Rope a deer

[{ESC}Mikey]

This is for anyone who has ever roped an animal or had to hold an animal on the
end of a rope:

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, g et 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.