A Michigan man learned first hand why you shouldn't move wild game until you know it's deceased last week—or came face-to-face with the beginning of the zombie uprising, I suppose—when he and two public safety officers were stunned to see a believed-to-be-dead whitetail burst from his car trunk in Kalamazoo, Mich.
According to FOX 17 Michigan, a Kalamazoo public safety officer was checking parked cars in a Red Roof Inn parking lot around 2 a.m. on March 19 when he came across a man sitting in one of the vehicles. The officer stopped to talk to the vehicle's occupant, who was kind enough to admit that he had what he believed to be a dead whitetail in the trunk.
The vehicle owner claimed that he'd hit the deer on a nearby roadway, and decided not to let the whitetail go to waste—he intended to take it home and turn it into a meal. The officer asked if he could inspect the whitetail, and the driver agreed—setting the stage for morning jolt that I'm wagering was probably twice as a powerful as any coffee.
The officer slowly opened the trunk as his partner and the vehicle owner looked on... and out jumped a very much alive whitetail. The young deer clambered out of the trunk backwards, stumbled a bit and ultimately high-tailed it into the closest wooded area it could find, stunning all parties involved. FOX has video.
Everyone's best guess is that the driver only stunned the deer and didn't know any better. Given that he was sitting in a motel parking lot at 2 a.m. with what he thought was roadkill in his trunk, I'm not particularly surprised at the lack of sense.
If part of you was hoping that this was going to lead to an opportunity to hunt undead whitetail, I'm sorry to disappoint you. For now you'll have to stick to the zombie deer targets like the one above (offered by Birchwood Casey).