A learning experience...
Names have been removed to protect the stupid !
Actual Letter from someone who writes, and farms.
I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a
stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it
and eat it.
The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured
that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do
not seem to have much fear of me when we are there
(a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at
the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4
feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to
it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog
tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my
rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed
well back. They were not having any of it.
After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I
picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of
the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and
stared at me.
I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I
would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at
me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole
rope situation.
I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little
tension on the rope and then received an education.
The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand
there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred
to action when you start pulling on that rope.
That deer EXPLODED.
The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a
LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight
range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity.
A deer-- no chance.
That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no
controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me
off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred
to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as
I had originally imagined.
The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as
many other animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk
me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me
a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the
blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had
lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil
creature off the end of that rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it
would likely die slow and painfully somewhere.
At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer.
At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess
that the feeling was mutual.
Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I
had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head
against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I
could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small
chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the
situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have it suffer a
slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my
truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of
like a squeeze chute.
I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my
rope back.
Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years
would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was
very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the
deer grabbed hold of my wrist.
Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse
where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes
its head --almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to
freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead.
My method was ineffective.
It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several
minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.
I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning
that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus
out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled
that rope loose.
That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the
day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up
on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder
level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp.
I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -- like a horse
--strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the
best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive
move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back
down a bit so you can escape.
This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery
would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different
strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.
The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run
from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance
that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so
different from horses after all, besides being twice a s strong and
3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right
in the back of the head and knocked me down.
Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does
not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the
danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and
jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like
a little girl and covering your head.
I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went
away.
So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a
rifle with a scope so that they can be somewhat equal to the Prey.
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