RICHMOND, Va.— Senator Allen yesterday denounced as “ludicrously false” claims from a former college football teammate that he frequently used a racial slur to refer to black people.

Now a radiologist in Hendersonville, N.C., Dr. Ken Shelton, also alleges that Mr. Allen, who is a former University of Virginia quarterback, once stuffed the severed head of a deer into a black household’s oversized mailbox.

In an Associated Press interview yesterday, Mr. Allen vehemently denied the allegations that Dr. Shelton made in an article published Sunday in the online magazine Salon.com and an AP interview Sunday night. His campaign released statements from four other ex-teammates defending Mr. Allen and rejecting Dr. Shelton’s claims.

“The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false,” Mr. Allen said during an interview with AP reporters and editors. “I don’t remember ever using that word, and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary.”

The Republican has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008, but questions about racial insensitivity have dogged him throughout his re-election bid against Democrat Jim Webb. Mr. Allen’s use of the word “macaca” in referring to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent in August prompted an outcry. The word denotes a genus of monkeys and, in some cultures, is considered an ethnic slur, but the senator insists he did not know that and had simply made the word up.

Dr. Shelton, a tight end and wide receiver for the Cavaliers in the early 1970s, said Mr. Allen used the N-word only around white teammates.

Dr. Shelton said the incident with the deer occurred during their college days when he, Mr. Allen, and another teammate who has since died were hunting on property the third man’s family owned.

Dr. Shelton said Mr. Allen asked the other teammate where black families lived in the area, then stuffed a female deer’s head into the mailbox of one of the homes.

“George insisted on taking the severed head, and I was a little shocked by that,” Dr. Shelton said.

“This was just after the movie ‘The Godfather’ came out with the severed horse’s head in the bed,” Dr. Shelton told the AP.

Doug Jones, who said he roomed with Dr. Shelton at Virginia, said in a statement that he never saw or heard anything from Mr. Allen that supports Dr. Shelton’s claims.

“I never heard George Allen use any racially disparaging word nor did I ever witness or hear about him acting in a racially insensitive manner,” Mr. Jones said.