On Monday, Sept. 3, Oak Bay police received a report from a female resident of Oak Bay that she had been attacked by a herd of deer.
The attack took place while the woman was in her own backyard in the area of Foul Bay Road and Crescent Road.
The woman heard a commotion in her backyard and went out to investigate. She saw several deer in her yard and opened the gate to let them out. The deer ran toward her, possibly seeing her as a threat to the young fawn that had run out of the yard. The deer knocked the resident over and stomped on her causing her minor injuries.
This encounter comes on the heels of a series of similar occurrences in Victoria and beyond.
RELATED: Comox Valley woman pinned by entangled deer Friday morning
On Friday, Aug. 31. a Comox woman was pinned to the ground after she discovered a male deer entangled in her backyard fence. She approached the large buck to offer assistance and he turned on her, knocked her to the ground and wouldn’t let her get up.
Comox Valley RCMP responded to the site and grabbed onto the deer and were able to free the woman so she could walk to a waiting ambulance. The BC Conservation Service attended, sedated the deer and untangled him. The woman had some relatively minor injuries.
Earlier this summer, a woman in Penticton was twice stalked by aggressive deer while out walking her dog.
RELATED: B.C. woman and dog chased by aggressive deer
The first encounter happened June 20 on a walk around 10 p.m.
“I heard a noise behind us, turned to find a deer trotting up behind us. She stopped about five feet away from us,” said O’Fallon. “We started running home and thankfully, when I looked, she hadn’t followed us.”
The next day it happened again, and this time Bucky, her 13-year-old lab/husky cross, was injured.
“She came right up to me, three feet from me, if that. I was yelling and screaming at her but she wouldn’t budge,” said O’Fallon. “She put her head down and ran around me, struck my dog with her front hooves, jumped over him and turned to charge at him/me again.”
RELATED: Aggressive deer encounter in Saanich prompts warning
Another early summer attack left one Saanich resident shaken when, on June 4, she was walking her dog on the 3700 block of Aiden Drive when a group of grumpy deer chased her and her dog around a parked car.
Conservation officers have consistently offered the same warnings.
“This sort of thing happens every year,” said conservation officer Peter Pauwels.
“In the spring a lot of these does will be caring for their young and, even if you don’t see the fawn in the area, you can almost bet they are very close by,” he said.
“The does are simply acting on instinct to protect their young and they can become quite aggressive.”
Police warn residents not to approach deer and, if confronted, back away while putting something between themselves and the deer.
If approached be a deer while walking a dog, police advise picking up the dog (if it is a smaller breed) and keeping larger dogs on a short leash.
