Roping A Deer
( Names have been removed to protect the Stupid! )
Actual letter from someone who farms and writes well!
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.
