WHY WE SHOOT DEER...

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!!

All these events are true so help me God...

An Educated Farmer