Subject: Why we shoot deer in the wild
> A Farmer in North Central Kansas wrote
> 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!!
>
> An Educated Farmer
> ____________________________________________________________
>
>
>
No comments:
Post a Comment