Actual letter from someone who farms and writes well!
(Names have been removed to protect the Stupid!)
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
I 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 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
having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had
originally imagined.
The only up side 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 to 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 tendons 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
as 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 to sort of even the odds.
h/t SAL DALE
