Game wardens killed four deer in Helena this week after they acted aggressively toward a teenager trying to deliver newspapers.

Zach Lukenbill said he was working his paper route near Monroe and Cannon streets in the west side of Helena early last Saturday morning when a six-point buck challenged him.

"He was huge," the husky 17-year-old Helena High senior recalled. "I walked around the corner and he charged me. I had to dive under a truck.

"I was under there for about 20 minutes because he just stood in the street, 10 to 15 feet from me. He eventually meandered off and I crawled out."

This wasn't Lukenbill's first encounter with what his grandmother Donna Fritz refers to as "the gang." He also was challenged by a three-point buck, and two four-point bucks that stood between him and a home on his route, not letting Lukenbill deliver the newspaper.

The aggressive behavior by the bucks was reported to game wardens with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, who hunted the deer down this week and shot them with .22-caliber rifles.

The carcasses were field dressed and donated to local food banks.

Shooting deer within the city limits isn't the preferred method for managing what has grown into an urban population of 300-400 animals, according to Mike Korn, FWP's Helena area coordinator. But in this situation, the deer were behaving aggressively and posing a public health hazard.

"When something is acting truly aggressive, we'll take action and respond to it," Korn said. "But just because deer are walking down the street or don't move when you walk by, that doesn't constitute aggressive behavior."

Game wardens Dave Loewen said these were "huge" deer, weighing 250 to 300 pounds. He hunted them down with Sgt. Mike Ottman on Wednesday and Thursday.

Loewen said they exercise extreme caution when shooting rifles in town. The deer usually roam around in herds at night, then separate and bed down in yards during the day. Once the suspected animal is identified in a yard, the game wardens ask the homeowner for permission to shoot it.

"It's a tough decision to make and we have a lot of things we have to think about," Loewen said. "Just the mere fact that you're shooting a gun in town creates all kinds of problems -- where is the bullet going to go, what if it misses, what if it's not a lethal shot? What will the deer do?"

The priority is to ensure that the shot is safe, or they don't take it. The wardens also make sure that a cinderblock wall, dirt mound or some other blockade is behind the shot, and they only work at close range, which Loewen said means taking the shot 10-15 yards from the deer.

"We try to do it as quickly and as discretely as we possibly can, so that besides the homeowners, we don't know if anybody even noticed that we did it," Loewen said. "We try not to make it a big deal."

He said they can't try to trap and remove the aggressive deer because that's only moving the problem elsewhere.

"They've been living on lawns and tulips, and if you take an urban deer and stick it in the mountains, it will not live very long," Loewen said. "It will either succumb to predators or find new lawns and tulips."

Korn said this isn't the first time wardens have killed one of the urban deer in Helena in the past year, as FWP tries to deal with a steady increase in the number of aggressive deer complaints that seems to have grown with the deer population.

He notes that the animals, many of which have lived their entire lives in Helena, have begun acting in a territorial manner, and that's exacerbated at this time of year as the males go into rut.

But he's quick to add that shooting the deer is only a stop-gap measure.

"This isn't the way to control the deer," Korn said. "But in situations where it's a public safety issue, we will act -- but it truly has to be an issue of public safety."

The 2003 Montana Legislature authorized cities to work with FWP to develop management plans to control wildlife within city limits, and that process is occurring in Helena, Korn said.

"We've been working with both Helena city police and the city commission to try to come up with means of dealing with this issue," Korn said. "It's a tough one. But until all the various entities can put something together in the way of long-term management, we're going to respond to public safety situations such as occurred the other day by removing the animals."

Ottman suggests that people keep in mind that even city deer are subject to nature and to be wary when around buck deer.

"People don't need to fear every deer walking around town. Just use good sense and judgment when you're around them," Ottman said.