A story from a New Mexico rancher...
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 hogtie 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.
There were three 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 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 initially imagined. The
only upside is that they do not have as much 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 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 that deer and
me. 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 beforehand that was supposed to work
like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up
to 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 amazed when I reached up there to grab that rope and
the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. 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 big dog. 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 legs and hit 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 easily get
away, 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. I had always been told NOT to try to turn and
run from a horse that paws at you because 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
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. It’s to sort of even the
odds.
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