Buck Has Toilet Seat Around Neck

A buck with a toilet seat around its neck in Sumter County is not what Sport Horne expected to see on his trail camera.

A buck’s rack is obviously not designed to negotiate the human world. Social media is full of photos of bucks with a wide array of items stuck in their racks. Basketballs, propane tanks, clotheslines, backyard swings, fences, a paper towel hanger, hammocks and even a bra.

Americus’ Walter “Sport” Horne decided to check the game camera he had put up behind his house two days before. When he checked the photos, he at first didn’t know what he was looking at.

“I have a feeder about 400 or 500 yards behind the house,” he said. “I don’t shoot the deer. I just like to watch them. I decided to check the camera I had put up two days before.

“I thought to myself, ‘What is that around that deer’s head?’ I thought at first it might be one of those things that cattle rub their heads on. I blew the film up and I could see that it was a toilet seat. I thought ‘How in the world do you get a toilet seat around your head?’”

Walter said the young buck didn’t seem to be bothered by his most unusual necklace.

“He wasn’t spooked,” he said. “He’d bend over to eat and the toilet seat was touching the ground.”

The Sumter County resident said he has no logical guesses as to how the young buck acquired the adornment.

 “Maybe he stuck his head down a commode that was in someone’s yard and the seat came off,” he said. “I really have no idea. I do know that no one in this neighborhood has anything like that sitting in their yard. There’s a trailer park about a half-mile or a mile through the woods. Maybe it came from there.”

Walter hopes someone will come and tranquilize the deer and remove the toilet seat. Otherwise, he says, the buck will probably carry it the rest of his life.

“If you’ll look close, you can see that it’s pretty tight around his neck,” he said. “It’s not just going to come off when he sheds his antlers. He would have to have the intelligence to lower his head and maybe shake it off. It would be like a human trying to shake a tight necklace over their head.”

The buck doesn’t seem bothered by the toilet seat around its neck.