irielife.net

{mosimage}My version, amazingly simlar to Laura's (also sent to some Joneses via email):

Watch out for deer. After putting one in Laura's lap (almost), I see by this link
that I am far from alone. Still, three deer and counting is pretty good
(the others in SLC and Georgia). Of course, now that I am in the
Midwest I honor the cervidaic highway competitor by eating him or her.

Saturday, we were trying to head North to cut a Christmas Tree. After
being diverted three times due to a fatality accident, and having been
in bumper-to-bumper on one-lane county roads for about an hour, the
family gave up and headed South. Not a block from this decision (and
still in view of the officer redirecting traffic), I caught a deer at
about 45 MPH. It came left to right, but my left headlight took out the
deer's hind legs. If you can picture that, it means that the front of
the deer was above the van's hood (it was bounding you see). Therefore,
the front legs, chest, neck and head took out that huge Caravan
windshield. It was spiderwebbed so badly that Laura couldn't see a
thing from the passenger side, and it caved in a good 10 inches or so.
If I hit it the same way at my normal speed along that stretch (around
65 MPH), I'm pretty sure that Laura would have had an instantaneous
holiday fur coat.

I turned around to see if I needed to put the
deer out of its misery (where's a sidearm when you need it?), and not a
minute later two Minnesota good old boys stopped to check things out. I
assured them that I would take care of the gutting and cleaning (much
to their disappointment), and they took off. I think they asked if we
were all OK. Or not. Anyhow, Buz and I threw the deer, which had by now
rolled down the curtain to join the choir invisible, into the back of
the van. ("we'll clean the blood up later.. don't tell Mom, Buz"). So
at home, I have about 50 minutes before it gets dark, and at our place
that's really quite dark. So my gutting and cleaning left alot to be
desired. I think I nicked everything there was to nick, but still
managed to get the tenderloins out whole and untainted. My neighbor saw
me struggling trying to hoist it up on our dead oak tree in the front
yard, so he came by to help. Unfortunately, the back legs were so
damaged by the Caravan that before I got to skinning the thing, the leg
tore free. Slosh/plop goes the deer, and I'm left with a hind leg
hanging from the rope. This was the scene when Rex drove up, having
just gotten home from work (and knowing nothing about our
tree-turned-deer hunting expedition). He looks at the leg and the
crumpled gutted deer and says, "That's scary". My neighbor says,
"What?" Rex says, "Isn't a little weird a leg hanging from a tree in
the front yard?" My neighbor says, "Why?" Rex mumbles, "I don't know
… it's just … I mean … hanging there … I mean …" My neighbor
says, "Look, I grew up on a farm. We had dead animals hanging up every
day." I love America. So Buz and I get as much meat off the animal as
we can before dark. Almost all of both pair of legs were blood-damaged,
so there wasn't too much useable. We figure we netted about 15 pounds
total. But the backstraps were beautiful and worth the effort.

My after-the-fact deer tag is coming in the mail.

I'm hoping that Buz remembers something of his Patriarchal Blessing that he had received just hours before all this.

Happy Holidays, and may the reindeer stay above your truck's roofline.

Randy