A couple of years ago, a story appeared on the Internet about unlucky hunters from the United States who mistakenly shot at a transgender man who looked like a cloven-hoofed horned animal. We checked whether this really happened.
At the end of November 2020, a story about a pair of American hunters from South Carolina who encountered an unusual game - a human - was widely circulated on social networks. Only this man turned out to be unique: he looked like a deer. One of the hunters got scared and shot the creature, which in fact turned out to be a 31-year-old transgender person identifying himself as an artiodactyl mammal from the deer family. As a result, William Tenenbaum, who was wearing special makeup to look like a deer, was rushed to the hospital. At least that's what they say in social media posts.
For example, in the “Average Abomination” community on VKontakte there is a post with this story collected 2500 likes and 73,000 views. There are also similar posts for 2020–2021 in public pages “Strange quotes from oppressed women” (1600 likes, 37,000 views), "Degradate Nation" (940, 34 000), “Some hellish facts” (880, 28 000), Redneck Diary (130, 12,000) and "Golden Fist" (60, 14,000).
In addition, November 25, 2020 story appeared on the website of the Federal News Agency, and there they referred to the News Break publication.
On newsbreak.com November 22, 2020 indeed appeared publication about a deer man shot by hunters. It has now been deleted, but stayed archived copy of the page. The problem is that News Break is a news aggregator. That is, only an announcement appeared on the site, and to read the full text you had to go to another resource. And the real primary source is the World News Daily Report (WNDR) website, there is news there too came out November 22, 2020, but a few hours earlier. Below is our translation of the original text.
Man from South Carolina, who believes he is a deer, was flown to the hospital by helicopter after being shot by two hunters.
William Tenenbaum, 31, is in critical condition after two local hunters mistook him for a deer, according to medical staff at Allendale County Hospital. According to the men, Tenenbaum was dressed and painted in the colors of a deer and wore antlers, so they did not recognize him as a person.
“For the first time in my life I saw a deer stand up and walk on two legs. That’s when I took a clear shot in the chest,” a shocked 72-year-old Harry Perkins told reporters. “It looked like the deer was rubbing its genitals and chest and signaling us to come closer, it was very surreal,” Thomas Pincut, 68, told reporters.
William Tenenbaum's mother, Michelle, said her son always had difficulty interacting with people and making friends, but he loved nature and being outdoors. “At eight years old he considered himself a porcupine, at twelve he considered himself a squirrel, and now he considered himself a deer. But it could be worse, he could be homosexual,” she said during a telephone conversation. In addition, Michelle admitted that her son's views on life were eccentric and that the family had to adapt. “Since deer don’t eat meat, we made him a salad of pine needles and pine cones for Thanksgiving. He seemed to enjoy it,” she added.
In 2016, William Tenenbaum made local headlines for breaking and entering a deer farm, where he was rumored to have sexually abused several animals. He was eventually released because the farm owner decided to remove accusations.
This entire article is fake. Our regular readers most likely already remember that WNDR publishes satirical news. This is stated in the slogan: “Where facts don’t matter” (“Here facts don’t matter”), and in disclaimer: “WNDR takes full responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictitious nature of their content. All characters appearing in the texts on this site are entirely fictitious, even if based on real people, and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is a mere miracle.”
Previously, we wrote about other stories made up by this portal, for example about those found in the stomach of a 100-year-old catfish remains Nazi officer and old lady, who taught several dozen of her cats to steal jewelry from their neighbors.
And the pictures that illustrate the story about the hunters and the transgender show not a person identifying as a deer, but a body art artist. In fact, these are not even photographs, but a couple of screenshots from a YouTube channel video Humanimals, which published on the platform in 2018. The caption for the video states that British artist Lauren Baker was responsible for the makeup and coloring. But how found out Snopes publication, the video could have been recorded around 2009, according to this hint photographs by photographer Erik Erkson.
In addition to many videos with a deer man, the Humanimals channel also has videos with other anthropomorphic “hybrids.”
Note that by 2022 the story about the deer has changed a little. For example, on VKontakte in the Just Art public posted photographs of the same man dressed as a deer with the following caption: “A couple who had sex in deer costumes were accidentally shot dead. The hunter was not ready for this.” The post received 2,200 likes and 683,000 views. Apparently, the effect of a damaged phone was at work here.
Cover photo: @humanimal.london / Erik Erkson
Satirical news
- Is it true that Santa Claus' sleigh cannot be pulled by male reindeer?
- Is it true that in Finland reindeer antlers are painted with reflective paint to reduce the number of accidents with them?
- Is it true that the official Harry Potter series will feature non-binary and transgender actors?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
