The Big Fat Doe

 This happened on Tuesday, but I was too tired to write about it that evening.  I wrote this story yesterday and emailed it to my daughter.  I tried to copy and paste it to the Institute, but it got all glitchy on me.  I tried to make it work for long time, but finally gave up.  

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I must have dozed off because there were five deer in front of my blind, and I had no idea how they got there.  The closest one was about 10 yards out and walking straight towards me.  I almost didn't want to shoot it but, when it stopped and turned broadside, I decided it was a gift from the Deer Spirit and it would be ungrateful of me to not accept it.  

It was a good hit.  The deer was dead on its feet, but that didn't stop it from running 50 yards into the shittangles before collapsing in a muck hole.  I didn't want to work on it under those conditions, so I dragged it back to the clearing,  guts and all, collapsing in a couple of muck holes myself in the process.  It took me a good hour.  I don't like to rush a job like that, I like to savor every moment.

Did I mention that it was a big fat doe?  How big was it?  Probably not as big as the 10 point buck that I shot in 2011, but bigger than any other deer I have ever harvested.  How fat was it?  By the time I finished field dressing the deer my folding knife was so jammed up with fat that I couldn't close it.  Later, after skinning the deer with the same knife, I soaked it in dishwater for an hour and then still had to use toothpicks to clean the remaining fat out of the folding parts.  I must have used that knife on a dozen deer over the years, and I never before had it plug up with fat like that.  Unlike the fat of domestic livestock, deer fat doesn't enhance the flavor of the meat, so all that fat will have to be trimmed off or the meat will  taste tallowy.  

I like to skin my deer as soon as I get them home because the skin comes off easier when the meat is still warm, and it helps the meat to cool quicker, which does enhance its flavor.  By the time I got this big fat doe home, however, the meat was already pretty cool and the carcass was starting to stiffen up, so I lost that advantage.  I shot this big fat doe at 9:00 AM, and I finished working on it just in time to open a beer and watch the 6:00 o'clock news on TV.  I'm sure glad that I do this for fun because I would hate to have to work that hard for mere money.

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Free Tim:  Whenever you start a post and leave it without clicking on the "Publish" icon, it gets saved as a draft.  You can add to it or edit it any time, or you can just delete it and start over.  You can edit a post after you publish it, but then the "Publish" icon becomes an "Update" icon.  When you click on that it saves your changes to the already published post.