Glenn’s Deer Handle
Stooped over and covered in mud, trying to pull a long gangly buck through the dense underbrush at dusk – that’s when deer hunters everywhere have felt the need for a Deer Handle.
And now – they’ve got the option to buy one.
The Deer Handle is the year-2000 invention of Glenn Cornelius, who resides in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Glenn’s Deer Handle is a compact and light-weight ‘harness’ of sorts that allows for a single hunter to effectively drag a deer through the woods without having to strain himself. Simply, with the Deer Handle, you won’t have to ever lean down to drag a buck again.
Basically, the Deer Handle is a 9-inch tool made of durable braided-nylon rope that affixes to the base of a buck’s antlers byway of loop and cinch, sparing the need for the creation of a knot strong enough to withstand the grasp of twigs or branches.
Once secured to the deer, the Handle allows the hunter to pull his deer quickly out of the woods without having to twist and contort. Instead, you can keep your eyes front-and-center and pull through a steady even motion.
“It’s hard to move a dead animal, it’s hard to try and lift dead weight,” says Cornelius from his Mississippi office. “I’d been hunting deer all my life, and finally about 6 years ago, I said ‘there’s got to be a better way.’ That’s when I got the idea to try and build something that would give me a better grip when dragging a buck out of the woods. The idea behind the Handle is to allow a hunter to use his weight equally to pull a deer, taking the strain off his back and sides.”
And that’s just what the Handle does – it creates a pocket-sized ‘hauler’ that lets a lone hunter in the woods better utilize the strongest points of the body (legs and shoulders), while lessening the torque on the weaker areas (spine and lower-lumbar region). The result is that the drudgery of the ‘deer drag’ is markedly reduced.
As Cornelius notes, most hunting products on the market are designed to help a hunter with the kill and not with the work that begins when the animal goes down. However, the objective of the Handle is just the opposite: Its creation was premised on getting the animal back to the truck – and then loaded into it.
As anyone who has hunted knows, the ‘drag’ is only half the problem. Once the deer’s at the truck, a single hunter is faced with the back-breaking chore of trying to load two hundred pounds of dead weight with dagger-sharp points onto a 4-foot high surface.
However, this is also a proposition that the Handle makes less intimidating: Just drag your deer to the side of the truck, hook the handle on the edge of a level tailgate and climb into the bed of the truck; now grab the Deer Handle again and simply draw the deer into your vehicle with even thrusts – absolutely no need for an extra set of hands.
“The basic point behind my Handle,” notes Cornelius, “is to leave the whole weight of the animal on the ground, except for the head. Literally, it’s about putting a handle on the deer so it can be moved from one point to another more effectively. The Handle is a tool, manufactured to the same strength as water ski handles so it will last. It’s not fancy by any means. But it’s not meant to be. It’s just meant to make deer hunting easier.
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