7-'legged' deer killed near Waucousta

By Jared Blohm
The Reporter jblohm@fdlreporter.com December 14, 2006

What has seven legs, male and female reproductive organs and nub antlers?

It sounds like a bad joke, but it's what Rick Lisko found in his driveway late last month.

Lisko hit the seven-legged nub buck while driving his truck through the woods along his mile-long driveway near Mud Lake, east of Waucousta in the Fond du Lac County town of Osceola on Nov. 22.

"It was definitely a freak of nature," Lisko said. "I guess it's a real rarity."

Lisko had slowed down as a buck and two does ran across the driveway.

"All of a sudden we felt the truck stop," he said.

The small buck had run underneath his truck, Lisko said. When he got out to look at the deer he noticed three- to four-inch appendages growing from the rear legs and later found a smaller appendage growing from one of the front legs.

"It's a pretty weird deer. It kind of gives you the creeps when you look at it," said Lisko, who described the extra legs as looking like "crab pinchers."

The appendages were moving when he first saw them, Lisko said.

"They were actually functional," he said.

Nothing like it

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Warden Doug Bilgo came to Lisko's property to tag the deer.

"I have never seen anything like that in all the years that I've been working as a game warden and being a hunter myself," Bilgo said. "It wasn't anything grotesque or ugly or anything. It was just unusual that it would have those little appendages growing out like that."

Bilgo took pictures and sent the information to DNR wildlife managers. He thinks the anomaly is a birth defect.

John Hoffman has worked at Eden Meat Market — which processed over 1,000 deer this year — for over 40 years. He skinned the deer for Lisko.

"I see a lot of deer and I've never seen anything like that," he said. "It just was a rarity. It was something different that you never see."

Mistaken identity

Lisko, who bow hunts, said he had seen the deer before, but never realized it had extra appendages.

"We just thought it had swollen metatarsal glands," he said.

Lisko wonders what it would have looked like in a few years.

"I imagine the bigger it got, the longer these legs would get," he said, adding that it likely would have also grown antlers.

The unusual deer may bring financial rewards to Lisko. He said Bass Pro Shops has expressed interest in doing a full mount of the deer and putting it in one of its stores.

Hoffman and Bilgo said they were unaware the deer had male and female reproductive organs, as Lisko claims, because the deer had been gutted before either of them saw it. They both said the deer appeared to be completely healthy.

"And by the way, I did eat it," Lisko said. "It was tasty."