After Bizarre Deer Kill in Waldeck, Speculation About Big Cat Surfaces

David and Linda McCall of Waldeck woke up to a gruesome sight Sunday morning. About 50 yards from their back door laid a deer with its guts ripped out. A trail of bloody, matted grass indicated where the deer had been dragged around the yard.

“The house windows were all open that night and we didn’t hear anything,” said David McCall. “We left the house around 8:30 a.m. and that’s when we saw it.”

“The deer appeared to have been attacked on our driveway,” he said. “Most likely, based on the deer’s injuries, the predator brought the deer down by latching on to the right developing antler. The predator then inflicted a major wound to the deer’s abdomen. The blood trail indicates that the deer thrashed around before dying about 20 feet from the driveway.”

The McCalls believe a large cat, perhaps a mountain lion, may have been responsible.

“The kill site has the signs that it was committed by a large cat as only the body organs were removed and eaten,” David McCall said.

Linda McCall said only the stomach and intestines were left behind. Large felines often eat heart, liver and other fleshy organs first, and they often discard the digestive organs.

The McCalls took several photographs of the kill and shared them with the Record. The Record passed the photos along to Laura Sherrod, the local wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife. Sherrod said she could not tell what killed the deer based on the photographs.

“This is a tough one to judge without seeing the deer and looking for additional injuries,” she said. “A big cat would kill by either jumping on the back and biting the neck, or generally you would see claw marks. These injuries make me wonder more about dogs. It is also strange that it was left out in the open rather than dragged away before starting to open it.”

The McCalls do have a game camera on the property, but unfortunately, it was pointed in the opposite direction of the attack. David McCall said he checked the camera anyway, but it did not capture any images of the deer or other animals.

In other big cat news, Wayne Navarro of the Ledbetter area wrote a report in the Ledbetter Newsletter about a recent encounter with a large cat. Navarro told the Record that a woman in the Wildwood area lost a calf. Navarro said her two boys went to look for the calf and found it dead from a predator attack in the woods.

On their way back home they encountered a large longtailed cat which they believed to be a mountain lion. The predator also killed the family’s small dog.

“That was probably a month and a half ago,” Navarro said. “We’ve probably had six to eight sightings in this area over the last four or five years.”