I think the pictures are real, but the story has several variations.
I haven't received the Minnesota version yet, but I have the Texas and Alabama ones.
Im going to use a little bit of mythbusters zoology here.
It IS somewhere in the south, and it is in the middle of winter. There are no apples or leaves on the apple tree in the background. Here in northern Wisconsin, our apple trees still have some leaves and fruit. The apple trees are not bare until about thanksgiving time. At that time, there are no bachelor groups of bucks. They are in full rut, and their necks are swollen, not skinny like the bucks in the picture.
Here in the north, by the time the bucks get back into bachelor groups, there is 2 feet of snow on the ground, and malnutrition has caused many of them to shed their antlers.
The combination of green grass, a bare apple tree, a bachelor group of skinny little bucks with antlers, is going to make me guess February and the Texas or Alabama story could be correct.