Page 23 - OSCSCI December Safari Trails

there was no love at all between
me and that deer. At that mo-
ment, 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.
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 a
million years would
have thought that a I hated the thing, and
deer would bite some- I would venture a
body, so I was very
surprised when ..... I guess that the feeling
reached up there to
grab that rope and the was mutual.
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 slide off to 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 in-
stead. My method was ineffec-
tive.
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 aggres-
sive 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 dif-
ferent from horses after all, be-
sides being twice as strong and 3
times as evil, because the sec-
ond 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 bow or rifle with a scope......to
sort of even the odds!!
All these events are true so help
me God ... An Educated Farmer.
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