SECRETS

RIDIN' FOR THE BRAND

Sometimes it’s not what you know that is the strongest motivator for hearing the truth. The strongest
motivator is what the other person thinks you know. Most closets contain skeletons. We don’t talk about
these things even when we are in a mood to do some confessin’.   It was these unmentionables that led
in a large part to the settling of the American West and continues to be a motivating factor to us today.
Sometimes it’s just wiser to keep yer mouth shut. If you’re attempting to get to the bottom of a story,
sometimes you don’t have to say anything to reveal what you do not know. All you have to do is rattle a
few bones to make the other person believe you know where the skeletons are. Everyone knows there
are three sides to any story; your side, my side, and what really happened.
I don’t talk much about ropin’. Used to do that – don’t do it anymore. Don’t even like to talk about it. It
brings back too many embarrassing memories. Ropin’ is one of my skeletons.
You see, I was in my late teens when 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 and have venison for supper. I figured that since they congregated at
our cattle feeder and didn’t seem to have much fear of me, that it would not be that difficult to get a rope on
one. I came up with this plan that I would rope it, get up to it and toss a bag over it’s head to calm it down,
then hog tie it and carry it home to the pens.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, which had seen this ropin’ thing
before, stayed well back. They were not havin’ any of it. After about 20 minutes the deer showed up – 3 of
them. I picked out a likely lookin’ 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 received an
education.
The first thing I learned is that while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope, 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 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 originally imagined. The only up side is that they do not have as
much stamina as many animals. What seemed like 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 so doin’ for me to realize this, since I
was mostly blinded by the flood 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 creature off the end of my
rope.   By this time there was no love at all between me and that deer. Despite the gash in my head and
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 that deer to run off with my rope 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
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 shaking for
several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer tricked it. While I
kept it busy trying to tear the bone 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 rare right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves
are surprisingly sharp. I had already learned 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. It 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 three 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 lying there crying like a little girl and
covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.
I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding
pretty good and felt broken and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket
had protected me from most of the worst of it. When I stepped out of the truck at home, dad took one look
and asked, “What happened?”    Now I didn’t want to admit to him that I had done something
monumentally stupid so I told him, “I was attacked by a deer.”
That was enough for dad for he just assumed that deer was rabid or insane. Such lack of detail does not
and will not work when we stand before the Lord. He knows! He knows every detail, but even more than
that, He knows the intent motivating our actions. He knows the why. Attempting to explain anything is
futile. The only thing we can do is confess, “Lord, I am wrong” and place ourselves in His mercy.
Besides, that is the one place where we can be comfortable with the whole truth.

© Carl H. Lenz, 2007

Secrets