Deer attacks woman on Glenmore hiking trail

Photo: Contributed 

A Kelowna woman says she was attacked by a deer Tuesday morning while hiking on the Highpoint Hill trail in Glenmore. 

The woman tells Castanet she was walking her dog on the trail, something she does regularly, when she was charged by a doe from behind. 

Startled, she got off the trail and hid behind a tree while trying to back away slowly. 

“As soon as I took one step, it charged us again,” she said. “It kept coming up to less than a foot away from me and looked in my face. I was scrambling away.”

She tried yelling loudly at it, throwing rocks, but the doe kept on charging her, which she managed to avoid by jumping behind trees. 

“It would go as far as 10 feet away, and I would slowly back away to go back to my vehicle and then, just out the blue, again it would charge me.”

Eventually, a man on a mountain bike came around the corner, causing the deer to turn its attention to him. The mountain biker yelled and waved a stick at the deer, which kept on charging. 

It did not give the pair the chance to escape until the man picked up his bike and used it to push the deer away. Even then, as the two scrambled away, it followed them slowly from a distance for several minutes. 

The woman says she’s never had a run-in with nature quite like it, with previous deer encounters always being “a really pleasant experience and a cool little encounter with nature.”

“Had I not jumped behind a tree I’m certain it would have trampled me,” she added.

While the victim of the attack did not see a fawn during the ordeal, she assumes the doe was protecting one of its young that could have been bedded down nearby.

Fawning season for deer in the B.C. Southern Interior takes place from May to early June, according to WildSafeBC Okanagan Westside Coordinator Meg Bjordal.

“Does may see pets as predators or threats to their newborns since dogs are members of the canid family and are the natural predators of fawns in the wild. If a dog comes too close, the doe may become aggressive,” Bjordal said in a news release Tuesday.

As for the hiker, she says she’ll probably avoid the trail for the next few weeks.

“I don’t think I’m going to go back that way alone.”