Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Roping A Deer

This is probably too funny to be true, but who knows???



Roping A Deer------- ( Names have been removed to protect the Stupid! )

Actual letter from someone who farms and writes well!

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, 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 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!!!
_________________

I love this place early in the morning.

Who ever wrote that (whether true or not ) should start writing comedy , That's tooooo funny!

The mental image may cost me a new keyboard. Do you have any idea how much diet Mt. Dew stings when expelled loudly through your nose? Sadly now my assitant thinks I am mental as she happend to walk in my office while I was both laughing and crying at the same time.

Jeff,Ive had the same problem on this site and have started invoicing Pond Boss headquaters for keyboards.Ill let you know about the nasty letter I get back from Cathy instead of a check

Last night, a "friend" (and I am questioning that now) decided to do something similar to what was written above. He is only 26 years old, so maybe that is part of it. He is somebody who a number of Pond Boss friends have met.

On his way home last night he saw a stunned doe in the middle of the road. He stopped to drag it out of the road, but before he got to it, it got up. Because it was still mostly stunned after having been hit by a car, he decided he'd drag it off the road and kill it with his pocket knife. That began the saga.

He was pretty badly beaten up. A second motorist stopped and tried to help him cut the deer's neck. When that didn't work, the other guy called the sheriff. When the deputy arrived, my friend was still hanging on for dear (deer?) life, trying to cut the deer's neck. The deputy was trying to shoot the deer in the head from about five feet away, but missed, and grazed its neck -- which only made it angrier. A second shot worked.

He did get to keep the deer, which another friend helped him butcher.

About 5 or 6 years ago the Emu sucker market crashed and a lot of people turned them loose. A couple of them were on my land.

A local cowboy was at my place and we decided to catch one of the males. He got a rope and made a perfect toss. It exploded and then attacked. It wasn't near as much fun as we thought it would be. Yes, beer was involved.

That sounds like something Patrick McManus would've written. If you don't know who that is, then you need to make reading some, or preferably all, of his numerous books a priority for today.

You will not be disappointed. I've read, and re-read them many times, and they still make my sides hurt from laughter.

afterthought:

I recommend starting with one of his early volumes:

"A fine and pleasant misery"
"Rubber legs and white tail hairs"
"They shoot canoes don't they?"
"The grasshopper trap"

The man is an outdoor comedy writing genious.

Only Rancid Crabtree can get into more problems that I can.

I was thinking the same thing about Pat McManus writing this. I have read "How I Got This Way" about 5 times and it still makes me crack up every time.

I'll strongly second your recommendation. I'd forgotten about Pat McManus, but still have all of the listed books somewhere in my house or garage. I need to find them for my 11 yr-old son to read. He'd really enjoy them; right after I finish re-reading them....

I went and looked. I only find "They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?"

After I reread it, I'm going to give it to my 13 year old Grandson. He'll enjoy it if I can get him off the video games long enough.

Adding to my previous post. I also tossed a lasso but missed. My friend later said I did it on purpose.

I think ive read that somewere before. Its like when someone tells a story as "the truth".

I left out one of his earlier books, and it contains the story that is especially meaningful in light of this thread.

His third book, "Never sniff a gift fish", contains the short story entitled "The elk trappers".

Dare I admit that I'm already giggling, just from flipping through the pages.

Wasn't it Field and Stream that had his stories at the back?

Yep. Later, I think he moved to Outdoor life.

He used to have stories in the back of Outdoor Life but I think he retired a couple of years ago. Field and Stream has Bill Heavey in the back now.