Deer camp splitting

[Bocefus78]

I was tired of showing up to camp and having to split wood with the fiskars. It seemed I had cherry picked the round pile of all the easily splitting stuff (by hand standards), and was left with all the splitter chow. Out come the hydro's!

I had 1 helping hand. I say one, because his budweiser never really left his other hand lol! How are you gonna complain though, all I did was run the splitter. In about 4 hours, I split and he stacked some Beech, Sugar Maple, and Elm. Stack ended up being 30' long and 5' tall at the tallest point. The elm is on the right. I kept it seperate since it was standing dead and barkless. It will be burnt first.

I didn't see a deer all weekend, except the 2 does that walked 40yds away and just stood there and looked at me while I was splitting. Go figure.

 

[smokinj]

It is that time of year..........Guess your lucky and he was not two fistin!

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Deer camp needs firewood! Funny about the 2 does. I was setting a new stand Sunday, mid-day and was on the ground tieing a rope onto the stand when I thought I heard something behind me. Sure enough, a doe and fawn were only about 25 feet from me!

 

[wishlist]

Deer camp needs firewood! Funny about the 2 does. I was setting a new stand Sunday, mid-day and was on the ground tieing a rope onto the stand when I thought I heard something behind me. Sure enough, a doe and fawn were only about 25 feet from me!

You should've used the rope Dennis, you've got to have a little cowboy in you? :D

Nice pile bocefus, maybe you can set a milkcrate in front of it and use it for a blind? Lol...

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Well, I had a rope in my hands at the time...

 

[JOHN BOY]

Nice pile bocefus, maybe you can set a milkcrate in front of it and use it for a blind? Lol...[/quote]


Make sure of course its a camo milkcrate !

 

[Bocefus78]

You should've used the rope Dennis, you've got to have a little cowboy in you? :D

Ahh...you so reminded me of this. Get ready to laugh! I found this a few years back...

I had this idea that I could 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 could have a good
hold.

The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly
concerned bout 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. 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 beforehand...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 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...