• If you are being asked to change your password, and unsure how to do it, follow these instructions. Click here

Deer Hunters Beware!

newmexkid

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2011
Messages
1,250
Location
NV.
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
 
Haha! Laughed but also get it!!
So many years ago I was helping a farmer get a Charolais bull back into a secure pen with my quarter horse. I had thoughts of roping him but I was able to get him into pen. My horse prob was thanking me. He was pretty good at team roping but a bull with attitude is not a good decision. But the farmer has funny sense of humor. Couple does out in pasture. He bets me I cannot rope a doe and since I did not rope the bull, I need to prove I can rope. Plus he said if I do not rope the doe, he will rescind my hunting rights on his land. GAME ON! Head out into pasture and the does look at me like WHATTTT? I trotted up to them and they took off. Well that is Go button for my horse. He hits warp speed and run right up butt of a doe at full speed 40+. Just getting ready to toss rope and doe makes 90° turn at that speed! My horse immediately tries to match and ain't possible! Stops and looks up at like "are you crazy"? We spun around and doe was standing maybe 100yds away, loped up and she takes off again. Run up on her, ready to rope and 90° turn. Horse sliding stop. Looks up at me and if he could 🤷🏻‍♂️ I bet! So doe ran off 100yds. Farmer hooting and hollering laughing his butt off. So doe starts trotting at me. What? Ran at her again and she takes off. Run up on her and 90° beats us AGAIN. Horse slides stops, looks up at me like "ENOUGH"! I now believe the doe is thinking this a game and is having fun! Never got a rope on her, prob good thing from OP experience! Farmer said the "show" was worth letting me hunt! Also wanted to know if I was going to shoot my new found friend? You know, I wasn't sure!
IMG_9566.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Many years ago a couple of cowboys in Jackson Hole decided that they would rope an elk ……I suspect that some alcohol may have been involved. The roping was successful…..until the elk did much the same as newmexkid's deer. It promptly and apparently quite easily jerked the horse off of it's feet. The horse, saddle, and cowboy took a pretty good beating before the elk broke free! memtb
 
Years ago I was horseback riding with a buddy when he roped a doe that was bedded down. She did not try to pull away, she immediately went onti her hind legs and came at his horse like a boxer. His horse went ape @#$ and tried to back away, unfortunately he had dallied thed rope and could not get it loose. I was laughing too hard to be of use. He finally got the rope loose and just let it go. The doe finally bolted and the rope slipped off. Good times
 
My buddy and I were in barn when police car came up to barn lights and siren. WTHELLO! Officer came into barn and asked us if we could saddle up and rope two bison bulls on loose in adjacent subdivision. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Explained that was suicide! Seems they got out from breeding farm up road and terrorizing this neighborhood. Pinned an officer up on his roof!😂 Wouldn't let him down! So we decided to see if we could push them back out onto farmland where we were. So off we go. We rode up the road on them and holy crap! They were destroying manicured lawns just grazing! Huge divots being left behind in lawns plus their own calling cards. We just eased up on them softly pushing them in direction of open land. All AOK until we got out into open spaces. They then took exception to us being within 50yds of them. Would lower heads, snort like a cartoon and charge us. No biggie, horses fast enough to keep out of harms way. We kept them out of the housing but they just wouldn't budge. Officer drove up across pasture and again asked why not just rope and "pull" them away. I told him better chance I could tow his car. Few minutes later, we hear a high RPM small CC dirt bike coming. Farmer bison owner straddling it again like a cartoon. He was Sasquatch size, feet up in air balancing on it since could not use foot pins to ride. Ludicrous sight and so laughable! The bulls saw him coming and took off tails straight up in air, snorting, farting and dropping organic land mines running away in sheer terror from this ungodly beast chasing them!! He chased them right back into their 4" diameter welded pipe corral! They seemed to feel safe from attack of this horrible creature chasing them. 50 years later, we talked about this several months ago on phone, still laughing butt off.!
 
We had Angus bulls for breeding, some Limosan and a mixed breed mostly Hereford not one of those big boys were less than 2000 pounds, which wasn't a problem as we had went to artificial insemination, to better control our calving time and injury rate. If anyone of those got out, we just darted them, only a fruit loop tried to rope them, watched " Bruiser" demolish a half ton left in HIS field after we let him out of the squeeze chute.

Try to rope a deer or elk.........my mother didn't raise stupid....but I would pay a dollar to see it.
 
Hardest I've ever laughed just reading a story!
Thanks for sharing.

I work as a personal assistant to a businessman, and one of the things that he owns is a large ranch, and that is where I also live. There are many ranch hands, and they have some fun stories to share. A few of them were on a snowmobile trip together some years ago, and after an enjoyable day of riding in the mountains were heading down the trail to the parking lot where they left their trucks.
A moose was walking down this well packed snowmobile trail, and refused to move to the side to let them by. The whole trail was not very wide they said, maybe twice the width of a snowmobile, and the packed part was right down the center. Well after a few minutes of following this moose at maybe 5 MPH and staying back 100' or so, the guy in the lead revved his engine up so it made a loud screaming 2 stroke noise, and the snowmobile lunges ahead toward the moose. Well they now have turned this docile moose, into a very angry one. It spun around quickly, and was facing them, lowered its head and charged. With no room to quickly turn or do much of anything, Chip who was on the lead snowmobile jumped off and ran back towards the next guy in line.
Sounds like his snowmobile took a serious beating by that big angry bull moose. Once content with the level of destruction it has done, the moose turned and walked back down the trail. They did enough repairs to make it rideable, and waited for a long while to make sure that the moose was long gone, before continuing to ride down the mountain in the dark. Chip said it cost him $6,000 to repair his snowmobile, and he had a deep new respect for the power of a moose, and how quickly they would attack.
While listening to that story I couldn't stop laughing, and neither could the others despite having heard it many times before. At the time I was new to country living, and clueless about moose attacking, just assumed that they would always run away from people. Ever since I see moose differently, not as an animal terrified of humans, but instead willing to fight if annoyed by us.
 
Top