In an incident witnessed and photographed by a local resident, a bobcat killed a deer in a Woodland Park condo community

In late February, a post was made on a neighborhood social media platform saying the bobcat had killed a deer and cached its quarry under a deck. The initial online response was disbelief with posters emphatically suggesting it was a mountain lion who made the kill and stashed the deer.

But the incident had been witnessed by Woodland Park resident Kelly Ragan, and photos of the bobcat dragging the deer surfaced.

“It was the strangest thing. There are a few cats around that like to come to my back door and engage my indoor cats with a bout of yowling,” Ragan said. “At first, I thought it was that. And then I thought it was a cat fight of some kind outside. When I looked outside, I was shocked to see the bobcat dragging a deer under my neighbor’s deck while the rest of the herd stood by and watched.”

Ragan shared her photos with Drew Vrbenec, CPW officer for Teller County.

“Without this kind of evidence, or without doing a necropsy of the deer, if someone just found a dead deer under their deck, my first suspect would be a mountain lion, but a bobcat taking a deer is not outside the realm,” Vrbenec said. “We live in the mountains with wildlife, and wild things happen.”

Collar data that shows that bobcats do prey on deer, and much like this case, it’s typically fawns or the opportunistic taking of a sick or injured deer. Vrbenec said.

“The first thing I noticed in the photo of the stashed carcass was all the peanut shells around it,” CPW Wildlife biologist Ty Woodward said. It could be the next poster to drive home CPW’s mantra that “a fed deer is a dead deer.”

Residential deer are susceptible to contagions and digestive diseases. Deer suffering from any of these afflictions present an ideal advantage for a predator.

“This is what happens when you have high concentrations of residential deer,” Vrbenec said. “The predators are drawn to prey. It really doesn’t strike me as odd that this happened so close to a residence.”

The young deer is malnourished and the herd showed signs of a repressed flight response—which can happen after prolonged benign exposure to people and pets.

“The bobcat saw an opportunity and the deck was a convenient place to stash its prize,” Vrbenec said.

When asked if the cache was a danger to the homeowner, Vrbenec’s response was, “Not really.”

“Bobcats are very elusive and are not particularly aggressive,” he said. “The bobcat will come back to feed on the carcass, but when people are around, it will stay away. We have a lot of bobcats in Teller County, and they do a good job of avoiding interaction with people. The same is true with mountain lions.”

His advice to homeowners who find a cached animal on their property is to let the predator have its prize.

“If you are worried it’s too close to your house, you can drag it to the fringes of your property…With warm weather, I’d move that carcass as far away from the house as possible because it’s going to stink and attract birds and scavengers.”

But if a homeowner wants a carcass gone, Vrbenec said, “You’ll have to haul it off yourself or call a pest control company to do it for you. That isn’t something CPW does.”

There are ways for concerned residents to discourage bobcats from making their property part of their home range. Vrbenec suggests using outdoor lights and a radio with a talk show playing.

“Bobcats dislike lights and human voice,” he said.

Of course, the most effective way to discourage the presence of unwanted wildlife near your residence is to avoid intentionally drawing them in with attractants or by feeding their prey.

Though it’s not a common occurrence for a bobcat to take a deer—and even less common to have a witness—bobcats taking advantage of a vulnerable prey animal is perfectly natural. Most of Teller County is ideal habitat for both predators and prey. In this case, residents got a front row seat to observe the wilder side of nature.