CORNISH, N.H. -
Everett Gray of Cornish, N.H., hobbles around his house where trophy deer kills are mounted on his wall. But last week Gray says it was a deer that almost killed him.
"And it got down to, you know, you killed me, now I am going to get you," Gray said.
On Thursday the life-long hunter was in the woods right in front of his house and it wasn't long before he spotted an eight-point buck. "Pretty quick I hear a noise off to my right and there was the deer, 20 yards from me, just coming right up the hill with his nose down on the ground and I saw the rack and I aim alright, well I guess I get a shot," he said.
Gray took the shot hitting the animal in the neck. After tracking it for a bit, he went in for the final kill. "I set my riffle down and took out my knife and I am walking up to the deer and it bounds up off the ground, whips its head, hooks me and just picks me up and drives me into the ground," he said.
A bandage covers the wounds where the animal's antler gored Gray's gut. A battle -- man versus beast -- ensued. "I'm laying there under the deer and it is just running its head back and forth and I am trying like hell to pull that antler out of my gut and I finally got it up," he said.
Gray eventually won the fight, but he was seriously injured and ended up hospitalized. "I was scared to death. I really thought that when I was lying under that deer, trying to wrench its horn out of me. I thought it was going to kill me," he said.
Gray is having the animal mounted -- including the rack -- he'll never forget. The deer meat is being processed. And for Gray, it will be his last buck. "I got my first deer at 47 and I got my last deer at 57," he said.
