Regardless, when the animal is killed, we need to test it.” “If there was anything that led me to believe that it may have been illegally imported then that would be a legitimate concern. “I don’t worry as much about chronic wasting with this deer because it is likely the offspring of an animal brought into this area many generations ago,” Killmaster said. Killmaster said that there are other diseases that farmed deer can spread, such as bovine tuberculosis. The main thing we worry about is Chronic Wasting Disease.” “The reason those things have to be permitted is because they come from out west and the last thing we want is for them to bring in some kind of disease that would wipe our deer population out. “Whoever kills it, they can have it, but we need to be able to test it,” Adams said. His letter has been distributed among hunters in the area and DNR officials say that they have contacted processors asking that if the carcass of the animal turn up to notify the state. “Because live capture is unlikely and no owner can be identified, this letter will serve as authorization for any legal hunter to destroy the animal,” Williams wrote. Mark Williams, DNR’s Commissioner of Natural Resources, authorized the destruction of the stag in a memorandum dated Sept. He confirmed that he does not have any interest in getting the animal back.”ĭNR is asking anyone who sees, gets photos of or kills this exotic red stag to contact their offices. Once we confirmed it was a red deer, that was the closest permitted location (the permit is still active) and that’s as close to a smoking gun as we’re going to get. “He was pretty confident they had gotten every last one of them, but they’ll surprise you sometimes.

“He was pretty surprised and really didn’t think it was one of his,” Killmaster said. An individual there has been depopulating his herd over the last couple of years and thought he had removed all the animals from his property when he took his fences down this past summer, Killmaster said. Killmaster believes it escaped from a private deer farm near the Glascock-Warren county line. “If he was home where there are more of them he would have already locked onto a doe that was in heat and that’s where he’d stay.” “He’s looking for love, but he’s the only one,” Adams said. Adams and Killmaster share a theory on why it is covering so much territory. As far as he knows, no one has seen it with their own eyes. “He’s highly nocturnal and that might have something to do with it.”Īdams said that 99 percent of the photos he has seen have been taken at night and all of them have been on remote game cameras.

“It blows my mind that this thing has made it this many weeks into the firearms deer season and hasn’t gotten shot yet,” Killmaster said. Killmaster said that while it is possible that more than one of these animals is in the woods, they are pretty sure that all of the images are of the same stag. Neither can interbreed with white tail deer found in Georgia. Red deer are found across northern Europe. Red deer and elk share the same genus and can interbreed even though they are found in the wild on two different continents. “One side is a really good strong rack, and the other side is kind of weak with little points,” Adams said. Elk don’t have that.”Īpril 29, 1968: Army called out when lions escape Augusta zooĪdams said that the stag, or male deer, has very identifiable antlers. The antlers are usually the tell-tale (sign) because red deer have what they call crowns at the tips of their antlers, a cluster of points. “Male red deer have dark colored manes or neck fur. “Red deer have a much more reddish-brown colored coat where elk have like a tan colored buckskin,” Killmaster said. Once a day time color photo was turned in, DNR officials recognized it as a red deer. In those first blurry, bad quality night time photos, the animal looked like an elk. “That’s going from Glascock to Jefferson, back to Glascock, up through Hancock and then cutting the Taliaferro line up into Greene County,” Adams said. It later showed up on game cameras near Edgehill, 3 miles outside of Wrens, on Old Mitchell Road near Gibson, on Beaver Dam Plantation about three miles north of Sparta and then in the Union Point and Siloam area. Game cameras in four east Georgia counties have captured images of this European red stag.

Giant green army man