The Washington County Sheriff's Office says an officer did nothing wrong when he shot and killed two young deer and that he did so at the DNR's request. A couple living nearby had essentially adopted the fawns, which had been living in their yard for months, and filed a complaint following the shooting.

About six Whitetail deer smashed into windows and doorways at the Moorhead Center Mall early Saturday afternoon, police said.

Mark Christianson, 66, of Fertile, Minn., bruised and battered with two black eyes, says the deer started it. A gun ended it. “He was pummeling me, standing on his hind legs and hitting me with the front ones. He hammered me good, rapid fire, and I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t good.’ I wasn’t winning, so I grabbed him and tackled him and we both went down on the ground.”

DNR conservation officers came to the rescue of a white-tail buck that hopped a fence onto a college soccer field in La Crosse. Officials say the deer spent the night with his antlers caught in the netting of the goal. They attached a knife to a stick to cut the net from a safe distance, then opened a gate so the exhausted animal could stroll back to the woods.

The Department of Natural Resources says the decline is a result of a smaller deer population and a windy opening weekend of the firearms season. Minnesota deer hunters harvested 192,300 deer during the 2011 season. That's 15,000 fewer deer than in 2010. The 2012 deer hunting season begins in September.

The first deer depredation specialist at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is a busy man. Clint Luedtke says he gets new complaints every day from farmers and gardeners losing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of food to the state's oversized deer herd. Luedtke says fences and chemicals can help but more hunting is the long-term solution.

For ten years Wisconsin had kept the disease confined to deer in the southern part of the state. But an infected doe found near Shell Lake changes that. The DNR will look for other sick deer in the area.