To me, it looks like someone pushed a 50-gallon drum through her trailer. – Utah Division of Wildlife Conservation officer Micah Evans
PANGUITCH — When Utah Division of Wildlife Conservation officer Micah Evans saw the large hole in the front of the trailer, he thought for sure he'd find gruesome results inside.
"I'm thinking the animal is pretty well hurt from the size of the hole. So I peek around the kitchen counter, and I see this 2-by-3 little set of buck deer antlers sticking up over the top of the kitchen counter, and it's standing up," Evans said. "Well, this is not something I see everyday."
On Sunday, Evans was on his way home from work about 3:30 p.m. when he responded to a call of a woman who thought she had hit something large on U.S. 89 in Garfield County.
"She reported she hit something with her camp trailer, and she didn't know what it was. She didn't know if it was a deer, she didn't know if it was an elk, she didn't know if it was a cow. She just hit something, and it had caused damage to her trailer," he said.
What she actually hit — or what hit her — was a 150- to 200-pound deer. Evans believes the buck was trying to cross the highway, became spooked by the passing truck and trailer, and tried to jump between the truck and trailer just as it was passing.
Instead, the deer crashed through the aluminum siding.
"To me, it looks like someone pushed a 50-gallon drum through her trailer," he said.
The hole was about 4 ½ feet off the ground. When Evans first arrived at the scene, he told the shaken driver, "I think whatever you hit is still inside your trailer."
Judging from the size of it, Evans said he expected to find a severely injured or deceased animal inside.
But when he opened the door, he could hear an animal licking.
"I can hear the jaw moving, and I can hear the tongue working," Evans said. "It was either licking its front leg or licking something that spilled on the floor. And as I'm looking at this animal, I'm thinking, 'Man, how the heck am I going to get this thing out of the trailer?'"
Evans went back to his vehicle to get his camera. When he went back to the trailer to get a picture of the 3-point buck, his camera flash went off.
"The second the camera flashed, the deer turns toward me, his eyes are kind of big, looks toward me, tilts his head down and antlers first comes running out of the back of the trailer full tilt toward me," Evans said. "I kind of let out a little high-pitched scream because I'm between the deer and door. I jump out of the door and run toward the back of the trailer."
The deer followed Evans out the door, slipped when he hit the ground, looked around and took off toward a barbed wire fence and full speed.
"This deer takes two bounding leaps, does a full Superman dive through this fence — its front legs are sticking straight out in front of its nose — (and) runs right through this fence, hits the ground and doesn't stop running until it reaches the Sevier River," Evans said. "It passed through this fence like there was nothing there."
The truck and damaged trailer were still driveable after the deer ran off.
"I've never seen anything like it," Evans said of the incident.
Email: preavy@deseretnews.com
Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam