Local News in Brief : Yorba Linda : Officer Hogties Deer That Jumped Into Yard

A buck deer wandered from the backwoods to a downtown back yard and rattled a couple eating breakfast before he was hogtied by a policeman nicknamed “the Cowboy,” authorities said.

A terrier helped corral the wayward deer after the startled Butorac family sighted the antlered beast foraging far from the woods Saturday morning.

“We were right in the middle of breakfast, around 8:30,” Francine Butorac said. “We were having cheese and ham omelets and we looked out at the yard and there it was.”

The 5-foot-tall, 130-pound deer romped around the back yard, upending patio furniture and knocking the cover off a fuse box.

Sitka, the family’s 10-pound terrier, barked and snapped until the deer jumped over a 5-foot fence into neighbor Gloria Rice’s yard.

Enter Brea Police Officer Leland Pratt, originally from Wyoming and known as “the Cowboy” by fellow officers. Pratt calmed the deer until an animal control officer tranquilized it with a dart gun.

“After we darted it, it was still kicking real good,” Pratt said. “So I hogtied it. . . . I stood up and called for ‘Time!’ just like rodeo.”

The deer was released into a wilderness area, authorities said.