Was That Bambi or Fido?

Va. man finds collared deer

It seems people are always trying to keep unusual animals as pets, but conservation police in Virginia have opened an investigation after a man noticed a deer with what appears to be a dog collar.

Andrew Spade captured the fully-grown buck on camera the other day while it was walking through his back yard in Roanoke County. His first thought was that there was some sort of deer study going on, but the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries said that’s not the case.

“Somebody has hand-tamed it. It is a tamed deer or at some point it has been a tame deer in the past or else the collar couldn’t have been put on it,” Andrew Knox, a deer expert with the department, told NBC Affiliate WSLS-TV.

Knox said the department gets about one similar case reported each year. He warns that domesticated deer are “extremely dangerous” to people because they aren’t as afraid to attack them.

Conservation police hope to locate the deer so they can remove it from the area before it hurts anyone.

It is illegal to capture or keep a deer as a pet in the Commonwealth, and violating that law can get you a $500 fine.

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