Pet Deer’s Slaying in Park Enrages New Haven : Connecticut: Bucky trusted humans implicitly; he had spent his entire life in captivity. Poachers are suspected. Reward fund tops $5,000.

Like thousands of afternoons before, ranger Wray Williams made his way down to Bucky’s tiny patch of parkland to feed the deer.

Williams was a little miffed when he arrived about 2:30 p.m. and couldn’t find Bucky. After all, the deer had spent nearly his entire life inside a small grassy enclosure at the West Rock Nature Center, a city park.

“Sometimes he’s standing there waiting for me. Other times he’s just sitting down somewhere where I can see him,” said Williams, who has worked at the 40-acre nature center for 15 years.

But on the afternoon of Sept. 19, Bucky was nowhere to be found.

“My first thought was that he had walked out of his pen and he was walking around somewhere in the woods,” Williams said.

Williams quickly grew worried when he saw the holes that had been cut through the nature center’s perimeter fence and another fence surrounding Bucky’s home.

“At that point I got a little scared,” Williams said. “The hole in the enclosure fence wasn’t big enough for him to walk through. He would’ve had to (have) been taken out by force.”

Inside Bucky’s pen, Williams’ worst fear came true when he spotted a small pool of dried blood. “That’s when I was sure that something bad had happened to him.”

The ranger ran to his office to call police and a search began.

A trail of blood and matted grass showed Bucky’s body had been dragged from the deer’s home to a clearing about 20 yards away. There, they found all that was left behind after poachers shot the deer, gutted him and carted away his carcass.

“There was just blood and flesh,” Williams said.

Bucky’s body was either carried or dragged about 60 yards along a trail that led to a nearby highway, where it was loaded into a car and hauled away.

It was the ultimate case of betrayal to an animal who had grown into a fearless friend of man during a lifetime in captivity.

“I was devastated that someone would do something so terrible to an animal in a cage,” Williams said. “This was an animal that trusted people for its entire life, and that trust was violated.”

During his 10 years at the nature center, Bucky grew from a frightened fawn into a strapping 160-pound, 10-point buck who endeared himself to thousands of city schoolchildren.

“He had no fear of man whatsoever,” the ranger said. “He would’ve walked up to anyone, friend or foe.”

The close and constant contact Bucky had with humans was one reason he was never returned to the wild, where he would have become an easy target for hunters.

But Bucky’s sanctuary became a death trap when he was shot at close range the night of Sept. 18.

Williams said the deer was probably sleeping or lying down when he was killed.

“He was the only animal anybody could get close to,” Williams said. “Bucky would walk up and lick your fingers, and I’ve seen him come nose-to-nose with kids before.”

Williams and many others in the New Haven area were outraged by the crime, which remains unsolved.

Residents and sportsmen alike questioned how anyone could kill a fenced-in deer, one that had brought so much joy to children.

“I think it’s one of the most cowardly things someone could do,” said Robert Weigold, whose two sons found Bucky in a field in the suburban town of Wallingford about a decade ago.

The boys turned Bucky over to the nature center when he was about 5 months old, after he began jumping the fence in the family’s back yard.

“I know no true sportsman would do anything like that,” Weigold said. “It could only be a lowly human being.”

Bucky’s admirers and several hunting groups have been pledging money to help authorities catch the killer or killers. The reward for information leading to a conviction has climbed to more than $5,000.

Williams said he’s not surprised by the response.

“It’s a dramatic story all around,” he said. “It’s a major loss for the inner-city kids who will never get a chance to see Bucky and the people who’ve come to know and love him.”

Some think Bucky was killed out of hunger. Others say he may have been the victim of a hunter out for a quick and easy kill.

The maximum penalty for illegally killing a deer in Connecticut is six months in jail and a $500 fine for a first offense.