Roping a Deer

Howdy Folks,

Did I ever tell you about the time I figured my cowboy days was over? Let me tell you exactly why my cowboy days is over forever.

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up with corn on the cob for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. Venison is the greatest, or so I usta think. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that since they congregated at my cattle feeder way out on the range, and they do not seem to have much fear of me when I am there that 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 get it back to the house to fatten up with corn on the cob. They like corn. And after all, 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.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, which had seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of this roping scene but they was watching. 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 and it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and 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 demon 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 keep 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 originally imagined.

The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many animals. A long 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 deer 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 else, all hid out in the brush which would be awful.

At the time, there was no love at all between that deer and me.At that moment, I hated that deer real bad and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. In spite of 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 did not want that demon possessed deer to suffer a slow death so I managed to get it lined up in between my truck and the feeder, a little trap I had set up in advance like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started to get my rope.

Did you know that deers bite? They do. I never in a million years would have thought or even dreamed in a nightmare vision 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 something almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts pretty awful. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. Instead, I tried screaming and shaking my arm around too much. My method was ineffective. It seems like that devil deer was biting and shaking his head for several hours, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer, tricked it, though you may be questioning that claim by now. I did trick it.

While I kept it busy tearing and ******* the bejesus 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 your head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly real 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 easy, 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 little so you can escape. But this was not a horse. This was a real mad demon possessed 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. I know you are laughing and the Torah says that laughter is healing to the bones. I needed some of that right then and there, but I sure was not laughing. I was screaming like a woman. The reason I had always been told NOT 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 your head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all. Besides being twice as strong and three times as evil, because the second I turned around to run, that devil deer 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. Actually there was no danger except to me as you can see. I was just going to feed him and eat him but apparently he did not like that idea very much. I think he knew I wanted to eat him. Since this event I have swore off of venison anyways. He had nothing to worry about. What they do instead of leaving the scene is to paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are lying there crying like a little girl and trying to cover up your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and that devil deer finally went away, thank God.

I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty bad and it felt like it was broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised up pretty good) and my back was bleeding and bruised in too many places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was the gas station up on the highway toward town. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like Hell had took me over. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling, "What happened?" I have never seen any law anywhere that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer, but you cannot murder a man for asking a personal nosy question.

I was feeling real sensitive about the whole thing. Knowing the lengths to which some law enforcement people will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear that I did not want to admit I had done something real stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer." And that is all I told him. I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it but the evidence was all over my body I guess. There was deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and there was a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there. I asked the man to call somebody to come get me. I did not think I could make it home on my own.

Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at the hospital and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife people and the game warden was real interested in my deer event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could without the rope part. "I was filling the grain hopper and this devil deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the heck out of me and he actually BIT me. That devil deer was obviously demon possessed and rabid or insane or something."

EVERYBODY for miles around knew about the deer attack because the guy at the gas station had a big mouth. For a long time people dragged their kids into the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story without the rope, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and I have enough trouble fitting in with their clicks without them snickering behind my back and whispering, "There goes that idiot that tried to rope a deer." How did they know anyway?

The doctors thought I was going to die and I thought I already had. The moral of all this story is don't go around roping demon possessed deers. They bite and kick. I have lost my taste for venison.


Jim Heitmeyer