Imagine being 15 years old, sitting in your home in the middle of the day eating cereal, and suddenly hearing someone beating down your front door. What would you do?
For one quick-thinking Marylander, the answer was to go upstairs, call 911, and then open the family safe and get a gun to protect himself with. Ryan Manchester of Frederick then went downstairs and killed the intruder as he was trashing the family’s living room Christmas tree.
Just one catch: The intruder was a deer.
According to the Washington Post, Manchester was at home December 5 when he heard something that sounded “like someone breaking my door down with a sledgehammer.” It was an eight-point whitetail buck, and after knocking its way into the house, the deer went into demolition mode on the family’s Christmas tree.
Manchester worried the buck might injure his dog, so he took the canine upstairs and closed it in a room away from danger. Then he made the aforementioned calls, ultimately dialing his dad and requesting permission to enter the family gun safe and use a 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol to kill the deer.
His father, John, worked an hour away and quickly gave Ryan the go-ahead. When asked if he would have killed the deer had he been in that situation, John was quoted as saying, “Absolutely, had I been there I would have done it myself.”
Ryan Manchester and his first-ever whitetail buck.
Although Ryan has target shooting experience, he is not a hunter. This was his first buck, so after the excitement died down he had the buck’s head taken to a taxidermist and mounted. Quite the story to tell!
In the end, authorities believe the buck stormed the Manchester house because a doe in estrous had marked the family’s Christmas tree. After all, ’tis the season.