Bubba, a 10-year-old beagle mix, was attacked by a deer recently while exercising in a Coos Bay neighborhood. World Photo by Madeline Steege

Chris Guernsey has a rather unorthodox method for walking her son's dog, Bubba. She drives a short distance from her home on Telegraph Hill, lets out the 10-year-old mixed beagle, then slowly motors back, with Bubba trotting alongside.

Having performed this routine for several years, Guernsey said her neighbors have grown accustomed to this sight. But the spectacle that unfolded Father's Day morning raised a few eyebrows, including Guernsey's.

It was a little after 10 a.m., when a blur of brown, black and white bolted up the Guernseys' steep driveway. Guernsey and her husband, Jud, who were awaiting their son's arrival, at first weren't sure what they were seeing.

“Jud said, ‘Look, Bubba's chasing a deer. No wait. The deer's chasing Bubba!'” Chris recalled. “It was absolutely flabbergasting.”

“I'd never seen him run so fast. All four legs were going, two at a time, and the deer was right behind.”

With the deer nipping at his back, Bubba raced up the stairs to the Guernsey's front door. Eyeing the steps cautiously, the 3-foot-tall deer pulled back and trotted up the hill, back down, across the driveway and back up the street.

“It happened so fast. It started, ended and then it was gone,” Chris said.

The full story came when John Guernsey, their son, arrived. He said he had stopped at the intersection of Third Court and Date Avenue so Bubba could get some exercise before arriving at his “grandparents'” place. But as soon as he had let Bubba out, a deer materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, and the chase began.

John piled back into his car and drove down the street a ways, finding Bubba cowering under a pickup truck with an attached trailer. The deer was nowhere in sight. After some cajoling, John was able to convince Bubba it was safe to come out.

But, it wasn't.

As stealthily as it had appeared before, the deer re-emerged, sending Bubba on his mad rush for the Guernseys' front door.

Once inside, Bubba took a good while to calm down.

“He's an old dog and he had a real fright,” Chris said. “Usually he gets a drink of water after a walk, but it took him two and a half hours before he got up. It was quite stressful.”

Black-tailed deer are not an uncommon sight on Telegraph Hill. Guernsey said she has frequently seen deer munching on blackberry vines and apple tree leaves. This year, deer have been especially plentiful, Guernsey said, noting she has seen a doe with a buck and a fawn, as well as another doe with two fawns.

“We are always tickled to see one,” Chris said, though she never had seen one attack a dog.

In hindsight, Guernsey suspected Bubba just happened to be too close to a momma deer and her young.

That assessment was shared by Bill Kinyoun, assistant district wildlife biologist in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's Charleston office.

“Typically what's happening here is someone allows dogs to roam and does have their fawns nearby, and they get very protective,” he said. “If a deer feels it is being threatened, it will go after a dog.”

Kinyoun said it is not uncommon for deer to attack dogs, or even people. In the last two weeks, he said he had been called out twice to deal with deer attacking both. Unlike the case on Telegraph Hill, the other two deer had been taken as pets when they were fawns. But once they got older, they became aggressive.

“What people tend to forget is they are wild animals. What's cute and cuddly when it's young grows up and they have lost their fear of the human environment,” Kinyoun said. “They try to establish an order of domination, just like they would in a deer herd.”

When Kinyoun is called in to take care of an aggressive deer, he will give the offending ruminant tranquilizers, take it to an isolated area and euthanize it.

A recent incident in Reedsport served as a prime example why that is the ODFW protocol, Kinyoun said. After corralling a 1-year-old buck that had been living as a pet since being captured as a fawn, Kinyoun and a partner headed to Elliott State Forest to dispatch the animal, but they had a change of heart.

“We had a soft spot and we talked ourselves into turning it loose,” he said.

They left the deer some food and waited until the tranquilizers had worn off before leaving. Kinyoun expected the deer would serve as a bear's dinner since it had been living in a human environment for so long. But that wasn't to be the case.

“Four days later, we got a call from Loon Lake, which is 10 miles from where we dropped it off, and it was doing the same thing,” Kinyoun said.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management personnel had captured the buck in a compound, but needed Kinyoun to take care of it. Unlike before, when it went much more quietly, the buck put up a good fight before it was tranquilized. Kinyoun said he broke a rib as a result of the effort.

“Which just goes to show that no good deed will go unpunished,” he said.

Kinyoun expects to continue receiving aggressive deer complaints the rest of the summer, when does are especially protective of their young, and into fall, when bucks begin to rut.

Since Father's Day, there have be no more incidents on Telegraph Hill, Guernsey said, though Bubba is a little more cautious these days when he comes to visit.

“Now he looks very carefully to see if there are any deer,” Chris Guernsey said with a laugh.