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Grain fed Venison???


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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 big dog. 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.

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Old but still funny.  There is a similar one by a well known Western writer (I think in Cowboys & Indians a few years back) about trying to slow down breaking a wild horse with a hitch to an anvil - took down part of the corral and a structure.

Edited by Rip Snorter
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perfect timing - we are a week away [actually 5 days ] from the ennual deer opener here - there are a couple state events that attract a lot of attention here - fishing opener and deer hunting opener , like big time holidays here , there will be a small army of orange clad gun toting individuals of all ages in the woods next saturday - ill be at the range safely out of the line of fire , 

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My Dad, a life-long outdoors man, learned his lesson when a muley doe got over an 8 foot high redwood grape stake fence into our back yard.  Dead of winter, sub-zero temperature, 2 feet of snow...and Dad felt sorry for her.  He opened both gates on either side of the house and when she didn't move, went out to coax her out with food.  I watched from the kitchen window as he went up to her very slowly and when she tried to kill him (deer hooves are like knives) his Carhart "tin coat" saved him.  It was twenty-five or more years old and had been an outdoor standby for all those years.  Now it was shredded all over the front and a few cuts on the left side and both sleeves, and totally wrecked.  The doe calmly walked around Dad and went up the street to the golf course, across into the pine woods, and vanished.

Dad got up and took inventory (he was bruised and visibly shaken but not otherwise hurt) and came inside.  

 

A couple of days later, Dad took the coat with him to a Lion's Club meeting and told the story.  As he was the Tail Twister, he fined himself two dollars and took all the comments aimed at him.

 

He said of all the hard lessons he had learned in his life, this one scared him the most...and Dad didn't scare easily.

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Sedalia is from Texas and they treat their wild big game animals different from most states and I have a hunch the story came from someone who also lives in Texas.

In Colorado it is illegal to feed, keep and trap big game animals. If you lived in Colorado and did what the story is about, you would be in big trouble with the Game &  Fish folks. It is the same in all of the western states in have hunted in. Non farm birds and animals are wild and must be treated as such.

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We had one stuck in our Koi pond last winter.  I got a lariat and put on a revolver in a quick draw holster, went out to rope it, with the dead end of the rope tied to the hitch on the UTV.  Other choices to shoot it and drag it out or let it drown and drag it out.  Though it had been in there a while, when I got close, fortunately it adrenalized and extracted itself.  Never had to find out if my draw and aim were quick enough if it came for me.  Country adventures.  A small buck we still see on occasion.

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