A nuisance deer was put down in Bothwell on Friday, September 18, after attacking a young mother in her family’s garden.

It was about 7 p.m. in the small farming community west of Tremonton and Andrea Anderson, 23, and her daughter, Emma, 3, were picking tomatoes from the family’s garden for canned spaghetti sauce.

The mosquitoes started getting thick, and Andrea asked her mother, Carol Anderson, to take Emma inside while she finished up.

It was a good move on Andrea’s part, because not five minutes later, she was attacked.

“I froze,” Andrea said. When the male deer started making it’s way through some apple trees into the garden, she said “I just stood there...trying not to make him mad.”

The deer continued advancing, lowered its head and hit her with its antlers. She said she tried to defend herself, but to no avail.

“He just kept coming and I knew I was in trouble,” she said.

Andrea said she started screaming and turned to run in to a shed. She screamed so loud cars stopped on the nearby road. The deer continued to hit her with its horns and hoofs as she made her way to protection.

“He was right on me, right behind me, trying to attack me the whole time,” she said.

After getting inside the shed she had the fight the deer to get the door shut.

Her father, Eli Anderson, and brother reached the scene with the deer munching contentedly on tomatoes in the garden, and Andrea’s brother shot the deer.

Andrea didn’t suffer any serious injuries, but “I got beat up pretty bad,” she said, and still walks with a limp from the tissue and muscle damage she sustained. She said her doctor told her it could take up to a month before she feels back to normal.

“It could have been worse,” she said. “I’m pretty lucky.”

Living in a small, rural community seeing wildlife is common, but this, Andrea said, is beyond the pale.

“I didn’t expect that to ever happen in my yard. When you’re camping or hiking, maybe.”

But this is not the first incident with the animal.

According to Carol Anderson, the animal attacked her, too, about six weeks ago.

She said it was early morning and she was checking sprinklers and a small apricot tree in her yard when “I turned around and was face-to-face with that thing and it scared the living guts out of me.”

Carol turned to the house, and the deer kept trying to paw her, and scraped her leg just before she made it inside.

“He had no fear at all,” she said.

And, according to Carol, even earlier in the year, the animal attacked a neighbor, Megan Branch, while she was carrying her baby.

According to Division of Wildlife Resources officer Cory Englet, who responded to the call Friday, it’s impossible to tell conclusively whether or not its the same animal in each instance, but, he said, “Chances are good it’s the same deer.”

Eli Anderson is certain it’s the same. After all, he spent enough time near the animal while putting up a shed on his property. He said the deer took naps and drank out of fast-food cups while workers were putting metal siding on the shed.

“It made itself to home and didn’t mind them using drill guns and making a racket,” Eli Anderson said.

He he called the DWR to remove the animal at that time, but just days later it returned.

Eli Anderson allowed a young archery hunter to hunt his property and the hunter wounded the deer which ran onto a neighbor’s property. According to Englet, the property owner denied the hunter’s request to retrieve the animal.

The deer that was shot after the attack on Andrea Anderson had been wounded, and someone had tried to help it, Englet said.

“We got looking at the deer and it had stitch marks,” Englet said. “Somebody tried to save him.”

Englet said there is an ongoing investigation, and that whoever domesticated the deer could face charges.

“This is a tame deer,” he said, “And it is against the law.”

According to Northern Region Conservation Outreach Specialist Phil Douglas with the DWR, this serves as yet another cautionary tale regarding wildlife―you can take the animal out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the animal. The animal looses its fear of humans, but none of its wild tendencies.

Douglas said the event and its circumstances “bring home the message that wild animals don’t make good pets. Those wild instincts are what help them survive. Wild animals should be left that way.”