wolc123

I lost significantly more meat on my "quartering to" shot at close range with my crossbow this season than I did on the 50 yard "Texas-heart" shot with my rifle. The mechanical broadhead entered just behind the shoulder and took out a big part of a butt-roast on it's way out the other side. That was also a messier gut job, with corn everywhere from where the broadhead sliced thru the stomach. The bodies on both bucks were similar sized but the rifle buck produced 1 more quart of meat (a lot less trimming was needed). That is enough to feed my family of four dinner and a "leftover" lunch for me the next day.

Buckmaster, it sounds like grandma might loose a couple of chops on that shot but nice job. What was the rifle?

My father in law gave me an old, made-in-USA Buck 110 a few years ago. It does not hold an edge real well, and I would prefer a smaller, two-bladed pocket-knife for deer. I have manged to kill a lot of deer while packing that old Buck. It makes him feel good when he sees me using his "gift" to gut them. He has seen that three times in the last three years up at his new Adirondack retirement home, and it puts a big smile on his face every time. I figure using that knife up there is the least I can do in exchange for the room and board. I use it at home these days also, and it gets the job done ok, but needs a frequent sharpening. After using it to gut two bucks two years ago, without sharpening after, I really struggled with it to slice the throat and finish off a button-buck that a hit-and run driver knocked the wind out of and left suffering at the end of our driveway. I am going to pack another "classic" knife next weekend, during late ML season, while hunting bear (no more deer tags) at my buddies place in the Southern Tier. My wife bought me a old made-in-USA Schrade 153UH at an antique shop last year. I will be a lot more comfortable hunting bear with that, than I would with the Buck. The longer, fixed blade seems to be made of much harder steel. A quick second shot is not going to happen with my crossbow or ML, but I think I could finish a wounded bear quick with that knife if I had to. I have lost a few knives over the years, and I don't have a particularly strong attachment to any of them. My favorite one, that I lost about 15 years ago, was a Schrade "sharpfinger". I remember playing cards at night in the cabin years ago, on a Quebec moose hunt, and using that knife to pick up dimes off the table. It really held an edge, and stayed incredibly sharp for a long time after taking a lot of abuse.

In the morning (before work): Remove a vacuum-sealed roast from the freezer and take off the plastic bag. Place the still-frozen roast in a crock-pot. Add one packet of Amish beef gravy mix ($1.20 ea. at Nolt's in Lowville NY, or other Amish stores in NY state). Add 2 cups of water, a few potatoes, onions, and carrots. Set crock-pot on low. 8-9 hours later (after work): Serve for dinner. This method takes minimal time and effort and tastes great. The leftovers are even better. A can of cream of mushroom soup can be substituted for the Amish gravy, but is not as flavorful. My kids like the Amish gravy mix a lot better. I get (6) aproximately quart-sized roasts from an average sized deer (all cut from the hind quarters), and an occasional neck roast. Each roast, prepared this way, will feed my family of four one hearty dinner, plus provide me enough leftovers for my lunch at work the following day. We put (32) of these roasts in the freezer, so far this season, so we should be eating very well until next season. No special culinary skills are needed to do it this way. It works great for folks with full-time jobs in other fields.

I usually hang them from the back, from a spreader beam, made from white oak, that hooks the tendons. I saw off all the legs (rear below the knee to save the tendons, and fronts just above the knee). I skin the rear legs far enough up to remove the tarsal glands and expose the tendons prior to hanging. If outside temps are predicted to be below 50 F over a week in the long range forecast, and hang the carcass in my insulated garage (with all the windows covered with cardboard to block out the sun). Leaving the hide on insulates against temperature extremes (high and low) and keeps the meat from drying out. Pulling the tenderloins right away and tossing them in the fridge for a couple days before eating is a good idea. They would dry out too much over the hanging week to ten days if you left them in. This does look like a perfect week for hanging a deer.

Was this post intended for this thread? If not, no big deal and thanks for the "bump". A 5th page would be nice. I think a "Texas heart shot" thread went that long on this site when someone else posted about it a few years back. Has anyone else made one where there was minimal meat damage, including un-bruised tenderloins, and a clean gutting job? I guess it is ok if I am the only one. It took 35 years of deer hunting for me to be presented with the perfect conditions for this shot, and I don't suppose I will see it again. It is definitely not a shot I would recommend for beginners, or those who are not confident in their marksmanship on deer. Proper placement of a good bullet with enough energy will guarantee a quick kill but will most likely still result in a significant amount of damaged meat and a messy gutting job. Speaking of coloring, that reminds me of something else, in addition to bullet placement and the alignment of the deer to my gun barrel, that was close to perfect about this shot. That would be the spot where it happened. I don't remember a prettier spot than right there, on that snow-covered forested ridge, up in the Adirondacks. Just one more reason for me to believe, that there is no limit to the blessings that The Good Lord can deliver, while we are still down here on Earth. I can only imagine how much more awaits in Heaven.

Too bad about the liver, you don't know what you are missing. BB liver is better than BB tenderloin by a smidge. Folks are scared of liver because they think it is a filter that screens toxins out of the blood, and they don't want to eat them toxins. It is really a tastey "seperator" that sends the toxins out one way and returns the clean blood to the circulatory system. Liver is also a great source of iron.

I hope she saved the liver, it don't get much better than that. Livers are tough from 1-1/2 year and older bucks, but the BB's will almost melt in your mouth, and the flavor is better than black angus or Herford calf liver (I have had a bit of each over the last month). Please don't say she let the coyotes have it.

Any chance of translating that into plain English?

It was a good year up in the big woods. I am already looking forward to next year. I did not cover that many miles, and killed both my deer close to camp, but next year I am hoping to venture out a bit farther. My rifle (Ruger M77 30/06) is a bit long and heavy for that though. Now I miss my old Marlin 336 30/30, but I never had a good place to use it while I had it. Those new compact versions of the Ruger American in .243 look like they would be perfect for still-hunting up there, and that is likely the way I will go.

Welcome back Belo, it is good to hear from you again. I don't believe in "a" higher power, but I do believe in "The" higher power, Jesus Christ. He is all I need, to know for certain that it WILL all work out. The time we have here is fleeting, but eternity with Him is forever. You are very right about the "guide" part though. He has "guided" every deer I have shot at (and even many that I did not) over the last 10 or so years, into "deer heaven" - our food supply. All I had to "do" was pull the trigger. He also "guides" me to hone my marksmanship skills, and to hunt where the deer are. He even went so far in the subject deer on this thread, to align it perfectly with my rifle barrel. That resulted in minimal meat was damage, and gutting was as clean as a whistle. If these were just isolated incidents, or if I failed to capitalize on even one deer that I shot at over the last 10 years, the "coincedence", or "dumb luck" arguments might hold some water. I find it odd that some of these folks who are accusing me of taking "unethical" shots have posted this year or last about "clean misses" they have made, or deer they have struck, but were not able to recover. Once again, every deer I have shot at over the last 10 years was recovered and eaten by my family or friends. Now tell me who is "ethical". The best thing about faith in Jesus Christ is eternity in Heaven, but there are fringe benefits as well. Full freezers, and live-wells are just a few of the lesser ones. You can't force that faith, but you can stack the deck in your favor. Regular Bible reading is a good place to start, as is hitting a weekly Church service and giving to and praying for those in need.

I have one DMP left for home (9F), and another for my in-laws (9A). Both of these zones are overpopulated, so I will try a little more to fill at least the one at home. Hunting the flat-lands around here just don't do too much for me now, with no more buck-tag, a full freezer, and after getting a good taste of Adirondack hunting this year. I will donate the deer if I do get it next Saturday, my last day of shotgun hunting. That might feed some hungry folks, save some ag crops, and landscaping, and maybe even prevent a automobile accident. Some good friends invited me to their camp in the Southern Tier for the following late ML long weekend. I have no deer tags left for that, but I am going anyway. I am not bringing my ML, because it is a pain to clean and I already got a doe with it in the early season up in the Adirondacks. I am bringing only my crossbow and my largest hunting knife. Squirrels will be my primary objective. I am 2 for 2 on deer with my crossbow, so I am up for the challenge of the much smaller kill-zone. My secondary objective will be a bear. Hopefully, I won't need that big knife. One of the guys took a beauty from that camp a couple years ago.

That right there is as good of an explanation with the problem of "Trophy Hunting" that I have seen. This site sure seems to be a "target rich environment" when it comes to trophy hunters. Hopefully a few of them will read this and wise up a bit. Meat is where it's at, that is why God gave us such fine-eating creatures.

Sorry about the lost meat. I usually hang the hind quarters in the fridge from hooks up top and rest the front on the neck ( a little lost neck meat is no big deal) on the bottom of the fridge. One week like that is usually good.

I don't know about the steak, but I did just happen to have two meals of corn-fed button buck liver this fall, and one of black Angus liver. The BB definitely had a slight edge in flavor. The Angus was damn good however and I am looking forward to the other two packs in the freezer this winter. When it comes to the steaks, the corn-fed deer are definitely on par with the Herford's we used to raise. Angus steaks are very good though, especially the fatty ones. I just don't know how many of those my old heart could take.

This slob will be eating very well this winter thankyou. That buck was the cleanest to butcher of (4) I did this year including two archery kills and another "thru the ribs" gun-kill. Tag-soup just does not do it for me. The Good Lord was exceptionally good to me this year, who am I to pass on His gifts?

I would not put soybeans in in the spring again. I did that last season and it was a coyote magnet. I would prefer the does be someplace else during fawning season. Soybeans are a great "sweetener" to add to late summer wheat/clover mix plantings however. September is the perfect time to draw doe's with fawns onto your land, after the fawns are big enough to evade the coyotes. My suggestion would be to stick to corn as a spring planting, or skip it entirely and concentrate on late summer plantings. I will be squirrel hunting post season. I will pack the crossbow until the ML big-game season ends, just in case a bear shows up (I would settle for one of those, having no more deer tags for where I am headed to). I don't expect a bear (probably hibrinated), but killing deer with a crossbow is like taking candy from a baby compared to squirrels and I am up for the challenge (for one long weekend anyhow). After ML ends, I will tote my Ruger 10-22 for the tree rats, until the end of February. Then it will be ice fishing and jig-tying time. A little bit of squirrel, bear, or fish would be nice to go along with the (5) fresh deer in the freezer this year. I would like to provide for my wife to mix things up a bit, so the kid's don't get too sick of that. I won't worry about deer again until spring plowing time, to get ready for some larger corn plots. I am all in there next season, since that kept my boneless venison cost below $1.00 per pound this year after subtracting all input costs.

I could eat rare venison every day. Some day's, when I am butchering, I am tempted to try it raw, right off the knife. I have often eaten raw walleye cheeks off my fillet knife and washed them down with a big swig off Genny cream ale. That has never made me sick. Maybe that would work on raw venison. Our youngest daughter likes it rare also, but our older one and her mother like it a little more cooked. On the grill, I usually just cook it all rare and let them put it in the microwave if they want it more done, or stick to the thinner parts on the edges.

I always de-bone them. The only thing I use the meat-saw for is cutting thru the bone to remove the head, lower legs, and rear section from the front. I throw all the bones, trimmings and hide (other than tails which I keep for making fishing lures) onto a pile, about 100 yards, straight behind my bedroom window. I have shot coyotes at night out of that window several times.

I also butcher most of the deer I kill, in addition to the occasional road-kill, nuisance permit deer, or "gifts" from friends. On very rare occasion (such as my ML doe this year up in the NW Adirondacks when it got up to 80 degrees later that day), I will take them to a local processor. I have got to say that Nolt's, down in Lowville did a heck of a job on that 1-1/2 year old doe. It looks like they trimmed away most of the fat, tendons, and silver skin. The best thing was the price, just $47 skinned, cut up, and freezer wrapped. If I could get that kind of price and service in WNY, I would not cut up so many of my own. I have processed (4) this year so far and have had about enough of it. I gave my last doe to my brother in law, but I just finished cutting up my Adirondack buck last night (after one week of aging in my deer fridge). Processing them yourself is not too bad, as long as you have the right equipment. A sharp knife, firm table, grinder, old refrigerator, and vacuum sealer help out a lot. I go to extremes to maximize the quality of my venison, from putting in foodplots (mostly corn and clover), to killing and gutting them as quickly as possible. For that reason, I like to know I am getting my own back. I like it best when the outside temp is between 30 and 50 degrees over a week. That happened twice for me this season, and I was able to hang them in my insulated garage, skin-on, for a week. Usually, I skin them the day prior to processing. That breaks up the work-load a bit, and leaving the skin on, as long as I can, helps insulate against temp swings and keeps the meat from drying out too much. On average, It takes me about an hour to skin and 3 hours to process , including set-up and clean-up time. Fat does or badly shot-up deer take longer, with more trimming time needed. I am fussy about trimming out as much of the fat, silver skin, tendons, and bloodied-up meat as my patience will allow. When temperatures in the extended forecast are predicted to be above 50, for extended periods, I skin the deer right away, and saw the hind quarters off. I hang those from hooks on the top of my deer fridge, and rest the front section on the neck in there. I holds them in there at 35 degrees for the week. The parts do not dry out too bad in there (it is an old, non-frost free GE unit from the 1950's). This adds some time to the process, as that fridge has to be cleaned later to remove all the blood. I find that even the grind is tough to chew if you do not allow the riggermortise to get out of the meat before freezing. Aging solves that issue. Aging time depends mostly on how old the deer was. A couple days is plenty for a 6 month deer, a week is good for a 1-1/2, and 10 days works well for older deer.

This subject has came up in several threads lately. Specifically, folks have said that deer from the central/South-east Adirondacks taste like they must just "eat bark" and are terrible compared to beef. I can't relate to that at all and do not recall ever having bad tasting venison. I think there is much more to it than just "what they eat", but that may be the primary factor in how they taste. How the deer was killed (the quicker the better) probably affects flavor. Getting the guts out fast has got to help. Those folks who "back out and wait until the next morning" are almost certainly going to pay the price on the table (if the coyotes don't get it first), especially on the choisest cuts (tenderloins). Proper aging makes the meat tender and I think lots of folks end up processing their deer too fast, near when riggermortice is at it's peak ( 6 - 24 hours after kill), but probably has little if any effect on taste. As far as the "what they eat" effecting taste, I don't have the data to support that, since virtually all deer I have eaten over the last 25 years or so have been on a corn/clover or white oak acorn diet when killed. My first deer was a bark-eating button buck down in Allegheny state park 35 years ago but I don't recall the taste of that one. I do remember how good the first venison I ever had was, a few years prior to that, when my dad killed a nice buck at the edge of a corn field at home. No one in our family could tell that it was not beef, which have been raised on our farm going back to the Civil war days. We got rid of the last of the cattle after my grandad passed in the early eighties and I certainly don't miss it, because the venison tastes just as good and is a lot better for you (grandpa died of a heart attack). I was a little surprised to find a belly full of corn in the buck I killed up on the NW edge of the Adirondack park this year. That may explain the excellent flavor of the tenderloins that we had for dinner this week. The last buck I killed up there 2 seasons ago had a belly full of white oak acorns, was at least a year older, and tasted just as good. My father in law said there was a big field of unharvested corn a short distance down the road from his camp up there this year. I know a lot of hunters who say they like their venison, but the real test is what do the non-hunting wives, kids, friends, neighbors, or strangers think about it? None of those groups has realized they were not eating beef when the local corn-fed, aged venison was offered at our house.

I am a pure meat hunter but I do prefer killing bucks over does for three reasons: They are easier for me to butcher because there is less fat to trim away, the antlers make nice grab handles to drag to the tractor, and they provide nice reminders of successful hunts in past years. I would oppose any further restrictions on buck harvest, be it AR's, one buck only, or no bucks for one or more years. I don't consider any hunting season completely successful unless both of my buck tags are punched. It does not matter to me, if they are filled with spikes or 10 pointers. I am thankful that neither of my bucks this season was worthy of a shoulder mount. They both had significantly larger bodies than smaller bucks I passed earlier and, along with 2 does and a BB, will provide our family and friends with plenty of food. Now I can put the $500 that a mount would cost into a new rifle for my oldest daughter for Christmas. So the bottom line is that I would still hunt if only does were allowed, but I would be pissed off about the restriction. The only folks who it would benefit is the "trophy hunters". The non-hunting folks are far more supportive of meat hunters than trophy hunters, so I don't suppose we will ever have to worry about such a silly rule.

If you are in a zone where they give out 4 DMP's, then you should take out every antlerless deer you can when the opportunities arise. If you can not use the meat, donate it to help feed the homeless. Most of the big processors will accept such donations. Those hunters who save their DMP's, in such zones, are not doing anyone else much good. When you punch your DMP's in those zones, you are benefiting the local deer herd, feeding people some excellent food, preventing car-deer collisions, reducing crop and landscaping damage, and saving the next generation of forest.

I slept in a little this morning and did not get out until just after sunrise. When I walked past the first hedge row out back, an antlerless deer (probably one of the BB's I have been after since the start of Cross-bow) bolted across a clover plot into some thick brush. He got lucky this time. His cousin not so much on opening day a couple weeks ago. I thawed out the other half of his liver and I am getting ready now to fry it up for lunch. Corn-fed BB liver is about as good as food gets. If I had been up in the stand a half hour prior to sunrise, it would have been a nice "chip-shot" at sun-up for my last DMP at home.

It has been more than 10 years since I used more than three on a hunt, and most of the multiples over that time have killed two deer. I am carrying 9 this weekend, not my usual 10, because I only have 1 DMP left for home, and I don't want to open another box. I used 2 for my opening day doe, spine on the first shot, and a head shot to finish her. I did throw an old, leftover, off-brand sabot into my pack so I don't have to waste one of them $3 ones if another "finisher" is needed.