I thought I would put this one up there for handful of us that prefer to kill and butcher our own proteins.
Hunting Thread
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Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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Oh I prefer store bought cow. But venison is damn tasty as a changeup, and it's always better when I shoot it because I know how to handle the meat properly. Gotta get that thing gutted ASAP and get as much blood as possible leached out of the meat.
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I actually get a free deer tag every year and I could fill it from my front steps a lot of days but I generally don't bother just because I have an abundance of beef and it tastes a lot better than venison. The only thing that could get me to shoot a deer is if I can figure out how to make good jerky. Seems like most people make it with ground meat which I don't appreciate and I like my jerky more dry and stringy and not all spongy like the Jack Link's crap that you get at the grocery store. If I can get it figured out then I will definitely think about shooting a deer to make into jerky every fall. I like venison sausage as well but people who hunt on my place give me quite a bit of that every year but it seems like nobody gets their deer made into jerky and most people who make their own do a shit job of it.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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What part of the world do you live, and what are the deer your killing eating? What they eat has a huge impact on how they taste. Corn fed and soybean fed deer are pretty good.
I am totally opposite, I would give up beef for game meat the rest of my life. I am taking my wife on her first big game in a few weeks, I can't wait to kill her packing out her caribou, she was supposed to get in better shape for the pack out.
Tim
Molten Core Raider
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I'm able to mooch a spot at some friends property every year just about. They put a lot of work in maintaining the land, optimizing food/nutrition, attracting deer to the property and managing the local herd to try and get trophy bucks, and my lazy ass gets to show up and nab a doe for no effort because I care about meat and not antlers and they need people to harvest doe's.
A 150-170lb doe who has been eating acorns and alfalfa all year is just about the perfect meat, imo.
A 150-170lb doe who has been eating acorns and alfalfa all year is just about the perfect meat, imo.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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I hunt, it's almost like a religion. When everyone else did Christmas and Thanksgiving when I was a kid I got a week extra off of school to go hunting with the family. In college two semesters in the fall I had class on M, T, W, only with some night classes thrown in. Got out W at noon. I hunted a lot. Ducks, geese, and deer, and the ocassional quail and woodcock. I "almost" got burned out on it while in grad school since we had a collection permit for deer. 4 guys in a high rack at night collecting does from the end of season till bucks dropped their antlers and we couldn't tell them apart in the spotlight. A good night was a dozen give or take and we did that 3 nights a week. Temple Inland which was the largest private landowner in TX with 2 million acres funded all our research and allowed us to collect on their land, didn't hurt the school was the Aurthur Temple College of Forestry at SFA University. Few years ago they sold out to Weyerhauser after the sale to a German invest group was blocked. That would have sucked to have Germans largest private landowner in TX. My land is 90% surrounded/edged with what used to be Temple Inland land.
During the avian flu scare we shot resting ducks off the water from a blind with a supressed .22, kind of took the thrill out of that for a while too. Sent them overnight to A&M to be tested for bird flu.
Favorite duck to eat, green winged teal. In the state of TX if you have a minimal amount of land you can apply for tags via the managed land permit system. Write a management plan and have it approved by TXPWD and you're good to go, can shift your season forward or back, increase your tags etc...I have one and have for almost 10 years, college roomate is now #2 man at TXPWD which helps. I lease out about 3/4 of my land.
Until the last two years when my health went to shit I would say between ducks and deer they made up 3/4 of my meat diet.
I'll dig up some pics. I'm the worst for taking pics while hunting. The only ones I have currently are 15+ years old of deer and pigs my GF took the pics. The pig I shot off the back porch, the deer I shot with my bow and is still my best deer with a bow. It was shot on my land as well.
Talking about eating deer. After we did a necropsy on the deer we collected we donated them to the local food bank and they would give it to the local meet packing place to butcher it. The homeless (not really homeless there) but the down on their luck ate very well. Eventually they told us they wouldn't take it any longer. Kind of irked me.
I'll try to dig up some duck pics. I have an aluminum boat I mostly made myself with a go-devil on it. Warren Coco and my dad and ex boss were heavy lunch partners for years and he gave me a great deal on it. He talks about how inventive he was to come up with the idea. He went to Vietnam during the war and saw them using them and that's where he got "inventive" lol.
Go ahead and laugh. I don't shave, or really even comb my hair during hunting season. I think I put the hat on just to take the pic.
During the avian flu scare we shot resting ducks off the water from a blind with a supressed .22, kind of took the thrill out of that for a while too. Sent them overnight to A&M to be tested for bird flu.
Favorite duck to eat, green winged teal. In the state of TX if you have a minimal amount of land you can apply for tags via the managed land permit system. Write a management plan and have it approved by TXPWD and you're good to go, can shift your season forward or back, increase your tags etc...I have one and have for almost 10 years, college roomate is now #2 man at TXPWD which helps. I lease out about 3/4 of my land.
Until the last two years when my health went to shit I would say between ducks and deer they made up 3/4 of my meat diet.
I'll dig up some pics. I'm the worst for taking pics while hunting. The only ones I have currently are 15+ years old of deer and pigs my GF took the pics. The pig I shot off the back porch, the deer I shot with my bow and is still my best deer with a bow. It was shot on my land as well.
Talking about eating deer. After we did a necropsy on the deer we collected we donated them to the local food bank and they would give it to the local meet packing place to butcher it. The homeless (not really homeless there) but the down on their luck ate very well. Eventually they told us they wouldn't take it any longer. Kind of irked me.
I'll try to dig up some duck pics. I have an aluminum boat I mostly made myself with a go-devil on it. Warren Coco and my dad and ex boss were heavy lunch partners for years and he gave me a great deal on it. He talks about how inventive he was to come up with the idea. He went to Vietnam during the war and saw them using them and that's where he got "inventive" lol.
Go ahead and laugh. I don't shave, or really even comb my hair during hunting season. I think I put the hat on just to take the pic.
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Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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- 111d 18h 30m
I have someone process my deer and he makes awesome jerky. It's kind of spongy, so not the stuff you like. But if I'm right about what you want, it should be fairly easy. Cut it thin, marinade it, and smoke it on very low heat for a long long time. You probably need a smoke house to do it right. I have an electric smoker and the wife and I are planning to see how that does. When we get around to trying it with ours, I'll post back with the results.
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Its called cold smoking, usually around 70F-100F, but no more than 120F as this starts to cook the meat. Cold smoking does two things, one it preserves the meat with smoke, and it also drys the meat out, the less moisture the better since bacteria cannot grow without moisture. Its tough to do this in a store bought smoker unless it is made to do cold smoking. Usually cold smoking is done in a smokehouse where only the smoke is funneled into the smoke house and the fire pit is on the exterior. The meats are also cured before smoking, it draws out the moisture from the meat before hand and promotes the absorption of wood smoke it also prevents shit like botulism. But you can also do a quick homogenization on the meat after smoking, just stick it in a 225F oven for 10-15 min to kill off any of the remainder of the bacteria present. So for cold smoking its either cure or homogenize.
Also you need to use only lean cuts of meat, as in hardly any to no fat, basically any of the large tough muscle, for instance on beef it would be the eye of round, which is like the perfect jerky meat.
You can also do this in a food dehydrator. Which sort of acts as a cold smoker but without the smoke. Cut meat into thin strips, no more than 1/4 in thk. Marinade them in your favorite shit, add a few drops of liquid smoke, and then proceed to dry them in a food dehydrator. They are perectly edible, but if you want to homogenize them for further safety, just put them into a 225F oven for 10-15min. This will assure you kill off any of the remaining bacteria.
Cold smoking is effective on salmon too, best results. Also sausage is done this way like kielbasa, its cold smoked for like 24 hrs and then hung in a dark dry place to fully facilitate the drying process.
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Going duck hunting for first light then switching it up at 9 AM and gonna scare up so ruffed grouse. Turkey season is coming up and I have my two weeks booked for rifle season for whitetail here in Ontario. This is the absolute best time of year for me, my daughter and I love to spend time together in the woods waiting for that moment when we can drop a tasty critter. Good hunting all.
Mrs. Gravy
Quite Saucy
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I would have a fairly hard time point blank blasting a raccoon. They're cute, smart, and seem almost domesticated when I've encountered them.