Posted on 11/16/2011 3:47:21 AM PST by waterhill
Why we shoot deer in the wild (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 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!!
All these events are true so help me God... An Educated Farmer
Whitetail Ping!
Suspect deer record most of their kills by jumping in front of cars.
Beautiful writing.
Because they’re made of meat. Duh.
One must not forget that moose are from the deer family, and moose are very dangerous, very quick and quite large.
No moose don’t stalk or pounce on prey, its the cow defending her young if you come between them and her, and also when they cross a dark winter highway at full gallop and you are driving a very low car. And then it becomes a convertible and you are dead.
The author should have read “The Yearling” or “Out of Africa” before trying this stunt.
BTW that was an excellent article, and funny.
Sorta reminds me of the audio tape where the guy had put what he thought was a road-kill deer in the back of his car, only to find out it was just stunned. The audio started when he was in a phone booth calling for an “abulance”.
They pounce in front of unsuspecting cars from ambush. I worked on a remote site in Virgina for a while and my wife would drive me to and from work, the last four miles on a dirt road. Every once in a while a deer would bolt in front of the car. The day hunting season opened there were Mercedes and Audis with Richmond license plate brackets parked here and there along the road. The deer were leaping out of the bushs every few seconds. My wife, who was usually nervous about deer was having a coronary.
One day we got behind a honeywagon and my wife figured she was safe, he would clear the way for us. Needless to say, a 12 point buck leapt into the 100 foot space between our Astro and the honeywagon. He was a beautiful thing to behold.
All of that and not one mention if it is a buck or a doe?
I am unconvinced...
(BTW, I’ve been close to a doe that got snagged in a fence, even as I was trying to free it, she was not very ummm... social...)
My personal experience is that they wait charmingly at the edge of the road, hoping to lull the unsuspecting driver into thinking “Bambi” or “Rudolph” - and then rushing the car in an attempt to get the driver to swerve into oncoming traffic or the ditch. One year, Marine Base Quantico tallied over 200 deer interceptions by POV.
Sort of like the suicide bombers of the forest.........
About 25 years ago I was out the week before Thanksgiving with my buddies deer hunting. It was the first day of the season and the deer weren’t yet accustomed to the occasional gunshot noise. I heard a couple of shots off somewhere in front of me, and since the shots numbered more than one, I figured that nobody hit anything and whatever they were shooting at would come towards me. I was right, After a few minutes, a large 6 point buck came directly at me at a full gallop. Never even saw me, I went down like I’d been hit by a tractor trailer. The startled deer was lying on top of me and I still hadn’t gotten off a shot. The buck quickly got up and bounded off lifting off from my chest with its hooves. I spent the rest of the hunting season limping around the woods with full body black and blue going from my kneecaps to my collar bone.
To make matters worse, I didn’t get anything that season.
Gonna pass this one on!
I’m glad you are okay! I don’t hunt myself but it sounds like it was a very good thing that you had your buddies nearby. Is hunting safer when you go with other people vs going alone?
Because if we shot who we really wanted to shoot we'd go to jail?
Bookmark
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.