These bucks were never getting free on their own.
As the fall season gets here and the rut starts to kick in, the big bucks will soon start fighting over territory and breeding rights. Unfortunately, every year some bucks end up with their antlers locked together and are unable to get free. That's the case with the two bucks in today's video out of Illinois.
This situation may be worse than normal because the buck's antlers are severely wedged at an odd angle that can't be good for the animal's neck.
It's only a matter of time before these two bruiser bucks either die of exhaustion or kill each other in their struggled to get free. Only human intervention can stop these animals from a slow and painful death. And this police officer has a pole chainsaw to get the job done!
We have seen plenty of locked buck videos at Wide Open Spaces, but these two bucks looked to be stuck together worse than any others we have ever seen. Those antlers were not budging an inch as the deer thrashed about. It is fortunate they were discovered because this story would not have had a happy ending normally.
The bucks must not have been stuck together for very long. They still had a ton of fight in them and it ended up making this rescue incredibly tense. The officers you see here is Illinois Conservation Officer Steven Beltran. Good thing he had a steady hand with that pole chainsaw!
In the end, he ended up cutting off most of one deer's rack to get these deer free. It almost appeared one of the bucks shed a whole antler on one side in the process. The good news is that both bucks went on to live and fight another day and Illinois hunters were not robbed of the chance at these two giants.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
NEXT: THE AXIS DEER AND HOW THEY'RE IMPACTING PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES
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