With the back leg detached from the hind quarter. My guess would be it had been shot or struck by a vehicle and broke the leg. And the Cat came on it. Dispatched it and started feeding on the hind quarter and chewed the leg off.
Guess away. I am surprised that the second guessing has not started till now.
The bobcat we saw on it killed this apparently healthy wild country buck. No doubt. Anyone may believe what they want.
No other vehicle drove up that road that day, and probably none the day before. It is not an active logging road and has very little traffic. The deer was still warm, the tracks and slide marks and blood spots etc. were fresh, untouched and easy to read overall in a skiff of unbroken snow over old snow. No cougar, human, vehicle, canine or other tracks marked the snow, only the bobcat and deer, whose tracks appeared normal.
Blacktails in this region usually live in a small area, especially a young deer like this one, and it is a long ways to humans, dogs or vehicle traffic fast enough to hit a deer. Plenty of lions up there but no sign of cougar here and if a cougar broke the leg, it is hard to imagine the little buck surviving long enough to leave all lion tracks behind.
The broken and severed leg are a bit of a puzzle but they are pictured as found. We have watched coyotes chase deer onto lake ice, where they often slip and do the splits on ice, break their pelvis and then are easy prey for the coyotes. This deer appeared to slip on the packed icy snow in the traveled portion of the road. That is where the first spots of blood on snow appeared, and we are guessing that the leg broke at that point somehow. Nothing about the broken leg looked like a bullet wound nor like anything but a fresh clean minutes-old break.
The cat ate a little meat right above the break and cut off the leg, leaving it as shown. It must have rolled the deer over or something because the only portion eaten is unseen in the photo, under the lower hind leg, just above the severed hock. I think that the cat ate a few bites, then started to drag the deer out of sight when we arrived. Again, my guesses, on the spot.
This ain't a freeway and is across a river canyon, a couple of thousand feet higher and 7 or 8 heavily forested steep miles from the nearest house or tiny garden cultivation.
