A partially eaten deer found in a Juneau neighborhood on Monday has Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists scratching their heads.
“The deer was kind of eerily placed directly under the streetlight on the 4th Street walkway, next to a stump. And it looked like it had been drug up a few feet from where it started to bleed,” says Amanda Chisholm, one of a group of neighbors that found the dead animal Monday morning.
“The hindquarters was what was attacked, you could say,” Chisholm says. “It just looked like it had been chewed up pretty good on its hindquarters.”
After a preliminary investigation, Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Ryan Scott says it’s not clear how the animal died. He says it’s unusual to find a partially eaten deer in a residential neighborhood.
Scott says it was an older female that may have been having a hard time this winter. He says several paw prints were found around the animal. So it’s possible that it was attacked by a dog. Scott says another biologist followed deer tracks up the hill from the carcass and saw a lone coyote. But he says the coyote was probably just scavenging and followed its nose to the dead deer.
Scott says the carcass was removed from the area.
