First of all they were bow hunting, and the buck was well out of range. All of you who are blaming a bad shot make me laugh... Animals die in nature every single day from many reasons. I'm not saying he couldn't of been wounded on another property, but it wasn't on these guys ranch.

DXB, how far from the road was this?

Hell no, buzzards hunt for food with their excellent eyes, not their nose. You think their gonna smell something a half a mile up in the sky?

Great buck..

Maybe gut hooked from fighting as the rut is nearly over or in its final swing in that area.

Don't know why so many people have a hard time believing yotes took it down.

Every picture or series of pictures I've seen suggests the coyotes don't jump at the deers face and bite them on the neck/head to kill them.

Looks like they chase them to exhaustion and basically start eating them while they're alive when they're too tired to run/put up a fight any longer.

Have seen yotes at night on deer before. I've seen a lot of bloody rumps, never a bloody neck.

Also people saying if it were coyotes the entire deer would be dead. Not impossible for 2-3 yotes to wear this buck out. How much do you expect an average 30 lb yote to eat?

I think its impossible to pin point whatever caused this bucks demise. Very likely coyotes. I'd find it a coincidence that the buck died from other causes and coyotes found it that night. How many people shoot bucks in the evening and come back to get them the next morning. Only on a few occaissions do you come back and find your deer has been found by predators and partially consumed.

I would think cats would be more solitary and a single cat wouldn't eat that much in only one night. They would also be more likely to attack from the head/neck. So I think its most likely coyotes.

I honestly don't know. I'll try and find out though. Are you thinking maybe he got hit? That thought had crossed my mind.

yote, but you still gotta tag him....

Yeah, because many of the deer hit on the road are able to run for a while after they get hit. Then they fall down because of their injuries and become prey for hungry predators.

He was tagged.

I think those pics are fake!

Thats cuz they smelled you coming East

Close Stub, but not close enough. Its because I leave a trail of death in my wake.

I dont know a lot about yotes, but I can tell you that its very common for wolves to purposely bite at the underside of caribou and moose, they do it to get the guts to drop and then they continue to chew at the guts and organs til the critter succombs. Then they feed like hell on it. Cant imagine yotes not behaving like wolves, canines arent like cats and bears that actually take down an animal with brute strength, they kill by tenacity!

Things that make you go Hmmmmmmm..........

Hell who knows what the hell happened. Deer die all the time, the rut is especially hard on the them. But if someone shot him , why wouldnt they fess up. Unless it was a poacher. Lots of crap could have happened and we will never know. He was a nice buck though.

possible....... highly possible

He was a GREAT deer. I'm hunting just north of Walnut springs, for the next couple of weeks... I'd love to see one like that.

To bad...A lot a good meat went to waste on that one...

spontaneous explosion of the rumen.

I bet a Wampus cat from Itasca did it!!!

Chupa for sure

I heard this was a high fence ranch so that takes out the chance of him getting hit by a car or the neighbors shooting him.

I'm going with coyotes, killed and ate him.

got a question for you about this. how do you explain me shooting a deer gutting it. loading it on the four wheeler taking it back to camp and going back by wear the gut pile was not 15 mins later to find there were no guts and no traces. now i must say i wasnt there so i dont know what came along and ate the guts but it wasnt buzards maybe it was hogs but id say yotes. and i agree with you on its impossible to find out what happend unless we send NCIS out to investigate. but with the detail of the story it sounds to good to be true that somebody didnt take the shot. yes i know its been stated they were bow hunting but you werent there right im sorry but people dont always tell the true story cause they dont want to admit they messed up. but with the details provided and the pictures of the supposed claw marks that look to clean of marks to me as well as to straight and not an abundance of them i see this as a set up. im just calling how i see it. get mad get pissed i could care less you asked for my opinion and everyone elses so congrats you got it.

dang nice rack, whatever it was it was mean

You make me laugh