Irish80prf
New member
Thought I would share
Roping a Deer - (Names have been removed to protect the Stupid!)
Actual letter from someone who farms and writes well!
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
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 up side 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, so 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 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.
Roping a Deer - (Names have been removed to protect the Stupid!)
Actual letter from someone who farms and writes well!
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
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 up side 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, so 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 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.
