My first thought was that the stag was badly injured. He trotted across the rural Wyoming highway wrong, dipping with every third step. Clipped by a car, maybe, I thought, mentally cringing at the internal damage that would have done. I pulled over on the shoulder, but by the time I got out of the car he had vanished.
The land was only moderately hilly, so I could see for a good distance, and the grass was waist-high on me: not nearly tall enough to hide an adult deer. I had taken my eyes off the stag for just a moment and now he was gone. All I could see was a flock of small birds swirling in agitation over the ditch at the side of the road.
…Hmm.
As I approached, I saw that the ditch held the end of a large pipe that ran under the road. Still I could see nothing but grass. Then, unmistakably, I heard the hollow sound of light hoofbeats on metal.
The stag came out of the pipe.
He clearly wasn’t expecting me to be lurking just outside his hide-out, and gazed at me for a long moment before trotting up out of the ditch. One of his antlers was much shorter than the other, which is not normal.
He still had that hitch in his gait that I had noticed before, but this close it was obvious that he was healthy. He broke into a slow run, bounding easily over the grass, and I saw what gave him his unusual pace.
Look at that hind leg. That’s not a trick of perspective…
His left hind leg ended in a stump, much too high up to reach the ground. It was long-healed and I think must have been a birth defect, especially given his asymmetrical antlers. (I did notice a skeletal deer hind leg on the ground in the pipe ditch, but this was just a very weird coincidence, because there was too much of the leg there to have come from the stag I saw.)
I saw many more exciting species in Wyoming than this deer, but no individual animals as interesting. If anyone sees him again in the coming years, he will be easy to identify. Maybe his odd antler will protect him from trophy hunters and he’ll grow to be a magnificent ten-pointer—on one side, anyway. I hope so.
Tough Little Birds 
He’s gorgeous and what a great story!! You know I am a lover of deer anyway, but this story really touched me. Thank you for checking on him. :)
You always have such excellent insights, usually of course with you experiences with birds… educating us along the way with your words and beautiful photos, this no less..
The kindness in that dear’s eyes .. And the sweetness of you to make sure it’s okay.
One of my best friends has Cerebral Palsy, walks just as differently, and is a Pediatrician at Kaiser.. one of the most admirable people in my life. May this dear show its greatness too…
(“deer” . . typo !! )
There used to be a three legged doe that would sit with her fawn on my parent’s lawn in Lafayette on the west side of Briones Park, and I heard an orthodontist who had a practice near Sun Valley Mall in Concord discussing seeing the same doe at his house in Orinda off the Dam Road. She had more than one fawn, in the years my parents saw her. One of her hind feet was missing, but she was adding to the population. There was no way to tell if her foot was missing because of a birth defect or an accident, but her fawns looked fine.
Wow, how neat! Being a three-legged deer seems hard enough, but to successfully raise fawns is another level of difficulty altogether. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, I love these stories. Thanks to all of you for sharing.