Oscar-nominated Hungarian deer kidnapped?

Two deer, including the Oscar-nominated Hungarian deer, disappeared into thin air, their owner believed them to be dead. The animal conquered the world as the star of an Oscar-nominated film. Authorities are still investigating and searching.

Brutal murder

As Bors reports, police have spent long hours at the scene at Zoltán Horkai’s farm, where two deer were believed to have been shot by unknown perpetrators. The horror may have happened on Sunday. The owner was busy with guests when he was informed by one of the caretakers that one of the deer was lying on the ground showing no signs of being alive. The other missing deer was not found at that time, but the tracks suggested something horrible. Horkai said:

They shot one from the back, near the woods, at their runway, wounded it, after which the animal traveled quite a distance, and went around the fence.

A silenced weapon or weapons were likely used, as no noise could be heard. The police are still looking for whoever attacked the two deer. However, it takes at least four people to carry off such an animal weighing nearly 150 kilos. Thus, the perpetrators were at least that many.

The reason behind the attack

The owner, Zoltán Horkai, believes that the perpetrators wanted the meat of the two animals. One kilogram of good quality deer meat is worth around HUF 7,000 (EUR 18.2). At least 70 kilos of flesh could have been slaughtered from Sanyi, the deer that was killed on the scene. Thus, the fence could have paid hundreds of thousands of forints. However, eating these animals could cost your life. These deer were vaccinated with a vaccine that rendered their meat unfit for consumption. Anyone who takes a bite can become seriously ill, or even die.

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Oscar-nominated deer

These deer may be familiar to many, the owner said that they were featured in several films. One of the deer, Ödön, is the animal from the 16 award-winning, Oscar-nominated film On Body and Soul. Telex writes that the deer that disappeared from the Gödöllő property of Zoltán Horkai was found a couple of days later. The developments were reported in an update of the original Facebook post for help. While the first pieces of evidence suggested that both deer were shot, the unknown attackers only took the carcass of one of the deer with them. Ödön, the film star was left behind. According to his owners, it was because he had suffered so much trying to hide from his killers. The deer’s owner wrote in the Facebook post:

He escaped into the forest when his partner was killed….we are very happy that at least he is alive and we are trying to bring him home, but he is very scared and in shock.

You can watch the trailer of the film that Ödön starred in here:

This is not the first time

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that something like this happened to Zoltán Horkai. He mentions an earlier case:

The day before my daughter was born, hunters also came in and shot a wolf that was living with Brumi, the brown bear. The reason they didn’t dare go into the enclosure to get the wolf’s carcass was because Brumi was lying nearby.

Zoltán Horkai became known to the world when a portrait series about him was broadcast on Discovery Channel under the title Zoltan, the WolfMan. Before that, his well-trained animals had been featured in action and nature films for decades.