Crash Day

I didn't make it out to the blind today. It was still raining when I woke up, and I wasn't feeling so good anyway. That's the trouble with being old, it takes longer to rest up than it took to get tired. When I used to hunt with my dad in Illinois we stayed out from dawn till dusk, but we only did that for three days. With the longer seasons in Michigan, not to mention my advanced age, if I burn myself out too soon, then I get sick and am no good to anybody. They are predicting better weather for tomorrow, so it's probably just as well that I saved myself for another day.

It's only about a quarter mile from my house to my blind, but walking in the woods is not the same as walking down a sidewalk in Chicago. Walking slowly and stopping to look around every half dozen steps gives you a better chance of seeing a deer before it sees you. That's called "still hunting", and it's a difficult skill for young hunters to master because they are not used to walking that way. It's much  easier for us old timers because that's the way we walk most of the time anyway. I have a tractor trail that leads out to the blind and loops back to the house. When I get a deer, I only have to drag it out to the clearing, then I go back for the tractor and carry the deer home with my front end loader. Sometimes I drop them right in the clearing, but sometimes even a well hit deer runs off into the swamp for up to hundred yards before dropping dead. A wounded deer can run for miles, and you don't want that. Either way, you've got a tracking job on your hands, which is difficult at best when there is no snow and a heavy rain is falling, which is why I passed up that chancy shot yesterday.

The gamey taste that many people associate with venison is largely due to improper handling and preparation of the meat. If you slaughtered a cow, left the guts in it for hours, put it on the roof of your car and drove around town all day showing it off, it would probably taste gamey too. The guts should come out soon after the deer stops kicking. A decent interval, about the time it takes to smoke a cigarette, is customary to show respect for the game and allow your coronary symptoms to subside. Then it's time to get to work. Care must be taken to not puncture the guts with your knife. If you do (it can happen to anybody), then you've got to clean the meat as best you can in the field and do a better job at home or in camp where you have access to clean water. When you are cutting up the meat later, anything that looks off color should be trimmed off and discarded. I like to skin my deer while it's still warm. The skin comes off easier, and it enables the meat to cool faster. I don't do that in the field, but I have a rope and pulley rig in the barn that I use to hang and skin the carcass as soon as I get it home. I let it hang there at least overnight, longer if the weather permits. A walk in cooler would be ideal, but an unheated barn or garage works fine if the outdoor temperature stays between 20 and 40 degrees, which it usually does this time of year. Deer fat does not taste good, it's like eating candle wax, so that all needs to be trimmed off when you cut up the meat. If you need more shmaltz for cooking, add some pork fat like Old Dog says. I make stew meat out of all the scrappy parts because my hypothetical wife tells me that, while you can get hamburger anywhere, good stew meat at a reasonable price is hard to find in this town

I have been in Protestant churches where they have substituted "Christian" for "catholic" in the Apostles' Creed, but I don't know if the Methodists have ever gotten on board with that.