DEER ROPING

Names have been removed to protect the stupid!

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, sweet feed it corn for a few weeks, then butcher it and eat it. Yum! The first step in this adventure was getting the deer.

Since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not have much fear of me ( a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the truck 4 feet away) it should not be difficult to rope one, toss a bag over it's head to calm it down, then hog tie it, then transport it home. I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen a rope or two before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it.

After 20 minutes, my deer showed up, 3 of them. I picked a likely looking one, stepped out, 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 could 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 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, it is spurred into 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 some dignity. A deer? No chance. That thing ran and bucked, it twisted and pulled. There was no controlling that deer, and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occured to me that having a deer firmly attached to a rope was not such a good idea. The only up side is that they don't have much stamina. A breif 10 minutes later, it was tired, and not as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me. 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 apetite for cornfed venison. I hated the thing, and would hazard the guess that the feeling was mutual. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. But if I let it go with the rope hanging around it's neck, it would likely die slow and painful somewhere.

Despite the gash in my head, and several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's pell mell flight by bracing my head against large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in.. I did not want the deer to suffer a slow death.

I managed to get the deer lined up between my truck and the feeder, a little trap I had set before hand, like a squeeze chute. I backed it in there, and I started moving forward to get my rope back. Did you know that deer bite? They do!

I never in a million years would have thought that deer bite, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab hold of that rope, and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like a horse, it does not just bite and let go. A deer bites and shakes it's head, like a pitbull. They bite HARD and won't let go. It hurts! The proper reaction when a deer bites is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and wrenching away. My method was ineffective. It felt like the deer bit and shook me for several minutes, but it was like 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 and pulled that rope loose. That was when I learned my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike you with there front feet. They rear right up and strike at head and shoulder level, and there hoves are surprisingly sharp. I learned long ago that when and animal--like a horse--strikes at you with it's hoves and you can't get away, the best thing to do is make a loud noise and move aggressively torwards the animal. This will cause them to back down a bit, so you can make your escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer. Obviously, such trickery would not work. In the coarse of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I scream like a woman and turned to run. The reason we have been taught 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 are not so different from horses after all, other than being twice as strong and three times as evil. The second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down. When a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately depart. 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. Now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope. It's so they can be somewhat equal to the prey.