Small Cabin

Small Cabin Forum
 - Forums - Register/Sign Up - Reply - Search - Statistics -

Small Cabin Forum / General Forum / Never hunted in my life. I was always curious about those who do
. 1 . 2 . >>
Author Message
optimistic
Member
# Posted: 22 Aug 2021 19:29
Reply 


Do you eat the dear?

Seems like deer meat will be the best meat around from a health perspective.

Fresh, organic, their diet is very diverse, lean - they walk huge distances, and no medicine/chemicals...

Can't anything like it in the most expensive meat stores around really....

My wife says that people who hunt eat it but that seems impossible since that is a ton of meat so that is why I am curious.

Fanman
Member
# Posted: 22 Aug 2021 19:40
Reply 


It's a few years since I've done any hunting but yes, ethical hunters eat what they kill, or donate the meat. Yes, a deer is a lot of meat but that's what freezers are for. There were some lean times when the deer I killed were an important part of my family's diet.

Brettny
Member
# Posted: 22 Aug 2021 19:41
Reply 


At 30yrs old I picked up hunting, so it's not to late. I'm the only one who eats venison in my house hold and wouldnt have a problem going through about 120lbs of venison in a year. I bring my lunch to work every day.

My first (and so far only deer) was a big old buck. I'm going for a doe this year.

darz5150
Member
# Posted: 22 Aug 2021 22:53
Reply 


For some of us. It is a part of life. For probably over a decade or more, we never used ground beef for chili or stews. Fortunately our deer are well fed. I live in the woods. Surrounded by farm fields and a huge orchard. Very tasty.
One thing about hunting or fishing that I have taught my family. Is that you don't kill for the thrill. If you kill it. Grill it. Eat it. Respect it. That animal lost it's life, so be thankful that you can use it wisely. Period.

optimistic
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 07:57
Reply 


I'm glad to hear that.

I don't see myself hutting. I was a solider and carried around an M16... I do not like that tool.

A farmer told me something interesting, not sure if it is true - I love the taste of sheep's meat. So he said that sheep is considered "gamey" flavor meat so if I like that meat I would like dear meat which is more "gamey"...

is that true? is dear meat more gamey?

I ate dear once in Germany but it was farm raised and very small and cooked in heavy cream so I don't remember it being gamey..

Fanman - who do you donate the meat to?

FishHog
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 08:18
Reply 


Love having some venison in the freezer. Really once processed and deboned the average deer is going to give you 40-60lbs of meat. It’s really not that much to consume in a year

As for “gamey”. That’s just a taste preference. Yes it can taste different than store bought beef. But so can a lot of different meats

mj1angier
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 09:21 - Edited by: mj1angier
Reply 


Deer meat to beef is like chicken to duck- look a little like each orther but taste different. Both are good, just different. Deer come close to grass raised beef, not feed-lot beef. And it depends on how the deer is shot, how it handled after the shot, and the knowledge of the cook.

Here in NC we can hunt deer with dogs in some counties. I can tell most of the time if the meat came from a chase kill. Something about uric acid in the muscle?

After the kill it needs to be field dressed and cooled down. that can be hard in the south where it might be 70-80 degrees in the early season hunting areas. Best to have a cooler full of ice bags in truck to put in body cavity to bring down temp. Then get to walk in cooler to hang or quarter and pack in coolers.

Deer is very lean- so lean most cook it till it's like leather. If I want a deer steak, I cook in cast iron pan with high fat butter. Roast and hams best cooked slow and low with fat and liquid added. A neck roast wrapped in bacon with some vegs in a dutch oven is great

Aklogcabin
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 12:31
Reply 


I've huntedn fished my entire life. Started trapping the last few years for fun. We are just starting moose hunting season.
I enjoy the thought that our family is eating hormone free steroid free meat. And we know how it was handled.
Discovering our outdoors heritage of hunting is a great opportunity to get outside if your into that. I learn to identify different plants around me and how to use them for food or medicine. Watch birds n other wildlife. And much more.
We also process our game together as a family. Making your own sausage mixes up. We like to add bacon to some of our burger for bacon burgers n such. We also can meat in jars to save freezer space. And if you have ever had canned moose I suspect you would say to is near the top in flavor n texture.
Hunting goes a lot deeper than harvesting game. I would suggest you give it a try. Good luck

jsahara24
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 13:31
Reply 


I've hunted since I was 12 years old. You don't get as much meat as you may think, but with the correct cleaning/butchering process it is great. We generally try to get 2 deer a year for my family, we make the backstraps into steaks for the grill. Hind quarters for roasts/pulled venison/slow cooking. Front quarters for making burger. With the second deer I will keep the backstraps for steaks, and use the hind quarters for making venison jerky, venison sticks, sausage and more burger since there is so much you can do with it.....Burgers, tacos, chili, etc..

Any real hunter only shoots what they can eat, or share with their friends and family.

ICC
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 13:44
Reply 


In NM there are specific rules regarding the wasting of edible portions. Edible portions of game animals include all four quarters, backstraps, tenderloins and the neck meat. License privileges may be revoked if found guilty. Last year we found and helped NM Game and Fish track down someone who just took an elk head and antlers. The carcass was only hours old when we came across it. The guilty party was also poaching and it cost him over $10K by the time it was all over.

Brettny
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 13:53
Reply 


How much meat are you guys typicaly getting from a deer? My last one was 114lbs after I got it back from the butcher. No sausage but I had them add some fat in with the ground meat. The butcher I bring it to is a well known small town guy and when I dropped off my deer there was about 12-15 other deer laid out on a tarp getting ready to butcher..it was the smallest deer there.

Aklogcabin
Member
# Posted: 23 Aug 2021 14:37
Reply 


I generally figure about 50-60 % live weight for finished product. We process our meat. A great family event.
A lot of wild game processors combine meat. Especially when making burger , sausages n such Everyone's get ground at the same time for efficiency. And I've seen them stacked up on each other. Kinda hard to have enough room to hang 20 or more different deer in one cooler. Or clean equipment after each deer.
Some butcher trim close or take extra good meat or leave leaves.
I like to know how my meat is handled. And know it's my my meat. As mentioned care in the field matters.
But it helps our family do things together and learn how to these skills. Something we're loosing society.
Lots of encouragement from good folks, but there's just some things you can't put in words. Being able to learn how to harvest our food n process it, start to finish including cooking n enjoy supper together. Harvesting an animal. It means something different to each of us.

Hey take one make one n learn together.

redneckpaul
Member
# Posted: 24 Aug 2021 00:05
Reply 


Yes we eat deer and the size can vary a lot. Small deer maybe 50lbs of meat, large deer maybe 150lbs most somewhere in between.
Average cow elk 200lbs.
My favorite meat is antelope but maybe 35-40lbs on a big one.
We need 3 -4 animals to last for the year.
Hunting is a lot of fun, lot of good memories hunting with my family.

Steve_S
Member
# Posted: 24 Aug 2021 10:32
Reply 


@ Optimistic, Sheep does taste a bit more gamey BUT it does depend on how they were raised. Goat meat is also gamier but the older it is the more "flavourful". Lamb Chops you buy in a store can give you a "light" hint to what deer tastes like.

I have some Independalist type friends who raise rabbits, chickens, turkeys, goats & sheep. They won't do cattle but have horses. The combination provides them with the wide variety of choices with relatively easy to manage livestock. The goats are worked as "Grounds Keepers" which they are amazingly good at. They do supplement minimally with hunting but only as needed because of recent discoveries.

Sadly, Hunter's are only now starting to get the information and it's not being taken well. Wildlife management has been test sampling various Game Animals and they are finding toxins like pesticides and worse. This of course will vary within the regions these animals inhabit and what they are exposed to. The region where my friends are is very far from "civilisation / urbanity" and two recent samplings of deer showed pesticides, mercury, PFAS chemicals, lead and more. Game animals are also now starting to be harvested with Tumours which again should make one wonder.

I can understand where wildlife & civilisation are pushed together that Game animals will carry the side effects of it. But when you are 1,000km from an urban centre where population density is Very Light and no industrial anything anywhere and animals have these Toxins & Issues ? Stuff is seriously screwed up ! Cariboo & Elk like Deer are all suffering the same knock on issues. Even fishing can be tricky now... Geez, nothing like it was 50 years ago ! maybe we just didn't know as we didn't have the tech to detect it all...

paulz
Member
# Posted: 24 Aug 2021 15:13
Reply 


Hunting
aa.JPG
aa.JPG
aaa.JPG
aaa.JPG
aaaa.JPG
aaaa.JPG
aaaaa.JPG
aaaaa.JPG


paulz
Member
# Posted: 24 Aug 2021 15:14
Reply 


Hunting
aaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaaaaaaa.JPG
aaaaaaaaaaa.JPG


snobdds
Member
# Posted: 24 Aug 2021 16:46 - Edited by: snobdds
Reply 


I've hunted for my whole life that I've been eligible for, 26 years. I have gone with my dad for all those years, never anyone else. I have only harvested one deer and one elk. If I never harvest another animal, I'm ok with it. I have passed up on many, many animals. I just enjoy getting out and wandering around looking at things. There is so much history in the forest if one looks.

The last animal my dad harvested is a funny story. He's getting up there in age and he doesn't travel the woods like he use to. He has this spot that's back on some old logging roads. He told me he's not going to shoot unless it's a 6x6 and 20 yards off the road. By god, he got a 6x7 and 5 feet off the road. It was the biggest elk I have ever seen. We got the head mounted and it's almost 5 feet high when standing next to it.

Having a mom that eats very little meat, we never grew up eating wild game. All the animals we harvested, we have processed and then donate to the salvation army. We live in Wyoming have have a ranch. We eat beef.

ICC
Member
# Posted: 24 Aug 2021 17:12 - Edited by: ICC
Reply 


Quoting: Steve_S
...maybe we just didn't know as we didn't have the tech to detect it all...


There is probably some measure of truth to that, but IMO, the big truth is that the activities of people can and do affect our surroundings and the effects reach farther than some people care to believe.

Just
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 16:56
Reply 


I was standing in a Icy cold rain for two hours beside a game trail two miles from camp. It was almost time to leave for home when a big black bull moose came down the path. He stopped turned and looked rite at me . My gun never moved.
And that is why you hunt!

bugs
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 17:33
Reply 


Hmmm... I appreciate some people like hunting and like wild game. I was raised on a small mixed farm. We grew what we ate, cattle, chickens, turkeys and pigs. No reason to hunt.

I hunt with a camera. About the same difficulty as with a rifle/bow/shotgun and in many ways even more difficult.

When hunting season arrives it is frustrating. No one hears the click of my camera but everyone, people and animals and birds, hears the blast of a gun shot for miles/kms around. It ruins the serenity of nature and the enjoyment of being in nature for me.

We have all 480 acres of our land posted and most of our neighbour's do to because of the small % of idiot hunters who blast away at anything that moves including cattle and horses. I guess these people can't read as there are issues each season with trespassing.

ICC
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 18:49
Reply 


Quoting: bugs
I guess these people can't read as there are issues each season with trespassing.


More or less the same here. Posted. Posted. Posted. Some folks feel privileged, that just because they are hunting, and have a state-issued license, some feel they have special access. Even though they actually did agree to all the do's and don'ts when they paid their fees, their brains turn to mush when out in the field. Or they never actually read what they were agreeing to. Or they are simple scofflaws. I get annoyed with those people.

gcrank1
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 19:05
Reply 


We have hunted with bow and gun. We processed our own, taking full responsibility for the life taken. The skillset for hunting AND everything after the kill is not for everyone. There is no waste in nature, the food chain takes care of that.
I have hunted and not taken 'the shot', not because it wasnt perfect to ensure a clean kill but because I didnt need the meat and had fulfilled the hunt with a fine stalk and had the perfect shot. Nothing had to die for me to be completely satisfied. To that point, one need not go hunting with the 'taking of game' even being the objective. To hunt is a mindset.
We have also 'hunted' with the camera, stills and moving, the best time to be out there is not during opening weekend of any gun season. I suggest there are times a camera hunter choose thoughtfully.
As with any activity involving man there are some who have no respect, the 'idiots' as you call them. Im all for prosecuting them to the full extent of the law.

redneckpaul
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 19:46
Reply 


What pisses me off is the libtards and liberal media and big city idiots don`t understand why people hunt. Saying there is no need for hunting in todays society.
Have these people ever been in a fucking slaughterhouse, it ain`t pretty....any way this shit pisses me off so everybody who hunt on here show us a HUNTING PIC.....
buckantelopw
buckantelopw


lburners
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 20:25
Reply 


I think you are getting riled up by conservative media. I live in a very liberal state and the hunting community is very much alive,supported and well.
You should check out the definition of liberalism. I think you will find you agree with most the principles.
Im not a hunter myself but allow a neighbour to use my property. I get the appeal its just not for me.
I have been thinking about getting one of those break barrel pellet guns though.

lburners
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 20:29
Reply 


Also. The comment Steve S made about toxins being found in game meat is a major bummer.

mj1angier
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 21:23
Reply 


Like anything, there a-holes that make others look bad: Don't get me started on the bicyclist around here: stops signs are not for them and they got to travel in a pack to big pass...or hikers that just happen to wonder on to gameland and not wearing blaze orange... or skiers and jet skiers waking when fishing... or campers who let kids and pets run wild thru your camp site.. or...

You get the drift. No matter what your hobby is there's someone that has been pissed off by someone doing it, lol

paulz
Member
# Posted: 25 Aug 2021 21:46
Reply 


Quoting: mj1angier
Don't get me started on the bicyclist around here: stops signs are not for them and they got to travel in a pack to big pass


Oh man, with you there brother. My old VW pickup was great, it would lock up just one rear wheel when I hit the brakes hard, made a huge screech. Had belly laughs watching those guys dive for the gutter.

Blew a head gasket or I'd still be doing it. Weekends look like the Tour de France out here.

darz5150
Member
# Posted: 26 Aug 2021 02:03
Reply 


Quoting: lburners
have been thinking about getting one of those break barrel pellet guns though.

Get one. We have a few. And my SIL has more. Very accurate when you dial them in.

Brettny
Member
# Posted: 26 Aug 2021 05:53
Reply 


Quoting: lburners
Also. The comment Steve S made about toxins being found in game meat is a major bummer.

Does the study also show the toxins in the leeding grocery store meat? All things are relative as far as data.

I also live in a very liberal state and have not seen nor heard of any slaughter house protests or hunter harassment. In fact most of the areas you can hunt are empty durring hunting season becids hunters.

gcrank1
Member
# Posted: 26 Aug 2021 10:06 - Edited by: gcrank1
Reply 


As an air-gun guy from waayyy back (yeah, started with a Daisy BB rifle as a kid then my first real pellet gun in the early '80's. Pellet guns are Far more accurate and can be deadly).
I only have 11? air-guns right now, pistols and rifles, in both .177 and .22 calibers. My best rifle, a German made HW97K in .22 is as accurate at 50yd as an average sporting .22LR cartridge rifle.
All this to say I know a few things about em, and this for sure, the 'springers' are the hardest of all to shoot well because of essentially a double recoil, first rearward then forward as the piston hits the breech propelling the pellet. These are mostly recognized as the 'break-barrel' but also come in side-lever and under-lever.
Note: there are some very high-priced, excellent 'recoilless' models.
Break-barrel pistols are absolutely the hardest to shoot well.
Easier for most are the 'pump-ups'/multi-stroke pneumatics. No real recoil to mess up your aim. The variable power levels by number of pumps lets you target shoot at a few or pump more for yard/garden small varmints.
There are also single-stroke pneumatics that are very nice for target practice but not enough power for any but the tiny varmints very close.
CO2 charged guns are also recoilless but require you use a CO2 cartridge and power falls off at the tail end of the cartridge.
King of the 'air-guns' now are the PCP, pressurized charged from a pump or even a diver's tank; 2000+ psi. These are recoilless, typically accurate and Powerful; pretty much like shooting a firearm.
And expensive! The gun is just the beginning, then the pump and tank will likely at least double the cost.
Most air-guns are single shots, not repeaters.
The .177 pellets are Tiny, the .22s much easier to handle. Many recommend the .22 for hunting.
And compared to firearms they are quiet.
Be advised many places dont allow shooting air-guns within their jurisdictions, they are considered the same as firearm discharges in their regs.
Lots of info online.
I wont be without one.

. 1 . 2 . >>
Your reply
Bold Style  Italic Style  Underlined Style  Thumbnail Image Link  Large Image Link  URL Link           :) ;) :-( :confused: More smilies...

» Username  » Password 
Only registered users can post here. Please enter your login/password details before posting a message, or register here first.