A Cautionary Tale: Watch Where She Kicks!
4/9/2010
A few years ago—before I moved to Wyoming—I was hunting deer near here. I spent my eight days looking for an “Oh-my-God!” mule deer buck but came up empty. The regs here allow a hunter to fill an unused tag with an anterless whitetail for about a week after the mule deer season closes. A buddy of mine—you’ll soon be seeing us cooking up some wild game on video elsewhere on this website—started whining that he had no venison to make jerky for his grandkids at Christmas. Being the magnanimous old softie that I am, I offered to pop a whitetail doe and give him the meat.
I told another friend about this, and he quickly found a corn field with a bunch of whitetails and a farmer who was only too happy to have me take one. It rained all morning, and it was still off-and-on drizzling that afternoon. The cornfield was like walking on grease. This wasn’t a real hunt, rather, it was a short, meat gathering chore; should only take about 15 minutes.
Sure enough within a very few minutes I found a whitetail doe strolling down a row in the cornfield about 70 yards away. I put a bullet through her neck, and she dropped. I was so confident that I was done, I left my .270 in the truck, not wanting it to get soaked in the drizzle. Buddy No. 2 and I quickly dragged the doe back to the truck. She had a hole through her neck the size of a tennis ball and was completely lifeless…right up until I tried to stick a knife in her to dress her.
As I started to just touch her brisket with my knife she kicked a bit. I rose over her, furrowing my brow with consternation.
Then she blindly kicked again but with considerably more force. Her hooves connected with me right where the tops of my legs join. If it had been a target, she would have punched out the center of the X-ring. I doubled over in abject agony. It took every ounce of strength to keep from dropping into the mud. I howled like a man kicked in the…well…you get it. Buddy No. 2—normally a pretty unflappable guy—was doubled over as well, laughing hysterically.
