Jesse was such a tired man when he got home from hunting. His nephew had shot a deer around sundown the day before but they couldn’t find it in the dark when they went looking for it. Luckily they were able to find it the next morning pretty close to where they shot it, it sounds like. Jesse told me it was gut shot, and I immediately started thinking the meat wouldn’t be good because it would have been stewing in its bacteria-laden fluids all night. After doing some research, though, it’s actually recommended you leave the deer alone for a couple hours if you gut shoot it, because the animal can live for hours and if you pursue it will run whereas if you leave it alone it typically lays down in the area it was shot and just expires. Not a pretty way to go, I know, but at least the animal doesn’t go to waste if you can get to it. I suppose wild animals like coyotes or wolves would get to it as well so it wouldn’t be wasted, but you know what I mean.
They field dressed the buck and started on the way back home. It sounds like Jesse was stressed on the drive to and from because he was driving another’s vehicle and trailer and wanted to be especially careful with it. Then the motor home my BIL and family took locked them out so they had to break a window and everyone had to crawl in through the window because the door wouldn’t open. Good times.
Jesse finally got home around 10 or 11pm maybe? He was tired and dirty and stressed and he still had to deal with the deer. He put it in the buck bag and strung it from our deck and called it a night.
After I got home the next night and we put Ezra to bed, we tackled the deer. We had to refer to the YouTube video numerous times to make sure we were doing it correctly, and even then we probably butchered it more than was strictly required. Have you ever butchered an animal? I can tell you firsthand, processing an animal has a pretty pungent scent. Definitely different than opening a package of meat from the store. That was kind of a difficulty for us, not knowing what was an “off” scent versus what was just a normal death/meat smell. But, I think we did pretty well all in all. We got a lot of roasts from it that will turn into jerky somehow, and the back steaks looked great.
Identifying and treating the viagra online buy underlying cause can help you recover from ED. However, working through such issues with a partner can increase, which then just creates more tension. discount viagra levitra Today, 70% ED sufferers in the UK experience erectile dysfunction (ED) soft tabs cialis problems. Depression is a known risk factor for the development of women viagra pills ED.
(The above video is the one we used; that guy moves so quickly!)
At one point you take off/break the skeleton carcass at the pelvis to leave you with the hind legs and we were trying to decide what to do with the carcass when we thought we’d just give it to the dogs. They could eat what they wanted and we’d throw out the rest. I thought maybe there would be arguing or snarling but no such thing happened. They both went to town on it with no apparent aggression issues. We left them outside instead of bringing them in for the night because I was unsure if there would be any digestive upset. I mean, we raw feed, but that was A LOT of food. The only thing I could tell was off the next day was they were so sleepy. They snoozed a good portion of the day away like they were in a food stupor, it was awesome.
Anyway, we put some meat aside while we were processing that we knew would be dog food and had another pile for obviously bad areas, and the rest we put in a cooler with ice, layering towels between the meat layers to soak up any blood and juices. That method seemed to work really well and we’ll probably do it again like that in the future. We were able to let the meat rest/age for a couple days and didn’t have to take up any fridge space to do it.
It was a little daunting to process our own deer instead of taking it in somewhere, but I liked that we got to experience it hands on and that we now know it’s not impossible to do again.
Leave a Reply