When I saw my buddy hauling a very nice Pennsylvania buck on the roof of his little station wagon last week, I started to re-think my objection to hauling deer on cars. We used to see it a lot many years ago, but we don't see it very often now for quite a few reasons:
1. Fewer people are hunting.
2. Deer are harder to get, so not as many come home with hunters.
3. More people have pickups which keep them hidden from eyes that might be offended.
4. Hunters tuck them inside the trunks of cars to avoid offending anyone.
I've hauled a deer on top of a classic Volkswagen Beetle, and in the trunk of a Toyota Corolla (but the legs had to stick out). Clearly this is a public relations issue, but it's also a practical issue, and that's why I'm not critical of hunters who choose to bring their deer home on cars.
This article (scroll down to read) first appeared in Deer & Deer Hunting magazine.
Go Ahead – Tie Your Deer to the Car
Steve Sorensen
Some 60 years ago, cars passing through the small towns of America on the opening day of deer season formed a virtual parade of bucks tied to fenders. Once I began hunting it didn’t happen as often, but I did participate in the ritual on one occasion. And a quick Internet search will turn up vintage black and white photographs of our hunting forefathers with deer tied to cars.
My favorite might be the all-time biggest New York typical buck, harvested in 1939 by Roosevelt Luckey. The smiling Mr. Luckey is sitting on the front bumper of a car holding his mounted trophy head. (Maybe there was a rule that said a car had to be in the photo, whether or the kill is fresh from the hunt or on the way home from the taxidermist.)
Back in those days such photos were a way of celebrating the hunt. People didn’t seem bothered by it, but you don’t see it as often today, and lots of people don’t like it.
A few years ago on the second day of Pennsylvania’s rifle season, my brother and I were following a small maroon station wagon. On its roof was a nice buck, and the closer we got the more impressive it looked. We started to pass, and my brother said, “Hey, that’s Tom!” Tom is a life-long buddy.
We waved Tom down and got him to pull into a parking lot to hear the story. The buck was magnificent – an easy qualifier for Pennsylvania’s record book.
The only time I hoisted a deer onto the roof, my hunting rig was a ’68 Volkswagen Beetle. It took all the strength this 19-year-old could muster to muscle the seven-point onto that rounded roof. As I worked to tie him down he made his best efforts to slide off the front, back, left and right. I finally got the job done well enough so he stayed there during the 6-mile ride home. How else could you haul a buck on a Beetle? I love it that my admiring little brother is in the photo.
This all brings up the question of whether it’s proper to display deer on vehicles. I used to side with the people who frown on it. Many think it looks barbaric. It might be insensitive to non-hunters and we worry that it could turn some of them into anti-hunters. I’ve heard that some people would even like a law against displaying deer on a vehicle.
I don’t want to turn people’s stomachs, encourage sympathy for the dead deer, or cause anyone to think my recent ancestors were Cro-Magnons, but now I see the other side of the coin. Although I do not feel the need to publicly display my deer, I now see several good reasons a hunter might head out on the highway with a buck strapped to his fender.
1. Size – It’s about the size of your vehicle, not the size of your buck. Not every hunter has a pickup, and most of us drive smaller cars these days. Thanks to all the stuff we haul around, it’s crowded inside. The obvious place for the deer is on the outside.
2. Ticks – Deer can be loaded with ticks and another critter called deer keds – many, many more than I remember when I began hunting. No hunter wants parasitic bugs inside the same car his kids will be riding in to church the next day.
3. Blood – I’m sorry, but dearly departed deer are bloody, and blood makes a much bigger mess inside the car than outside the car. Untie the deer after you get home, slide him off the car, and hose the car down. It’s much easier than cleaning blood from the inside.
4. Heat – The deer needs to be cooled down, and body heat is dissipated more quickly when the deer is on the roof than in the cargo area of an enclosed vehicle. Better eating, and road grime isn’t a factor on a short trip when the deer still has its skin on.
For these reasons (and you can probably think of more), I’m no longer critical of hunters hauling deer on top of their cars. It’s not an ethical issue, as some try to make it. It’s a practical issue, so we have good reasons to do it. We’re not necessarily saying, “Hey everybody – look at me!”
Then there was that time I brought a dead coyote home on the floor of the front seat of the family car. If neighbors and other motorists had known, they might have appreciated it. My wife knew, and she wished I would have strapped it to a fender.
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