US man dies of injuries from deer attack

A man has died after being attacked by a large deer in his back garden.

Ron Dudek came across the deer when he went into his garden to pick tomatoes. The buck struck him in the face, ramming an antler into his mouth and ripping a hole in his cheek.

Dudek, the 73-year-old president of an electric company, died Monday of his injuries. The Medical Examiners Office said an autopsy revealed that the deer’s blow caused a lethal blood clot that went to his lungs.

“This was a startled deer that tried to get out any way it could and ended up hooking the victim,” said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game.

The deer will be killed when it is found, he said.

Some neighbours said the buck that gored Dudek had become increasingly bold in recent weeks. While other deer run when people approach, this one stood his ground, they said.

Dudek’s widow, Joanne, said she and her husband of 54 years never fed the deer that came into their garden, which offers a panoramic view of a river canyon about 17 miles north-west of San Diego.

“He was my life,” she said.

The attack on Dudek was the first of three violent deer encounters reported in California over the past month, Martarano said.

On September 29, a deer pinned a man against his house and bit a chunk out of his wife’s arm in Mendocino County in northern California.

On October 11, a deer killed one dog and attacked three others in Orinda, near Oakland.

But deer attacks are rare nationwide, said Larry Hawkins, a legislative and public affairs officer for the US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

A deer killed a five-year-old boy in 1977 at Yosemite National Park, he said.