A hunter in the US was gored to death after a deer he believed he had shot dead got up and attacked him.

Thomas Alexander, 66, was hunting in the Ozark Mountains, Arkansas, when he shot the buck and watched it fall to the ground.

When Mr Alexander approached the animal to see if it was dead, the buck stood back up and attacked him.

Mr Alexander suffered multiple puncture wounds but managed to call his wife who alerted the emergency services. He was later declared dead in hospital.

Keith Stephens, from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, told local media that the hunter's death was "one of the stranger things that's happened" in his 20 years of working for the agency.

“I don’t know how long he left [the buck] there, but he went up to check it to make sure it was dead. And evidently it wasn’t," Mr Stephens told local network KY3.

“When you get up there, be really careful around it because it may not be dead. But if you let them lay there for a while and they don’t move, and he may have done that. We just don’t know," he added.

Mr Stephens said that it was unclear whether Mr Alexander had died from the puncture wounds, or another cause, such as a heart attack.