DEER HUNTERS
(A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who
farms, writes well and actually tried this)
I had this
idea that I could 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. 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 slide off to then let
go. A deer bites you and shakes its
head--almost like a big dog. 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!!
All these events
are true so help me God...An Educated Farmer
Ray Gruszecki
November 9, 2020
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