“Shouldn’t be raising children,” those are some pretty harsh words. There are some seriously bad fathers out there or lack there of. I wouldn’t lump this guy in with that. The chances of that deer suddenly goring that kid is extremely unlikely. Could it happen? Sure. But I wouldn’t be losing sleep over the odds. But I guess I’m the kind of dad that let’s my kids ride quads on their own and ride bikes without helmets. I also got quite a bit of flack from some on here a while back for strangling a coyote in front of my son. He still thinks that was pretty cool by the way.
Fathers spending time with their kids, not on their phones are already better than a good chunk. We all make different decisions in risk assessment and how we decide to parent. Let’s not tear each other down so fast
Probably not smart. BUT, my boys would have been trying to figure out a way for one to feed and distract it while the other was trying to get on it and see if they could ride it.
While it's not a good idea to feed wild large animals by hand, I agree with M. Pauls. Not allowing kids to take risks is worse for them than not allowing them to take any. In the case of the latter, they never grow up.
When I was those boy's age, I left on my bicycle with my buddy after breakfast with no food or water on us in the middle of the Southern California summer with a high of 100F or more that day and came back at dark. We were always fine. When we needed some water, we rolled into someone's yard and drank from their hose and then went back out into the hills to make forts and jump our BMXs without helmets on.
That sort of thing would be looked down on far more by today's society than feeding a deer by hand and I don't think my parents were neglectful. Could we have died? I suppose. But we didn't and instead had great childhoods.
Me and my brothers did some stupid stuff and are lucky to be alive. We laugh about it it now of course but in a way that makes us realize how dumb we were. Lol
Keeping kids in glass cages does nothing for them.... except that they grow up with no experience, no confidence, and no idea when to take an acceptable risk.
Was this an acceptable risk? I dunno, I'd have jumped at the chance when I was 6-7, or 50....but we grew up with a few bumps, bruises, and a shiner, now and then.
I think kids need to be allowed to be kids. Life has a way of teaching lessons. And, parents seem to want to protect their kids from life. Which causes problems.
However, strangling a coyote is a long ways from feeding a 200 pound Mulie with a 170 inch head gear. That deer is a literal wrecking ball in comparison.
I had a logger working for me years ago that had two whitetail bucks he raised from babies. Bottle fed on up. Both bucks tried to literally kill him in separate incidents while he kept them. And, both animals put him in the hospital.
Both bucks, once hard horned were unapproachable. They would flare up and try to gore anyone who got close to their pens once they rubbed their velvet off. But, became tame as lap dogs after shedding all the way through to hard horned again.
Yes, they were more tame then the mulie. But, if this continues, the mulie will soon enough lose enough fear of humans to be the same caliber of dangerous.
Just my opinion. And, not judging or lecturing anyone else on theirs.
Not the smartest move on Dad's part too easy for a buck to gore the heck out of either if those kids. But there are far worse situations that crappy parents put their kids into.
Hell, we raised deer around the house growing up. Always had fawns following us around. Wild deer, just kind of had a bunch as pets. They grew up and were still really tame even as adult bucks and does. Never had any problems with them but we were also around horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and goats the whole time growing up.
I was allowed to go to the river and spend all day fishing, swimming and having fun with no adult supervision by the time I was 6 or 7. My folks figured I could swim and knew what rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and copperheads looked like. At least I couldn’t get in much trouble out on the river.
Mom and Dad both worked so had every day after school with my brother for several hours after the bus dropped us off. We got into all kinds of stuff! We actually worked our tails off to get the animals fed, garden taken care of, yard mowed, trash hauled and burned, fences checked, etc as fast as possible so we could get out and shoot our bows and maybe catch a fish!
They were more careful with letting us head out with a gun. I was probably 12 before I could take a .22 out on my own or with my brother to go hunting. Was at least 15 before they let me take a .30-30 out for wild pigs, deer or whatever else I could find to shoot. Had already killed a couple of deer with bows by then...
Never had any even any close calls with guns growing up. Respect and responsibility were beat into us from an early age. Pretty much the same for all the boys where I grew up.
It’s good to let kids be kids. It’s good to let them learn. I certainly had a blessed childhood.
Apauls... fantastic bro,, .." preteach strangleholds" my kinda guys. Too many snowflakes, not enough real people...lure the mulie in with bread and snatch up the neck! Love me some savages...
Wow...I can't even believe we are talking about this, but then again, I don't understand people wearing masks while hiking or when in there car either... When did the American people get so skittish?
These experiences build dreams and character in kids and that should not be with held. With out taking chances, our youth would be sitting at home playing video games, watching tv, not learning work ethic, and not aspiring to do great things...oh crap! That does sound like a lot of youth today! How is that not the real danger?
Never had any even any close calls with guns growing up. Respect and responsibility were beat into us from an early age. Pretty much the same for all the boys where I grew up.
I love this statement..... in this generation of "there are no losers" and "everyone gets the same trophy", it's refreshing to hear about respect being taught.
No harm, no foul. Had the kid got hurt, we all know what the comments on this forum would look like. But all is well, that ends well. With the size of the buck vs. size of the kid I wouldn't have allowed that. But I can't tell you my kids never tried to feed a whitetail doe in our back yard.
I would have been fine letting my child if he was the older kid. That little kid needs his @$$ beat. Then again he looks all of 4 years old. Like many on here I didn’t wear a bike helmet. My best childhood memory is running around town with a red rider shooting cats at not much older than the little tot in that video. The world sure has changed.
There must be a lot of girly city dads on Bowsite, I guess. That video is nothing compared to what happens on ranches in my neck of the woods every day.
Grey Ghost many don’t even know what they missed growing up. I’m glad my kids won’t. I have some pictures I wish I could post like my 6 year old jumping off the trampoline to a pool 10’ away filled with 6” of water. Living in the country they don’t often wear swimsuits. Lighten up and live.
So let me make sure I got this straight. If a child gets flipped by a Buffalo in Yellowstone the parents should be arrested according to bowsite when it was discussed here. But a dad let's his four year old feed a buck he is a great dad. OK got it.
I never said he was a great dad. I wouldn’t have let that littlest kid feed the deer the way he was acting. There is however a lot of difference in a town buck and a 2500# buffalo. I’d let my 3 oldest kids feed that buck but I won’t let any of them in tight quarters with a beef bull. Big animals like that have a different personality and they don’t like to feel pressure no matter how docile or tame they seam. I put buffalo and bulls in the same category. I’ve had gentle bulls put me up a fence with no more than I flick of their head. They know they have you outweighed and outmatched 20x. Cows have a different personality, every animal is different.
Link. Those bales are dangerous suckers :) my brother and I were running down a big row of them. I got to the end and stopped. My brother comes in behind me and doesn't stop. Generally would have been funny. Except this time it wasn't since our old hand winch bale cart was stabbed in the end of that last bale. Hit that and WOW, it hurt bad. It literally relocated my sternum. It sits way off to side since that day.
I think many of us have stories from our youth that wasn't our finest hour. I did some very stupid stuff when I was a little kid. I think I was around 6 or 7 when I wanted to play rocket man. I remember jumping over a bunch of ashes in a fire pit bare foot and not making it. Burnt my feet pretty good. Not wanting to out do that act of stupidity, I also remember my best at 9 or 10......finding some type of tubed fireworks like a roman candle in the street that was broken in half. My curiosity was talking......I stuck one half on a flat surface and wanted to see what was inside of it. In one of my youthful acts of supreme brilliance, I didn't have a flashlight so I lit a match and held it up to the end of the tube to see if anything was left inside this tube. Needless to say my curiosity was answered when I put the match up to the end of the tube and it immediately blew up in my face as I was looking inside of it. I ended up with burns and peeled skin around my eye and cheek. Luckily I didn't loose my eye(s). Yup....I was a flaming rock star back then.
To revisit this thread, I see lots of “let kids be kids”. Well, in general I agree, but I think back to the close calls I had as a kid growing up on a dairy. Several brushes with mama cows while trying to doctor newborn calves for screw worms, probably something that most of you younger guys never heard of. In those days, the early fifties, if you didn’t put some Peerless screw worm dope on a new calf’s navel cord the screw worms would kill him. It wasn’t if, it was when. Mamas did not like this and my brother and I climbed the fence or rolled under many times to get away from mama. This is just one example, there were many others, from running through the pine trees in a lightening storm to chunking corn cobs at each other while running around the loft of the barn. We didn’t die, or ever get seriously hurt, but we missed some damn good chances. So......let kids be kids, but as the adult, pick and choose when and under what circumstances. That’s your job !
Oh yeah, we got our asses tore up about the lightening storm escapade, as well as running in the barn loft, and we still had lots of chances to be kids.
Feeding bucks is not good, neighbor was killed by his pet buck when he playfully stuck him in the femoral artery.
Quarreling does can pack a punch with them from t hooves too.
Kids on the farm, walk the corn, ride the auger, play spin on the PTO, but don't fall into the boars pen. We didn't get hurt but a few neighbors kids got buried doing this kind of nonsense.
I'd be more concerned about little Ethan's ability to follow simple directions than the fact that he was feeding a buck, I wonder how that kid turned out...And I'm sure am glad I grew up on rural ranches and not in suburbia, man we had a lot of fun doing stuff that would get frowned on these days!
You know, many people may know this about me. I'm an attorney. I do a considerable amount of domestic trial work. The majority of that trial work involves custody of children. I'm continually reminded during trials just how bad of a father I am :) The things that the parents complain about the other parent doing. . . . I'm like "Why's that bad?!"
All in my head of course :)
I would consider my parents to have been the best parents a wild young country boy could have. They gave me incredible freedom with guns/bows/trucks/ATVs/horses, etc. Any of my own failures or defects are in no way attributable to them. Even though I consider them the best parents ever, I know there's a picture somewhere in their house, of me feeding a cracker to a wild velvet muley near the Grand Canyon.
And there's a BIG difference between a bison and a muley.
Reminds me of a recent happening here in Colorado concerning feeding a local deer. Seems like a neighbor fed a buck WT for a few months and then one day it attacked a person walking here dog past there the buck hung out in the neighborhood. The buck attacked and punctured the arm and head of the person with it antlers. The CPW CO was called and had to put the buck down. Yep, had to kill the buck because of someone's stupidly of feeding this one deer or more local neighborhood deer.
This video shows a similar stupid human encouraging their very young children to be part of the same process and the outcome could have turned out ugly for both the kids and the buck.
I can just hear the father trying to explain to the CO, "Gee, I was just trying to teach my kids to be just kids and man up." Sorry the buck took out my son's eye and you had to put the deer down." "Gee!"
I'm an adult and I stayed behind a tree when I took pics of these guys. We rented a cabin in Ruidoso a few years ago and when I looked outside these monsters were there between all the cabins.. Must have come off the Apache Reservation. This was between Christmas and New Years. I have a healthy respect for the damage these guys can do, but I had to get the pictures.
