On the 4th of July twelve years ago my brother in law was having a big party. My wife and kids were driving over to his place and we took the long way by gravel to check out the country side. We turned a corner and while I was accelerating a small deer jumped in front of us. The deer crossed the road and then entering the waist high corn, turned and proceeded to run up the 1st row of corn. I sped up to so the car was parallel to the deer. The deer put on a burst of speed and pulled ahead a little bit. I accelerated to match his speed. We played this game a couple of times, then I backed off because I had a feeling that the deer would jump back across the road. Sure enough after I backed off the deer came across the road right in front of us. To our amazement instead of jumping the fence on the opposite side of the road it put its head down and was going to go through the fence. The deer had miscalculated a bit, for the middle of its forehead connected with the top strand of barbwire, the wire stretched to about 2 1/2 to 3 feet past normal. The wire reaching a point of stretching no more along with the momentum of the running deer sent the deer into a back flip over the top of the wire. It landed on its feet and kept running no worse for the wear except fore maybe a couple of barb wire holes in its head.
Over a dozen years ago on opening morning of east river rifle season my grandfather who was in his late 80’s was driving me up one of his bean fields to drop me off in some tall grass. There was about two inches on snow on the ground and a light snow was still falling. A monster buck appeared in the headlights and stopped the same time we did. I looked over at grandpa, he looked at me and said gee’s I have not seen a buck like that for over forty years. The buck just trotted off into the darkness. I was still about a half mile from where I was supposed to be dropped off. I told grandpa that I was getting out here and would find a place to sit in the grass. I found a small tree about twenty yards in from the edge of the field and sat down. It was still about half and hour before legal shooting hours. After some time I could hear something in the grass moving towards me. About five minutes before shooting time I see a deer torso about ten yards from me and it has this really shake gait. After seeing this for several seconds I shoulder the rifle and take off the safety. I did not shoot, one it was still too early, secondly I could not see a head or legs just the body. This thing went by me for about thirty yards. I thought shoot I am sitting right next to a drainage ditch and the deer are running right by me. When it was light enough I walked over to where this deer came by me and there was no ditch, just strange shuffling tracks in the snow. This dang big buck had shuffled by me on its knees and elbows with its head down. I found this hard to believe and told many people over the years about that and they always say what ever. I did have the opportunity to miss this same buck with all five shot the next day at fifteen to twenty yards. Man I had buck fever and was shaking so bad. The rest of the group just stood there with jaws dropped for I was the only one with a buck tag and he was a big boy.
Two years ago I saw the same kind of thing. It was late September the harvest had just started to get going. I was turning onto a highway in my work truck pulling a six hundred gallon fertilizing trailer. To the south was a soybean field that was ready to be harvested. As soon as I turned I saw about sixty yards to the south was a tan body in the beans that was moving parallel to me. My first thought is it’s a mountain lion, but then a head sticks up with antlers and looks around and goes back down. Ok it’s a buck, now my truck pulling the full trailer is slow and takes awhile to pick up speed. I paralleled this buck for half a mile and it would raise its head every fifty yards or so to look around then drop it back down. All I could see was a couple of inches of its top torso above the beans. The weird thing is that this deer was going about twenty five to thirty five miles per hour for this half mile of bean field. The highway I was parallel with the deer was going east/west. When I was done with work for the day I came up the highway that went north/south and stopped about where I saw the deer cross the bean field. The beans in this field were only about two to two and a half feet tall. This buck was scooting on its knees and elbows for a half a mile going over twenty five miles per hour.
