said. “I wasn’t at home at the time. The driver hit his
brakes and the noise scared Bucky and he jumped the
fence and ran into the woods. They called me and I came
right home. I was scared to death that he was gone for
good. He wasn’t nearly old enough to fend for himself.”
John went into the woods to look for the fawn.
“I went in and walked around and looked around and
called him,” John said. “There was no sign of him. I heard
something. I turned around and my dogs were right behind
me. Then, I decided to stand still for a long while and
there he was. I decided I’d better put a taller fence around
his pen. When I’m at home, I bring him in the house with
me.”
When PCT asked him about his plans for Bucky’s future,
he paused for a good, long while. It’s obvious that he’s
grown fond of the fawn.
“He’s very social,” John said. “If I isolate him from
people and the dogs, he gets anxious. But, when he gets
old enough to fend for himself, I plan to let him choose
for himself. If he wants to stick around the place — that’s
great. If he wants to go and be on his own, he can do that
too. I’ll let him go when he’s old enough. Right now, he’s
still on the bottle. He is pretty-well housebroken, you
know …”
So if you see a pickup tooling about one day, a few
years from now, with an outdoorsy-looking guy behind the
wheel and a 10-point buck in the passenger’s seat … well,
you’ll know that Bucky decided to just stick around.
JULY 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
89