Deer milk

Anyone know how to milk a wild deer?
love to all

Ummmm.... I don't think that is a very good idea.

Milk a wild deer?  Wild being the questionable factor.........milk.......how do you catch........huh!?!?!?

Daniel, why do you ask? A fawn can be raised on goat's milk.

love it. I asked because my current situation is not settled enough to get goats yet, but am over run by wild deer and wanted to see what kind of humor was out there in the permie world.

Thank you Daniel for that gift of opening the door for humor! )

Be patient and if it's something you really want, the goats, it will happen.

Have a Great Day,
Pat

Caution:  You can catch Lymes Disease from ticks on a deer...Always wear a rubber!

They are also very well versed in beating the crap out of you with their hooves.

Their horns can be used for many things. Everything from buttons to sewing needles and fishing jigs to drinking horns and numerous intricate carving projects. An you can just pick those up when they shed them, no running for your life.

Pat Maas wrote:
Their horns can be used for many things. Everything from buttons to sewing needles and fishing jigs to drinking horns and numerous intricate carving projects. An you can just pick those up when they shed them, no running for your life.

Daniel asked about milking a deer.  Antlers?  In a lot of places finding shed antlers before they are consumed by mice et al would be considered a lucky find.  Those small critter chew antlers into oblivion rapidly for the minerals.  Even a small wild white tail will defend herself violently when cornered.

We had a pet deer as a kid (bambi...not the most creative of names) that we caught as a spotted yearling back in the 70's. The mom had been killed by neighbors dogs.

Was fantastic fun. Used to suckle on our ears and skate around on the marble tile floor (re: bambi), run through the house and out into it's large cage.

Have to find some pictures...

ape99

I am very familiar with white tail deer. grew up with them in western NY. Some of my best playmates. The bucks can be very dangerous during rut and the does as you said will fight, if they have to. Usually they will run if they can.

I learned to watch for the antlers. Elk antlers do work better for buttons, but you can do them with irregular white tail antlers. An older gal taught me how to make many useful items from the items I brought her and those antler sets were part of those things.


Daniel asked about milking a deer.  Antlers?  In a lot of places finding shed antlers before they are consumed by mice et al would be considered a lucky find.  Those small critter chew antlers into oblivion rapidly for the minerals.  Even a small wild white tail will defend herself violently when cornered.

Pat Maas wrote:
I am very familiar with white tail deer. grew up with them in western NY. Some of my best playmates. The bucks can be very dangerous during rut and the does as you said will fight, if they have to. Usually they will run if they can.

I learned to watch for the antlers. Elk antlers do work better for buttons, but you can do them with irregular white tail antlers. An older gal taught me how to make many useful items from the items I brought her and those antler sets were part of those things.


Daniel asked about milking a deer.  Antlers?  In a lot of places finding shed antlers before they are consumed by mice et al would be considered a lucky find.  Those small critter chew antlers into oblivion rapidly for the minerals.  Even a small wild white tail will defend herself violently when cornered.

I grew up in the Catskills.  We had lots of antlers because the deer harvest there was always excellent but finding shed antlers isn't easy in the winter mostly because of the terrain.  By Spring finding anything but pieces of antlers in the woods is about as good as it gets.  I have lots of "stuff" made from whitetail antler.  I even had an antler tip on the "whammy bar" of one of my guitars. 

Dave,
    Did you have a trap line? Had to set mine out of game paths, because of the deer. Checked my traps most days 2x, but with bad weather it could be just once day. It's how I found most of the antlers, with the exception being a place in the swamp that many came to on an annual basis. Found the best irregulars there.
    We were in the snow belt, but still manged to find enough antlers every year to please my teacher.

Pat Maas wrote:
Dave,
     Did you have a trap line? Had to set mine out of game paths, because of the deer. Checked my traps most days 2x, but with bad weather it could be just once day. It's how I found most of the antlers, with the exception being a place in the swamp that many came to on an annual basis. Found the best irregulars there.
     We were in the snow belt, but still manged to find enough antlers every year to please my teacher.

I put out a trap line when I was in 5th grade and ran it until 8th grade (?)  at least I think I had stopped by high school because girls were more important than trapping mostly muskrats.  I checked it every morning before school and in the evening before sundown.   

Guess it was because I had to check fences also and what was trapped and skinned paid well. Didn't do muskrats. Just fox and coon primarily with some other critters tossed in. I never stopped trapping until left home at 16.

Boys never came into interest in high school for me as just had too much to do on the farm and 4H. That and being a tom boy didn't sit well with most people at that time.

Checking fences and feeding the stock took place long before day break so could catch the school bus in time. Trapping fell in there just right as could do that quickly and then salt, roll and throw in the freezer.


I put out a trap line when I was in 5th grade and ran it until 8th grade (?)  at least I think I had stopped by high school because girls were more important than trapping mostly muskrats.  I checked it every morning before school and in the evening before sundown.

I got an occasional coon but mostly "rats" and a few mink.  I didn't live on a farm.  My Dad was their doctor. 

Hi Dave,
    We're way off topic here so need to stop. Been nice. Getting ready to head to Argentina in September for the adventure of a life time and helping create a garden to feed a good number of people. A PDC looks to be happening also, something to look forward to! )

Argentina?  What part?  My primary piece of ID still lists my address as TDF.  Spent 7 years there, and loved most of it.
¡Buena suerte, y disfrutar de ella!

Do not, under any circumstances believe that deer are domesticated, as this tale will tell:

(found this on the internet a year or so ago)

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 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 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 before hand...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.

Great story John.  I almost feel bad about laughing so hard.  I made mention of them beating the crap out of anyone earlier for that very reason.  I witnessed it happening to a friend that was playing "Daniel Boone" and tried to bulldog a small doe.  She was about 120 lbs. he was about 180 and in excellent shape but that deer kicked his ass similar to  what happened to you.  She was calm until the moment he jumped her.  Then she became "hell on the hoof."  Nearly the whole front of his body was seriously purple for a very long time from getting pounded by her front hooves. 

Wasn't me (I mentioned that I found the story on the internet...wish I knew who posted it, as they certainly deserve credit for the story!)

Great story John,
Guessing it had to be a cowboy that was still on his  learning curve, maybe with a  beer or two under his belt.

Argentina, to a ranch near Zapala. Estancia Ranquilco. Will be planting a good sized garden and carry it through until harvest. Then it's time to come home to my new "little" ranch and get started on that. Just have enough time before heading south to work on some problem areas and hire someone to take care of things while I'm gone.

I missed that reference.

I knew it once, when I was in my childhood I drink an wild deer milk because the recommend it for me and i don't know more but knew one thing the deer's milk was so sweet to drink.

AFTON wrote:
I knew it once, when I was in my childhood I drink an wild deer milk because the recommend it for me and i don't know more but knew one thing the deer's milk was so sweet to drink.

Does AFTON have anything to do with upstate NY?

Deer can be raised in captivity... My uncle has a small herd that he keeps for food, I believe. However he lives in Ceylon. And the herd has been in the family for generations. I'll have to ask him about it some time.

TheLight wrote:
Deer can be raised in captivity... My uncle has a small herd that he keeps for food, I believe. However he lives in Ceylon. And the herd has been in the family for generations. I'll have to ask him about it some time.

Here in the US only certain species of deer can be kept in complete captivity such as Red deer and Fallow deer.  I have friends that raise them but are slowly getting out of the business due to the continuing spread of "wasting disease."  Their methods allow the herds to live pretty much wild within a well fenced "woodland" pasture.  Because deer are ruminants I would think that the milk they produce is quite palatable.  Everyone grows up developing differing tastes for various foods so what's normally palatable for some may be abhorrent to others.  I do not enjoy really strong goats milk for instance but do like the cheeses made from it.  If it has a "goaty" flavor I won't drink it.  It is the same with venison.  When I was a youngster if we had unusually heavy snow fall accompanied with a really cold winter season the deer had little choice but to eat the mountain laurel.  The meat tasted "funny" from those deer and it gave many people the "green apple trots."

Hey, why hasn't anyone mentioned the fact that deer were the first animals to be milked by man? Reindeer that is. People still milk Reindeer.