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!!
