Adventures in corn-fed venison

[snopes]

Comment: Is this an actual letter from someone who writes and farms:

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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 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,
and 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! Never in a million years
would I 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 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 a 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...so that they can be somewhat equal to the Prey.

[tagurit]

I can't answer the question, mostly because I'm crying.

From laughing so hard.

[Auntie Witch]

I don't know if this happened, but I think it could. Deer are some of the most nimble creatures I've ever seen.

[Horse Chestnut]

That was hysterical, (w00t, Bambi!), but if the deer were coming to his cattle feeder, weren't they "corn-fed deer" already?

[amorrison50]

A friend sent this to me the other day... I wanted to laugh but it was so obviously written by someone who knows nothing about deer that all I could do was pick out glaring errors. Comparing a bite from an animal who has no top front teeth to a pit bull is kind of funny.

Originally Posted by amorrison50

A friend sent this to me the other day... I wanted to laugh but it was so obviously written by someone who knows nothing about deer that all I could do was pick out glaring errors. Comparing a bite from an animal who has no top front teeth to a pit bull is kind of funny.

Deer have no top front teeth in Ohio?

[snopes]

Originally Posted by amorrison50

A friend sent this to me the other day... I wanted to laugh but it was so obviously written by someone who knows nothing about deer that all I could do was pick out glaring errors. Comparing a bite from an animal who has no top front teeth to a pit bull is kind of funny.

Note that the comparison is merely to the animal's *shaking its head* after biting, not to the strength or depth of its bite.

- snopes

[amorrison50]

Originally Posted by Sly Dog

Deer have no top front teeth in Ohio?

No, whitetail deer do not have upper incisors. Cite I'm not sure how an animal would manage to hold on and shake its head furiously with only lower incisors and molars in the back to do it with (I suppose it could do so with molars, but it seems like an unlikely defense mechanism and it would take a bit of maneuvering. Animals who use teeth for defense usually have more effective ones to do it with, like canines). Then again I can't imagine someone roping a deer and it just standing there, either... unless you've raised it from a fawn, a wild deer is still wild and will act as such, though it may come close it's not going to act like a pet.

ETA: Ooh, my first spanking!

[CenTex]

Originally Posted by Sly Dog

Deer have no top front teeth in Ohio?

Deer have no top front teeth anywhere. AFAIK no ruminant has top front teeth.

ETA: spanked by amorrison50!

[rhiandmoi]

Ruminants might lack top front teeth, but their dental pad is hard and if a goat bites it still hurts like heck. Having never been bitten by a deer I don't know if they would shake their head like a pit bull.

[CenTex]

Originally Posted by rhiandmoi

Ruminants might lack top front teeth, but their dental pad is hard and if a goat bites it still hurts like heck. Having never been bitten by a deer I don't know if they would shake their head like a pit bull.

Not saying it doesn't. I have been bitten by a sheep before and yes it hurt, and if they get you with their back teeth, they have top and bottom teeth.

[MrsLottoTx]

I found him!

This guy thinks deer are bad....he should try roping a moose.

Originally Posted by rhiandmoi

Ruminants might lack top front teeth, but their dental pad is hard and if a goat bites it still hurts like heck. Having never been bitten by a deer I don't know if they would shake their head like a pit bull.

Well if it's anything like a goat then despite lack of a set of teeth they DO bite in anger, as Bonnie, the goat on the stable yard I used to work on, proved. She lived in a small stable with half walls next to the feed "room" which was of similar construction - kind of like a pig pen I suppose. There was a commotion in her stable so we looked over the wall to see a fairly large rat had got in there (presumably on route to or from the feed room), she took great exception to this invasion of her privacy and she ATTACKED it! She was really mad and the rat was terrified - she chased it around the stable until it saw the tiny gap under the door and dived for it, as it was quite a large rat it was trying to squeeze under and was momentarily stuck a little - long enough for Bonnie to bite down hard on it's rear end and start shaking and pulling at it in anger. She did release her hold for a second and the rat managed to run away and make good it's escape though.

Kirsty