Okay - I will first apologise for the length of this post - anyone would think I am
@ashman !
Second, although I know nothing of deer hunting, this one appears to take the cake, so hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Cheers
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 hang about the bird feeder and don’t appear to fear me much (a bold one will come right up and sniff the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck, not four 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 bird feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. After about 15 minutes my deer showed up – actually 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 looked at me. I wrapped the rope round my waist and twisted the end so that I would have a good hold.
The deer still just stood there and stared at me, but you could tell it was slightly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it and it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope, and then received an education. The first thing I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred ito action when you start pulling 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 colt. A cow or colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer – no chance! That thing 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, I 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 the stamina as many other animals.
A brief ten 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 be the blood flowing out of a big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my appetite for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of my rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging round its neck, it would likely die a slow and painful death 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 to guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and several large knocks 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 recognise 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 suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined up between my truck and the feeder – a little trap I had set beforehand… kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started moving up so that 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 was very surprised when… I reached up there to grab the rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bitten be a horse where they just bite you and 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 to probably 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 that the 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, reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behaviour for the day.
A deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike 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 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 girl and tried to turn and run. The reason I had been told NOT 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 three 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 realise the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw at your back and jump up and down on you while you are lying 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!
