"I've never seen anything like this," Catherine Veerhusen tells the
Des Moines Register. "No words, no words." Veerhusen and her husband were driving Sunday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when they saw a herd of deer—one buck and three does—on a bridge over US Highway 30. Veerhusen says the deer seemed "panicked." Suddenly the buck ran to the opposite side of the bridge and jumped, falling 20 to 30 feet to the highway below. The three does quickly followed, leaping off the bridge to their deaths. "It was pretty quick. I didn't even get to my phone in time. I was more busy watching them," says deer hunter Denny Benyshek, who also saw the incident. "I seen this rack and thought, 'That's a nice buck.'"
Veerhusen posted video and photos of the incident to Facebook, calling it "horrifying." Her post has since gone viral, being shared more than 300,000 times, Fox 43 reports. Ron Lane, conservation officer with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says the deer may have been pushed by hunters into an unfamiliar area and freaked out. "The bridge there is brand new," Lane tells the Register. "I'm guessing the deer aren't used to that, with all of the construction going on." He adds: "It sounds like with they were just trying to run across and didn't know where to go." (More deer stories.)
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