Deer hunting

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!!