A short story about deer butchering, venison liver pate, and blending with your surroundings . . .
On Friday I took a trip to the next (larger) village over to get some milk and look for a book at their library. I wanted a book on how to butcher a deer. Because, of course, we HAVE a deer to be butchered. We did it last year for the first time and we used this fantastic book* that had step-by-step instructions, diagrams, recipes, etc. Photos, too, which would probably make most of you gag, but were exceedingly helpful. But that book came from The City library, and I did not want to drive there just for that book.
So. Into the little library I went, where I wandered around the hunting section and the cooking section to see what I could find. The very nice librarian there saw me wandering and asked what she could help me find. I hesitated for a second, because it seemed kind of weird, to me, to be asking for a book on how to butcher a deer. I was made aware last year when I checked out that fantastic book at The City library how unusual it is for anyone to butcher their own. And I know most people bring them to a processing place and don't do it themselves. But I told her exactly what I was looking for.
Not only did she not look in the least surprised, she apologized when she told me they didn't have anything, thanked me for reminding her to put out a display of game cookery books, and then proceeded to tell me how much she loves venison liver pate (EW). And THEN, the random dude sitting at the computer near us chimed in to say that he was leaving the next day for Cooperstown to hunt on his land there. Well then.
Yup, these are my people. It's so nice to feel like we fit in.
* I did actually get to The City library yesterday, where I found that in their big sorting and weeding out job last year, they had discarded all the books they had had last year on game processing and cooking. Stupid city people.
6 comments:
Once you butcher your deer, maybe you could help Mr. Mom clean the two deer hides taking up every inch of space in our freezer. I said I wanted deer hide rugs . . . I just didn't know it meant they'd be in my freezer weeks after the deer were killed.
When I'm king, I'll tell every library, when you're going to dispose of books, contact the last five people who checked it out. You've got the records, see if they want it.
Maybe your local tradition with deer is different, but with moose (after removing the dried rind from skin-off aging) we bone-out all the meat by fileting off the major muscle masses from the legs and cut them into appropriate sizes for roasts. The frozen roasts can later be cut into steaks when you thaw them out, if desired. Rib, belly, neck, and miscellaneous tough-looking meat gets ground for burger. Backstraps and tenderloins are fileted out and cut into appropriate size chunks for packaging. With deer, you might want to slice them up for steaks before packaging. Yumm! The aesthetics of your cuts aren't really important (don't tell MiL); just keep everything clean and free of deer hair. Also, the fat is where the gamey taste resides so we trim all that off before packaging. The dogs will love the cooked scraps, but I'd do that outdoors for odor control.
Folks around here often mix pork fat with their venison to get the right consistency for sausage and ground meat. I raise pastured pigs and sell a fair bit of back fat for this purpose in the fall when hunters get their deer.
M.M.--Yeah, no thanks. We don't do anything with the hides because we age the deer with the hides on. By the time the aging is done, the hair comes out in clumps. I think they have to be skinned right away for the hides to be usuable.
Drew--Good plan. I'll be awaiting your coronation.
Roger--Yeah, we ended up just winging it. A. remembered mostly what he did last year. Not so much good meat this year though, because of the bruising. A lot of dog scraps though, more than last year. We feed the scraps to the dogs raw--they seem to digest it better that way, somehow.
Walter--You speak our language! Yay! Yes, we did make sausage today, and we used rendered leaf lard from the pig we bought for slaughter last year. The MiL renders it for making pie crust, and we always have some in the fridge. That's some useful fat, right there.
I guess I don't feel like such an outcast knowing that my parents aren't the only ones who've butchered road kill...
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