Thursday, June 11, 2009

How to hand feed a trophy buck

Hello all my friends. This is my first shot at this, but let's just see what happens. Have you ever wondered why you work so hard at witnessing to all different types of people and gotten only a interested people at best. Well, let's sit back and examine, not what you did, but rather a story of an event that actually occurred to me.
Many years ago, my wife,and I went camping with my parents, who had just purchased a new recreational vehicle. We had talked them into going to Inks Lake State Park, in the Hill Country of Texas. The area had been parched due to a severe drought and many of the animals were in fear of starving due to lack of food, especially the deer population. A favorite pastime in the park was to throw corn and feed to the deer, to get them to come closer. My three year old son decided that he, too, wanted to feed the deer. To his dismay, the deer ran away the second he started to chase them.
After a few moments, I tried to show my son how to entice the deer. So, I took a bag of corn and walked slowly in the direction of the deer (all does and 2 bucks) and then knelt down in an open area, next to a few trees. I then tossed out some feed so that the deer would know what I had. During this whole time I remained as still as possible and let the deer make all the moves. after about fifteen minutes I had several deer eating from my hand.
It was then that I spotted a 10 point buck in the tree line, watching intently. I had his doe eating from my hand and several others coming to me willingly. I made a subtle motion for the other doe to move aside, which she did. I then repeated my steps to this trophy buck. I tossed a few kernels of corn in his direction and left the rest to him. I held a large amount of corn in my hand, stayed in a kneeling position and offered the corn to him without moving. He still would not come toward me, but he did watch me very carefully. Eventually, his hunger overcame his fear and he moved toward me. It took the better part of 1/2 hour to 45 minutes for me to coax the buck close to me. Once he started eating the corn from my hand, I could hear the sound of several different cameras going off at once. I tried to ignore them and continued to feed this proud animal. He even allowed me to pet him after a few minutes of grazing. I allowed him to finish of the bag of corn I had, in return for his trust. When I finally got up and returned to my family, there were a lot of people wondering how I pulled that off. They all said that you could easily tempt a doe, but the bucks were impossible to get. I just replied patience is not only a virtue, but a necessity.

The moral to this is simple. If you want to be a good witness for the Lord, do not force yourself on to and individual or situation. Remain still and encouraging offering only small amounts of the bread of life. If they hunger enough, they will come to you. Finally, the more stubborn they appear to be, the more calm, still, and intent you must be. Remember the old saying " Good things come to those who wait."
PS A lot of prayer is also a good thing.