This was sent to me by a friend. Thought you guys might find this of interest...

OuCH!!!


-DallanC

Man, they do get nasty, don't they...

Thats Gota HURT . When there ruttin they do get after it don't they.
Joe

ouch ouch ouch and did I say ouch. man that couldn't have felt good for either of them. now do we count the extra points on the 3rd antler?

Reminds me of a story I came accross awhile ago. Turns out deer can be mighty mean!

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 congregated 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) 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 transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my
rope. The cattle, who had 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 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 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 originally imagined. The only up side is that
they do not have as much stamina as many 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.

I managed to get it lined up to back in between my truck and the
feeder...a little trap I had set beforehand. Kind of like a
squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and 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
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 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
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, 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.

Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp
was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was
bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be
just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few
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 co-op. I got out of the truck, covered in
blood and dust and looking like hell. The guy who ran the
place saw me through the window and came running out yelling
"what happened"

I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would
prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that
this is an area that they have overlooked entirely.
Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement
personnel 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....not wanting to admit
that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part
in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer." I
did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The
evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of
my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer
print on my face where it had struck me there.
I asked him to call somebody to come get me...I didn't think
I could make it home on my own. He did.

Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house
and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly,
deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was
interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as
completely and accurately as I could...I was filling the
grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just
started kicking the hell out of me and BIT me. It was
obviously rabid or insane or something.

EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the co-op has a big mouth).

For several weeks people dragged their kids
in 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, but NEVER anybody around
here. I have to see these people every day and as an
outsider...a "city folk"...I have enough trouble fitting in
without them snickering behind my back and whispering "there
is the dumb-ass that tried to rope the deer.

A friend told me a story once about how, in his youth, he shot a small doe who ran off toward a river. He trailed it and found it standing about belly deep in the water. Being a pretty big feller he decided to save a bullet and just drown the wounded deer. He waded out and grabbed hold to push it's head underwater. To make a long story short, it was a pretty near thing about who was going to be drowned there! That little, already shot, doe worked him over pretty good. He suggested that, should I ever be in a similar situation, I go ahead and spend that extra cartridge!

That looks like it would have been one nasty fight Bushy...no doubt to the death. They deer your mate shot would have been the ultimate loser...I couldn't imagine it surviving that injury too long without a nasty infection setting in leading to a painful and slow death.

I've never seen deer fight, but I would imagine where a doe is concerned, like all animals it becomes survival of the fittest.

Cheers, Vince

I found out more info on this deer quite by accident. It appears the antler is not from fighting, but its actually a defective 3rd antler growing out of its eye... I found the story almost halfway down the page at the B&C Trophy Watch

www.boone-crockett.org...?area=news

Side note, I was visiting that page to see the 300" mule deer killed in Colorado by a 14 year old at the top of the page, its amazing.


-DallanC

Thats crazy Dallan .Nature does some weird things and your right that mule deer is amazing
Joe

So do you get to count the extra points then since they are attached to the dear?

One dandy drop tine, I read the same thing about it growing out of it's eye...Weird.

Nothin like learning the hard way, eh codybrown. Thats sounds like something I would try. Glad I dont need to now.