Originally Posted by
DeppedyDogg
My brother and I were hunting Orchard Country in upstate NY several years ago.
We picked up the barking and beying of some dogs in the orchards we hunt. Followed this for 6-9 minutes until we saw the deer running flat-out. Then we saw the dogs behind her barking and beying.
We followed the Doe and dogs' barking and beying for another 6-8 minutes. We lost sight of this doe but the dogs noise was easy to follow. We took up following the dogs since we had permission to hunt there and my brother was adamant on killing those mutts.
Suddenly, the dogs' barking stopped. As we followed up on them we came up to a road she & presumably the dogs crossed. She was dead on the other side of the road.
No penetration wounds, no one shot her. There were no broken bones nor road rash. She wasn't struck by a car or truck.
We opened her up and found the top of her heart opened up with string like fragments.
Deer are made for burst speed, not endurance. These dogs killed that doe as sure as any hunters bullet.
Never found those damned dogs either, Once the thrill of the chase was over, they moved on.
Just like humans, im sure some deer have some kind of genetic heart defect, not the deer running itself to death. I doubt dogs would be able to outrun a deer since most deer have longer strides. They should be able to easily outrun humans or dogs, however waht they might do is do an initial all out sprint to get away which would expend more energy than someone jogging to track them down. So overtime, if you had dogs or the person was a good tracker they would most likely be able to run down the deer. Anatomically deer, dogs, and other animals have to pant to release their heat, humans just sweat. The animal would likely need to find a water source soon after to cool down, while humans could keep running it down since they are sweating.
I dont necessarily agree that deer are meant just for sprinting, I think that they cant keep up on endurance becaue of their fight or flight response, they expend 80% of their energy doing a full sprint to get away which would cause their muscles to fill with alot more lactic acid(or whatever they have), while the humans or dogs going at 50% would take longer to fill with lactic acid and thereby be able to run down the deer.