Wild Deer Story

[martymas]

how many of you love wild animals

wild deer in fact

well here is a true story

and a lesson learned

Roping a deer

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 congregated 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) that 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, which had 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 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 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 originally imagined. The only up side is that they do

not have as much stamina as many 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 to suffer a slow death. I managed to get it lined up to

back in 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 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 hound 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 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 doesn't 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.

Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split

open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty

good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my

back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket

had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest

place, which was the co-op.

I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like I'd just

come from a bar-room brawl. The guy who ran the place saw me

through the window and came running out yelling "what happened"

I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit

an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they

have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law

enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was

concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my

actions as criminal. I swear, not wanting to admit that I had done

something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told

him "I was attacked by a deer." I did not mention that at the time I

had a rope on it.

The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my

jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my

face where it had struck me there. I asked him to call somebody to

come get me. I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did.

Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted

to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare

thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to

describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could. I was

filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of no- where and just

started kicking the hell out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or

insane or something. EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the

deer attack (the guy at the co-op has a big mouth).

For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer

around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled

their feeders. I have told several people the real story, but NEVER

anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an

outsider, a "city folk", I have enough trouble fitting in without them

snickering behind my back and whispering "there goes the dumb-butt

that tried to rope the deer".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[JDoors]

Didn't take long to see where THAT was going!

... I wrapped the rope around my waist ...

[TheTerrorist_75]

That's much better than my crazy friend Chris who hit a deer with his truck and thinking it was dead tried to cut it's throat so it would bleed out. He was shocked when that deer stood up with him standing over it. He got the ride of his life through a X-Mas tree farm. Those branches cut the heck out of his face and arms and bruised him head to toe. He finally stabbed it to death. Now he will never approach a downed deer without touching it with something long like a branch to see if it's dead.

We do bust his butt to this day.

[martymas]

nature made animals to do 2 things by

default

procreation

and survival

i know of an incedence where the hunter

thought the deer was dead

and when he tried to examine it it came alive

and slashed his singlet and ripped a gash

the length of his chest

36 stitchers

wild animals?

here we have wild pigs called captain cookers

and they are very dangerous

they will rip you with there tusks

to day we fight them unfairly we can shoot them from 200

yards away

im an animal lover

so may be im seeing it through a biased mind

marty

Edited March 17, 2007 by martymas