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Actual
letter from someone who farms, He writes well and has 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 eat it. The first
step in this adventure was getting a deer. they are easy as
finding rabbits, 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 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
bow or rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds...
All these events are true An Educated, Bruised and Bleeding Rancher......
Suggestion
from Bobby Raise Rabbits! |