How to ROPE A DEER | SouthernPaddler.com

How to ROPE A DEER

islandpiper

Well-Known Member
Subject: Roping A Deer (Names have been removed to protect the stupid!)
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 g 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...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 w as 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, 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 n 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.
 

Wannabe

Well-Known Member
Apr 5, 2007
2,645
2
on the bank of Trinity Bay
Bear,
That one is rite up there with those two stories Doc Mobius told. Funny no matter how many times ya read it. Least to me they are.
Bob

P.S. Anybody that ain't read the Doc Mobius stories go hunt back in the humor section and find them. Worth the effort.
 

tx river rat

Well-Known Member
Feb 23, 2007
3,043
2
Waco Tx
Well I know a fell here abouts that was pretty good with a rope. One day he was rideing cattle and rode up on this pretty little bobcat, one of my opps his buddies said bet you can't rope that cat and being about twenty one and bullet proof knew I could.
Now I have roped a lot of things and when you sling that loop they supose to be running away from you ,the rope settles over them and they hit the end of it running full blast when the horse does his sitting act.
Well this must have been a female because when that rope settled over her head she swapped ends and run right at that horse , ran right up under that horses belly and wound the rope around one of the leggs on that ole stud horse I was ridding.
Well the PBR didn't have nothing on us , that cat was screaming flipping
clawing and bitting right up next to that studs jewels, plumb got him excited and the rodeo was on ,seen some bucking horses in my time but that ole stud could have showed them all a thing or two that day. I was holding on for dear life wasn't no way I was hitting the ground with that mad pussy cat throwing a fit . I rode and rode and rode and the dam buzzer wouldn't go off to end this nightmare. well finally the horse kick the hell out of that cat and stomped on her a few times put him out of commision , looked over and my two pards were sort of blue looking they were both laughing so hard couldnt breath, wasn't to dam funny to me.
Well thats my little tale about ropping a bobcat now I want get into the day ropped that 200 lb boar hog.
Ron
PS 1967 on the Barganier ranch this aint no tale
 

bearridge

Well-Known Member
Mar 9, 2005
3,092
4
way down yonder
:mrgreen: Thanks Ron.

After piper posted that ropin' tale, I recalled some Amazon product reviews by a fella who put me in tears. I had ta go see if one of us (mebbe me) had posted it on here. I didnt see 'em. I reckon I need ta go back 'n read some ole jokes.

regards
bearridge

It's hard to be nostalgic when you can't remember anything. Unknown
 

jimsong

Well-Known Member
May 24, 2008
247
1
lakside village, texas
I was in the Army with a stone cowboy, from Kansas. named Tolbert. He tried to get a few of us to help him rope a moose, tie it to a tree, and help him get a saddle on it.
He said he had ridden sheep and goats as a tot, horses and bulls as a teen-ager, and had never been thrown. He thought a moose would be a challenge for him.
I don't know if he ever did it, But yours truly didn't dab a rope on 1,500 of meat with antlers!
This same guy went into a ten hole ladies outhouse near Eklutna glacier,and roped a wolverine, dragged it out, and lived to tell about it.
I didn't see what happened inside, but the sounds emanating from the john, were blood curdling. After a a couple of minutes, the door opened, and Tolbert ran out, holding one end of a nylon climbing rope. He got himself set, and commenced to lean back on the rope, and out popped a wolverine, roped around the neck and one foot.
Tolbert gave the beast some slack, and twitched the rope off, and the Wolverine waddled up the side of the canyon at a dead run. He wanted no more of ladies rooms, nor crazy, Kansas cowboys.
On a separate, and barely related topic, around the same time Pops roped the wolverine, An Airman, off Elmendorf AFB, was walking into Anchorage. A wolverine was sauntering across the highway, and the Airman decided to amuse himself by throwing rocks at the wolverine.
45 minutes later, the Airman was rescued by the Elmendorf APs- from the top of an aluminum stop sign, which was bolted to a two inch pipe seven feet tall.
 

islandpiper

Well-Known Member
ok, here's what i got back from an old buddy, avid canooooooer in indianapolis;

...What a story......Reminds me of a time once in Wyoming when a couple deer huntin' buddies of mine and I tied up with a mule deer fawn that laid hidden in the grass long enuff for us to get up on it...one of my big football playin' buddies did a flying tackle, and wound up on the ground with the fawn in a head lock. Well, the head lock controlled the deer's head alright , but not it's hind feet ,which were now behind my rocket scientist's buddies back. The deer reacted violently, and I mean VIOLENTLY, by rakeing it's back feet down his back like it was running.....fast... Somehow, both the deer's back feet got inside his belt and down his pants, and began thrashing like crazy until it had ripped the back outta' his shirt and ripped off his jeans and skivvies down to his knees.... He was rollin' round on the ground with the deer, half naked, screamin' like a girl for us to get the thing off him, 'cause he was afraid to let go....of course, it took us a while to arrest the critter, 'cause it's hard to exrert yourself when you'er laughing so hard you can't breathe. It was quite a sight.....
When we finally subdued the critter, we were all three layin' there on the ground with the deer pantin' and all outta' breath, when we realized we hadn't planned ahead very much since it all happened so fast..we've got him, but what are we gonna do with him now ? We thought of crastratein' him, figurein' we might be able to grow us a nice big fat steer of a deer, and maybe get him durin' huntin' season after he grew up....figured that'd be some good eatin' ...but ... that wasn't appealin' since we were all guys...so...we laid there on the ground, caught our breath, counted to three and all let go at once and ran like hell....
Shoulda' seen my buddie's back ! Looked worse that a "Cat 'O Nine Tails" treatment all the way down to his butt ! He was the only one wasn't laughin'...
Yeah, ....best not to mess with deer up close...they are every bit as strong as three deer hunters.......at least that one didn't bite !!!

Semper Fi....

Rodger
 

Kayak Jack

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2003
13,976
171
86
Okemos / East Lansing Michigan
Pat and Mike, two Irish brothers, were out hunting bobcats. They saw one run into a small cave. "I'm gonna go in there." announced Pat.

Mike stood outside, listening to all the hollering and caterwallering. In a 2 second break, he hollered in, "Need any help hanging on?"

"Hell no!" was the answer. "I need help letting go!"
 

Kayak Jack

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2003
13,976
171
86
Okemos / East Lansing Michigan
I wonder, sometimes, how old some of these hunting stories really are. Some of them, like "the buck snorting back in the bushes", I think came down to us from our cave man ancestors.

Locations may change, names get added or deleted, technology moves along - but the heart of the story would be recognized by a guy hunting mammoths as easily as by a guy carrying a Remington 700 .30-06. Some things are truly timeless.