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.

A friend of mine sent this to me and had I not actually seen him this morning at coffee, I would swear that this might just have been something that he did, and wrote, himself. See, this is the kind of stuff these cow boys actually do around here for fun. And then they'll sit around my kitchen table for years to come and laugh about it over and over again. That's what you call self entertainment. Now my friend likes to hit the cooler, in the back of his pickup, pretty hard now and then on a Friday afternoon as many cowboys do, which I think is pretty obviously what took place here(!). And if I knew for sure who really did this, I'd wait till his head cleared a bit and the bleeding stopped, and then I'd have to call him up and let him know it was all for naught. See, he said so himself, that the deer were already eating the corn out of his cattle feeders. All he really had to do was shoot one. Ha!

Have a great day!

MeMo