For those of you who hunt deer, want to pet deer, or
anything in between....this is too funny! Names have
been removed to protect the stupid! This is an actual
letter from someone who writes, hunts and farms.

"I had the 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 look 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, bucked, 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 *third thing* I learned, 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 the blood flowing out of the big
gash in my head mostly blinded me. 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 that 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 that deer and me. 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 it 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.

The fourth* thing I learned!!!! 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, tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the be
Jesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left
hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my *fifth* lesson in deer behavior
for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front
feet. They rear right up on their back feet, 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 cannot 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.

*Lesson six* 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.

Yep! This is from Lee, however ya know him!