Actual Letter from someone who writes, and farms.
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 it 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 i ts 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
bejesus 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 so that they can be somewhat
equal to the Prey.
.
FAITH IS NOT BELIEVING THAT GOD CAN....
IT IS KNOWING THAT HE WILL!!
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