A 10-point buck sought sanctuary inside a southern Michigan church on opening day of the state’s firearm deer hunting season.
Pastors at Grace Sturgis encountered the buck inside the church’s auditorium on Monday before it leapt through a window and back into the wild.
A video the church posted on Facebook shows the buck wandering around the church. Pastors Amanda and Luke Eicher and Justin Wickey erected barricades in a hallway to try to keep the animal from the rest of the church. At one point, it climbed stairs to a balcony.
“I was just shocked by how high he could jump,” Amanda Eicher said. “I was amazed at how big he was.”
The buck didn’t appear to have any gunshot wounds and was bleeding just a bit from what appeared to be cuts from the glass, she told the Kalamazoo Gazette. Besides the broken window, the only other damage was blood stains on the carpet.
“We all need reasons to laugh, especially with the hard seasons from the past two years,” Eicher said. “I’m glad we could provide some laughs.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.