Moira man fights off deer attack

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November 17, 2009

CASEY RYAN VOCK The Press Republican Tue Nov 17, 2009, 10:47 PM EST

MOIRA — A 56-year-old Moira man fought off a vicious attack by a deer Friday afternoon, possibly saving his own life.

Gerald A. Dabiew was loading wood into a front-end loader in his yard on Best Road when he noticed a large, 10-point buck rubbing against a tree across the road.

“I saw something out of the corner of my eye,” said Dabiew, who then watched the deer enter the roadway. “He looked toward me, and he wasn’t but 20 or 30 feet away. He put his head down and dove right toward.

“He was moving, and I didn’t have time to do anything. All I thought was ‘grab those horns.’”

Dabiew, who is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs about 230 pounds, grasped on to the animal’s antlers and wrapped his legs around its neck. But the deer lifted him up and began repeatedly slamming Dabiew onto the ground, ramming him with the large rack.

“He kept pushing and twisting on me. I knew that if he kept me down there, I was dead. So I fought with everything I had. I had his nose down between my legs, and I held him tight to me.”

But the deer kept lifting him and slamming him to the ground. At one point, the animal smashed him against a nearby tree stump.

By his estimates, Dabiew’s encounter with the angry buck lasted about 20 minutes, his mind racing for the duration.

“I remember telling him, ‘You’re not going to kill me out here!’”

Dabiew was home alone at the time, so his calls for help went unanswered.

“I screamed and screamed for help. My throat dried right out, and I couldn’t scream anymore.”

The fracas went on so long that both the deer and Dabiew had to stop to catch their breaths. Dabiew could hear the animal breathing deeply through its nose as he clenched it with his legs.

Dabiew looked for anything within reach that he could use to fight off the animal, but every time he started to loosen his grip, the animal began battering him.

“I knew if I let him go he would be right on me again.”

Slowly, Dabiew realized that he, himself, was becoming exhausted.

“He started thrashing again, and we rolled a couple times.”

At that point, Dabiew let go and pushed the deer off him with his feet.

The deer turned away from him, kicked him in the side of the face with its back legs and ran off.

It took Dabiew everything he had to pull himself up onto the front-end loader.

As he did, he looked toward the tree line and saw that the deer had stopped and was staring back at him.

Dabiew drove the loader back to his house, where his brother was just arriving and had to help him out of the machine.

Covered head-to-toe in blood and mud, Dabiew cleaned himself up and was taken to the emergency room at Alice Hyde Medical Center, where he was treated and released.

Dabiew has cuts and bruises all over his body, including his stomach, chest, back and head. He also has a bruised tailbone, which he said doctors can do nothing to treat.

“I’m sore, but that will go away with time,” he said. “I was in fights when I was young. But I have never taken a pounding like I took from that thing. I have never been so afraid of anything.”

Dabiew, who does not hunt, said the attack was likely a freak incident, but he believes the noise he was making by throwing wood into the loader could have sounded like bucks fighting, which hunters use to attract deer.

Ed Reed, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Environmental Conservation, said that theory could be correct.

“This is breeding season for whitetails, and they get pretty aggressive,” Reed said. “They have been known to attack people. If he sees something moving, he feels like it’s somebody encroaching on his territory.”

Reed said people should not be concerned for their safety in light of the attack.

Regardless, Dabiew hopes his story might raise awareness of the possibility of deer attacking humans.

“People should pay attention,” he said. “I have lived here all my life, and I have never seen anything like this. I didn’t even believe it. It scared the crap out of me, I know that.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.