Saturday was the first day of rifle season for deer. In other words, the pressure was on for A. to get his deer. I don't know why he feels this pressure, but he does. The family must have meat, after all. *
He got up at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning to drive 45 minutes to public lands up in the hills. Up, where it is colder. A lot colder. It was about 15 degrees, with a snow cover. He stayed out for about three hours and didn't see a single deer, returning shame-faced (and freezing) to answer in the negative when the children asked if he got anything.
After several hours of jittering around, he decided to go back out around 3 p.m. This time he just walked up back onto our neighbor's property and camped out in the gully. He returned around 5 p.m. dragging a very fat doe.
This is pretty much what he did last year, so I think he's getting the idea that if shooting a deer is the objective, there is very little reason to get up in the dark and cold and drive anywhere. Obviously the hunting is better half a mile from our house.
Anyway.
Charlie in particular was excited about this deer, shouting "Hooray, Daddy!" and subjecting the deer to a minute examination. I like to think I encourage scientific curiosity, but it was still pretty gross to see him poking at eyeballs and pulling on the tongue.
Also gross is how surprisingly long a deer's tongue is. Ew.
Anyway again.
So the first deer of the season is now hanging in the barn aging, to be butchered this weekend. Due to my not-very-functional hands at the moment, I will not be participating in the butchering this year. I suggested to A. that he just cut the whole thing up into stew meat and turn it all into a gigantic batch of chili to be frozen.
Is this not how most people go about preparing freezer meals for after the baby is born?
A. has two more tags, meaning he can still take one more doe and a buck. So we could end up with the world's largest supply of chili in our freezer. Works for me.
* Joke. We still have quite a bit of our half cow in the freezer, so I think anemia will be held at bay for awhile yet.
2 comments:
I was obviously under the mistaken understanding that you could only shoot bucks. Shows how little I know. May be that's only in Arizona. Anyway, kudos to the mighty hunter who brings in not quite free meat for the growing family.
Sorry about your wrist issues.
Hhmmm! There is nothing like good tasting venison. True story. . . many years ago, my family was friends with a couple, who, although they were nice people, she was a little on the "uppity" side. We had them over for the Super Bowl one year and I served venison chili, but I never told her it was venison. She raved about how good it tasted. Previously, she had told us there was no way she would ever eat venison and she proceeded into a drama routine about how awful that was. . . To this day, she doesn't know she ate venison!
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