A close encounter of the wild kind
Written by  Steve Gilbertson


Trying to rope a deer, you realize they kick, they bite and you learn why a rifle ‘evens the odds’
 
Many years ago, when I raised cattle, I’d set out corn for them. Lots of deer also came in. Soon, they tamed up so much that one day 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 four 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.
 
‘Rope-a-dope’ trick
 
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. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up – three of them. I picked out a likely looking one 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. I took a step toward it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and that deer exploded.
 
Explosive power
 
Pound for pound, I learned, 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. Since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
 
If I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slowly and painfully. There was no love at all between me and that deer. I hated the thing and I would venture a guess that, at that point, the feeling was mutual.
 
Big battle of wills
 
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 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.
 
Biting and shaking
 
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 three times as evil, the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
 
Hail to the victor
 
When a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not flee the scene right away. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. Instead, it paws your back and jumps up and down on you while you are lying covering your head and crying like a little girl.
 
I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. Now I know why people bring a rifle with a scope when they go deer hunting – to sort of even the odds!
 
Note to game wardens who may be reading this – I may have made this whole thing up!
 
Steve Gilbertson, Aitkin, is a bluebird lecturer, birdhouse builder and avid morel mushroom hunter. He said he has given up the rope tricks of his youth. He calls the article he submitted “a hybrid” of his own additions to a story he found on the Internet, “author unknown.”

I had read it before but had to read it again for the laugh.

Great story! It sounded like something ULT or glenn57 would have tryed doing! :laughing4:DIRTBALL2