Posted on 11/19/2009 5:28:48 PM PST by 1776 Reborn
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 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.
good story!
Living where the deer roam freely and believe they own the land I can surely appreciate this story.
I’m laughing so hard I can’t see!
This cheesy sob-sister never heard of moose bites?
ROFL Priceless
A friend sent that to me and I had to post it.
He lives in WI so it probably happened there.
Damn hate when that happens!
Very funny story about gentle Bambi.......just don’t piss them off......
In my younger days I almost tried to slit the throat of a young buck I hit with my truck. I had it pinned against an embankment...then thought better of it!
Thank God I had more brains than guts!
I will never again feel bad watching the hunting shows where a deer gets shot (I prefer the ones where the deer gets dropped where it stood - no suffering).
“Deer ain’t house pets” - that very old movie “The Yearling” proved that.
Re those hunting shows, they end with the triumphant hunter(s) holding up the wonderful rack of a suddenly dead deer.
My hunting show would BEGIN at that point, and the name of the show would be, “You Shot It, Now What Are You Going To Do With It?”
Well, it’s time to get out your knife, gut it, hang it up to bleed dry, butcher it (no quick trip to the deer processor), and finally skin it. All for the TV audience.
I mean, the best part of the hunt is putting venison in the freezer. A friend has already shot several does and spike bucks then said to me, “You can’t eat the antlers!”
Life is funnier than fiction sometimes.
The deer being tired and us being healthy 20 year olds, we saw no problem with grabbing the legs and antlers and flipping him over to our side.
We took turns bull dogging him and then let him go. He hobbled around and look to be in sad shape. We then discussed tying him up and saving him for the trip back to be butchered.
The deer must have heard and understood us, cause he healed and got better all of a sudden, jumped the fence and ran into the cedars.
I wonder —
Why did he want to put the deer in a stall to feed it,when it had been coming to the feeder to eat with the cattle everyday anyway?
Another way a deer isn’t like a horse or cow is that they could jump out of a stall.
Why didn’t he fall to the ground and roll under the truck at the first opportunity, rather than turn and run, after he had the rope off and saw that the deer wasn’t going to back down?
But, it was an hilarious story! lol.
“You can’t eat the antlers!”
True, never heard that before.
All good points. I don’t know the guy this happened to.
*There seems to always be one or two people Texas each year who get busted for roping a deer from horseback/truck. The last one I heard was last year out of Glenrose (HS kid).
Well, he has to have a good sense of humor, or he would never have told the story!
He is bound to have taken a lot of ribbing from friends,and I don’t want to know what his wife may have had to say about it! lol.
Great story!
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