Pet gets home just before deer season begins

PUXICO, Mo. (AP) - A pet deer that escaped from his rural southeast Missouri home made it safely back two days before the opening of deer hunting season.

Connie Caldwell of rural Puxico says Bambi, a 6-year-old fallow deer her family has raised since it was 6 months old, escaped from his confines in late October.

She told The Dexter Daily Statesman that she saw the wayward deer once in the woods and tried unsuccessfully to coax it back with food. But on Thursday, she again found the deer and managed to get him close with a bucket of corn. She got a rope around his neck and brought him back to the farm.

The opening of Missouri's firearms deer season was Saturday, and hunters were expected to kill about 100,000 deer during the weekend.

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Information from: Dexter Daily Statesman, http://www.dailystatesman.com