wolc123

I was really surprised how quick it blew the brains out, but it took a little longer than expected to clean up the gums and the hide around the base of the antlers. I am eager to try it again. Hopefully another candidate will show up during late ML season. I did move the pressure washer down to the basement so it would not freeze up and I could winterize the outside of the house. It would be no problem getting it back up and running a hose thru the basement window from the hot water faucet down there. One things for sure, I will never boil one on the stove or even an outside gas burner again. Did you get any funny looks or comments doing it at a public car wash?

How did you get it cleaned up after you skinned it and how long did it take? I posted a photo of one in the taxidermy section that I used a power washer on last week. That worked pretty good, taking about 1/2 hour, after taking about 10 minutes to skin with a sharp knife. My wife wasn't crazy about one a friend did for me a few years ago, but it has grown on her a bit and she tolerates it now. My daughters were a little scared of it for a while but they also got over it ok. Hopefully it wont scare your grandkid.

The tree-stand closest to the road has been the most productive one on our home farm for many years. I remember bumping (3) deer out of a little patch of brush, about 40 yards off a paved 2-lane road, at a central-Adirondack camp, about 20 years ago. In remote areas like that, the road-side growth is likely much more attractive to the deer than the old-growth forest which dominates most of the area. In more populated areas like we have at home, most hunters think they have to get as far as possible from roads and buildings. It seems like the deer might adapt to that, by sticking close. I even shot a buck out of our bedroom window during late ML a few years ago. I wont be able to do that this year as they are making it "antlerless only". Maybe a doe or better yet, a button-buck will pop up. Our venison supply is adequate now but that would really put the icing on the cake.

I have eaten many beef and pig tongues and find that to be just about the best part. My grandma, mother, and now my wife pickle them along with the hearts. I have been tempted a few times to try a deer tongue, but they are kind of small to mess with. Pickled deer hearts are a special treat every year at our new years eve parties. My mother in law did fry up two "Adirondack mountain oysters" from the buck I killed up at their new camp last fall. They did make a bit of a mess when they "blew-up" in the frying pan. If you want to try some, I would recommend splitting them a bit with a sharp knife, before frying. What remained after the explosions was not bad tasting however. Fortunately, we also fried up the sizable heart and tenderloins with those that time, so we had enough to eat.

On the NW edge of the 6 million acre Adirondack park, where I hunt several times per season, I always carry 2 compasses (one in jacket pocket, one in pack), waterproof matches, folding limb saw (works great for splitting deer pelvis bone and to thoroughly clean the cavity), extra ammo, sharp hunting knife, Leatherman tool, two small flashlights, bio-degradable orange ribbon, quart canteen of water, about 20 feet of twine, and a space blanket. All that stuff, plus a handful of candy bars, fits easy in a fanny pack. Aside from the blanket and matches, almost all the stuff I carry is used for the hunt anyhow. I probably should try the matches as they must be close to 20 years old. I have yet to spend a night lost in the woods, but I think I could survive a week in there, relatively easily, if I had to. I have used the second compass several times when I did not believe the first one in some un-familiar territory (following tracks for miles has put me in some of that). It always turned out to be right. I wouldn't bet my life on the cellphone I also carry these days, even though reception is pretty good in that area. It definitely comes in handy on the private land on the edge of the park, to get an ATV close for a carcass recovery. If I had no compass or matches and had to stay one night in the woods, I would build a shelter from materials at hand in an area protected from wind, using as little energy as possible. The next day I would find some water. If I had to stay more than a couple nights, I would worry about food. The "reserves" I carry would get me at least that far. The "rules of threes" come in handy in any survival situation. A human can survive 3 seconds without thinking, 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter/clothing in a hostile (cold/wet) environment, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food.

To drink, I prefer Genny "cream ale" for lunch, "light" for supper, and "12-horse" for special occasions. For cooking, plain "red-label" Genny. By pure coincidence, I just posted this picture on another thread in the taxidermy section, but you can see the tap-handles for three of them on the front the "Beer-fridge" behind our bar.

The nozzle I used is adjustable. I had it set to the high pressure/pencil position. I have a couple of buddies who have been using this method for a few years. There is a youtube video where a guy says he did one in 10 minutes with a 3000 psi washer. In the daylight, with enough experience, that might be doable. That was my first one. At night, under a floodlight, it took 1/2 hour to blast clean. Hopefully I will get to try it on another one or two in the next couple weeks and I can try to shave a few minutes off my time. The warm weather this season has cut deer activity a bit, but is great for the "water-blast" euro method. This picture shows it next to the one the kid did for me two years ago with boil/scrape method. His dad's power-washed 2-1/2 year old buck scull held up a little better than my boiled 3-1/2. The kid did his own 1-1/2 year buck at the same time as that one, in the same pot, but it got busted up pretty good by the boiling water. Sorry about the confusion on his dad's buck's demise. He killed it with a Marlin 30/30. I found the bullet in the neck while butchering. I will have to give it back to him, maybe he can attach it to the scull somehow. There is no doubt that power-washer would be lethal from close enough range. I accidentally killed a couple other "deere" parts with it, including the vinyl seat on my big tractor, and the drive belt on my mower. I also blew some paint off my truck.

I did this one that my buddy killed on opening day with a 3000 psi power washer. It took 40 minutes total, 10 minutes to skin with a sharp knife, then 30 minutes to blast out the eyballs, brains and other soft tissue. His kid did one for me a couple years ago using the conventional boil & scrape method. That took several days, and was a smelly job with a messy cleanup. There was no smell at all blasting off this fresh head with a power washer. I also used it to clean off a smaller buck scull plate during archery season and that only took 10 minutes. I wore goggles and rain bibs and did it on a concrete pad. Cleanup was easy: the birds and vermin had every bit of the mess gone by the following morning. I wrapped the lower part of the horns with duct tape to keep the natural antler color. My buddy was very happy with the job. It was the least I could do for about 75 pounds of boneless venison.

An 8n is not geared low enough for a tiller, so stick with the plow. Definitely a great tractor but you have to work within its limitations. The ORC will take care of most of the trouble of non-live pto or hydraulics. Forget about a front end loader and the lack of power steering wont bother you much. Load the rear tires and you will have plenty of drawbar traction for a 2x12 plow, 8 ft pull-type disk, or 6 ft 3-point. Few tractor makes/models are more durable, and none have better parts availability.

Those food-saver vacuum sealers work pretty good. I have (2) only because my 11 year old one stopped working prior to deer season last year and I did not want to be without. Before I tossed it in the trash, I took apart the pump and found a single, tiny spec of grit on the main diaphragm. I took that out, reassembled, and it works just like it did when new. Now I have a backup if it ever dies for good. I use it year round for fish and game. It keeps the fish tasting fresh much longer than my former method of putting the fillets in zip-lock bags, filling with water, then freezing. We had some that was caught in June for dinner tonight and it tasted like it was just filleted. For fish, I dry the fillets with paper towels prior to vacuum sealing. Also, without the ice, the packages thaw out and are ready to cook much faster. Your next purchase should be a grinder. An old refrigerator comes in handy too, for aging the skinned quarters, when it is too warm to just hang the skin-on carcass. While many folks have an old "beer fridge" out in the garage, for us its primarily a "deer fridge". A couple sharp knives and a heavy duty table come in handy also. I am thankful that my wife helps out with the cleanup of all the gear, except for the grinder housing which I scrub out after every use. She also usually runs the vacuum sealer. The only way you know you get your own meat back from a butcher is trust. When I was young, we had an old retired butcher in the neighborhood who I never doubted always gave me back my own deer. It has to be tough with some of these big seasonal shops, given that 1/2 the total deer kill usually occurs on opening weekend of gun season. Knowing you get your own back is the best part of doing it yourself, but learning where to shoot for minimal meat damage is also good (its hard to beat the broadside, center lung shot in that regard). The money you save is the least of the benefits.

Our family eats 4 average sized deer a year and I always cut them up myself. I usually package the first one in quart-sized zip-lock freezer bags. Those save time and work great as long as you eat it within 3-4 months. The rest get vacuum sealed. That keeps the frozen meat from freezer burning and tasting fresh for at least three years (every so often a dated package gets lost in the back of the freezer). Usually, I age the meat for a week or so at 33 - 45 degrees F, to be sure the rigermortice is broken down, prior to processing and freezing. The timing didn't work out for that on the last two this season. They were killed one day and cut up and froze on the next. It will be interesting to compare them vacuum-sealed packages with the one I zip-locked earlier, during archery season, when I had time to age for a week in an old refrigerator. I made them "next-day" deer into all roasts and grind. I figured the grinder or the crock-pot would be able to take out the rigermortice that way. The meat from one of them, a 1-1/2 year old doe, felt pretty good, like maybe rigermortice had not set up yet. A 2-1/2 year old buck, killed about 5 minutes prior, seemed a little "rubbery" however. Years ago, before I started cutting up my own, I had some from a processor packaged just like yours in them little foam trays and covered with plastic wrap. I don't think I would worry too much about re-packaging as long as you eat it all within about 6 months. Your best bet would have been to just get it frozen ASAP after you got it back. That type of packaging keeps the air out pretty good, probably better than zip-lock freezer bags. Go get yourself another one and vacuum seal that one, for the long term. I am still waiting for number 4 myself this year, hopefully it will be my wife's favorite, a 6-month, antlerless buck. Maybe this weekend or late ML season. Venison does not get much better than the liver of a 6-month old deer and it has been almost a year now since I had any of that.

If you shoot behind the shoulder, thru the ribcage, roughly 1/3 will drop dead on the spot. Bullet or caliber is not as critical as time of arrival. If the bullet hits on the pressure stroke of the heart, the cardiovascular system can't handle the pressure shock and the lights go out immediately. That is why some will drop with a .243, while others will run off a short distance when hit in the same spot with a 300 win mag. The shoulder blade puts them down on the spot every time, with pretty much any centerfire caliber or bullet.

Usually I aim center lung for two reasons: First, it provides the most room for error, and second, it destroys very little usable meat. I always hate loosing those few back-strap chops that the shoulder-blade shots cost me. There are some exceptions, however. It's worth it if it can help get you a whole other deer. With a group of antlerless deer, usually the "boss" doe leads the group. If you drop her on the spot, with a shoulder hit, you stand a good chance of filling another tag (with a center lung shot). The followers usually mill around aimlessly for a little while when their leader goes down, making for easy pickings. I will never go for a "double" until I know the first deer is down for good. It is not a bad idea to always use a shoulder blade shot on a doe in close if you still have a buck tag to fill. A single gunshot is not always enough to throw a horny buck off the trail of a hot doe. I had my pick of two of them in that situation a few years ago and dropped the larger one right next to the dead doe. I suppose If I had a close shot at a big "wall-hanger" and was close to a property line, a shoulder shot would be in order. After 34 years of hunting, I have yet to run into that situation yet, hopefully tomorrow morning it will happen. I always use neck shots to finish mortally wounded deer from point blank range, and have used them to kill several others from under 20 yards when the rest of the vitals were obscured. I wont take head shots even while hunting squirrels, but I have always used the head shot when butchering livestock or killing most trapped animals. In those situations, it is easy to make the "x" between the eyes and ears and get the .22 rim-fire round to enter the head perpendicular at the intersection. That drops most anything, dead in its tracks. Sometimes possums get up and walk away after, so now I give them a second center-lung shot. Skunks sometimes "unload" themselves after taking a .22 to the head, so now I use a shotgun blast of # 6's to the head from 15 yards upwind and have yet to have one spray after that treatment. I have killed a handful of deer with heart shots but every one of them was when my center-lung aimed shot struck low in error. I don't mind when it happens with an arrow but it bothers me a bit with a gun because I love pickled deer heart.

With a total of 18 gas engines, I switched half of them, including all of the 2-strokes and infrequently used 4-strokes, to ethanol free two years ago when it became available again locally. It has made a world of difference in maintenance and ease of starting. I would pay $1.00 more a gallon for it if I had to and probably still save money and aggravation. We continue to use the cheapest 87 octane 10% ethanol stuff in the four-strokes that get more frequent usage. For anything that you start on average of less than once a week, ethanol-free is the way to go. With falling oil costs, I doubt we will have to put up with the ethanol fuel for too much longer. That should bring down the cost of corn and fertilizer also. I have heard that it costs more energy to make ethanol than it saves.

Wow, truly an epic tale of woe. After reading that, going thru the Southern zone archery season without having any deer within range don't seem all that bad. I should have popped the 4-point I snuck in on up in the Northern zone with my ML.

Throw some old towels/sweatshirts/rags in a small burlap/nylon bag and tie it closed with a piece of string. Shoot a fieldpoint into it to unload. this is cheaper, lighter, and much easier to pull the bolts out of than a foam block target. To keep the center from getting worn, open it up and stir the rags around from time to time. Last year I carried a block, but this works much better. I see the unloading after every hunt as an advantage over a regular bow because it gives you continuous in-season practice. That is something many conventional archers neglect much to their peril when it comes to wounding or missing deer.

I also get a kick out of those who say: "hunt the wind, nothing else matters". A problem with that is what to do in calm, or light variable winds which often prevail over the first and last hour of daylight when deer are most active. The simple answer is to take some cheap, additional steps for scent control. BO is the biggest culprit. A stick of scent-free deoderant does wonders and does not cost much more than the perfumed stuff. Scent free detergent and keeping you clothes outside of your living area helps out. Skip all the cheap cologne, hairspray and perfumes. Leave your coffee and cigarettes home. Bad breath can bust you. Keeping your teeth clean and watching what you eat can help. Munching on an apple for a snack is a good idea, and hot cider is a great warm-up substitute for coffee. The deer's nose is probably 1000 times more powerful than yours, but as long as you, or your wife/girlfriend/buddies can't smell you, then you might have a chance of fooling his nose in no-wind or light variable wind conditions.

It must be a morning for 4-points. One slowly crossed our farm from west to east, 100 yards from me, at 10:30 am, stopping twice to munch on clover. Had he been 50 yards closer, I would have taken the shot, as this is the last day for my archery buck tag. That was exactly one year to the minute that another 4 point crossed the same direction but on the next hedgerow, and only 15 yards from my blind. That one caught me napping, but I was wide awake this time. Hopefully I can catch a bigger one in range out at my folks farm this afternoon for my last archery season hunt of the season. They just finished harvesting all the field corn over there so the deer should be concentrated in the remaining cover. Good luck to everyone this afternoon.

Don't worry, no offence taken. The hecklers here are a great bunch. One sure way they can get a "like" out of me is to put a little focus on the real reason for any hunters success: our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Sometimes he wants them deer in "deer-heaven" - our food supply, and sometimes he don't. The weapon used don't matter all that much.

Turkeys do seem especially dumb sometimes. I remember cultivating corn on the far corner of our farm early in the summer before the hay was cut. When I finished and began to drive back, a big, ugly hen jumped out of the hay about 5 feet in front of me. Rather than just jumping back into the tall hay, she stayed right on the narrow, mowed lane for close to 1000 yards. She managed to stay just far enough ahead of the slightly clumsier tractor to make her escape when we finally reached a clearing. That was definitely the most non-graceful run I have ever witnessed by any living thing.

I used a ML in a shotgun-only zone for about 10 years. I killed every deer I shot at with it during that stretch in regular gun season, and another during ML season, (7 total). I stopped using it during regular season when I was not able to recover a buck that I hit at a range of about 150 yards. I had a nice rest, a 7X scope and a standing, quartering-away buck. I was very confident in making that shot and had practiced at that range. After the shot, the buck ran thru a creek and across an open field, then across a road and into another mostly open field with some clumps of brush. There was about 4" of fresh snow on the ground. He showed no reaction of a hit and even appeared to slow down and check for traffic prior to crossing the road. I assumed that he was hit and followed the tracks as far as I could, until loosing them in the brushy field about 300 yards from where he stood at the shot. I spent a lot of time at that sight looking for hair or blood on the snow, finding none. There was also not a drop of blood along the entire trail in the fresh snow. After several hours of grid-searching I wrongly assumed that the shot must have missed. A week later the crows helped me find him in a clump of brush about 25 yards from the furthest point I had searched, The coyotes had eaten well. The shot likely struck close to my point of aim and the bullet may traveled diagonally into the rib-cage, clipping one lung but not exiting. The 240 gr bullet driven by 100 grains of pyrodex from the 50 cal ML simply lacked the energy at that range to get the job done. That is why I will never again use a ML during a season where a rifled shotgun is legal. Even though it always hit right where I aimed and killed every deer, that one I lost to the coyotes will always haunt me The bolt-action 12 gauge shotgun I use now packs double the energy at 150 yards, is just as accurate, and provides two extra shots. I actually knocked a doe right off her feet with it at 163 yards the first year I used it. It has killed them every time, often on the spot, and none have gone more than 70 yards after the shot. I still use that ML during the special season, but I limit shots to 125 yards now. When I did use the ML during gun season on our farm, I would also take along my short barreled, open-sight pump 12 gauge for "backup". Why limit yourself to one shot if you don't have to? That got me a nice 8-point one year when I dropped a big doe (the largest from a group of 6 antlerless deer) at about 75 yards, in the woods. I only had one doe permit, so I could not use the shotgun on any more from that group, even though they hung around their "fallen leader" for several minutes. When they eventually did leave, two more deer came along on their trail, each sporting racks. The smaller one stood right below my stand while the 8-point stood next to the dead doe. I took the longer shot at the larger-racked deer and he fell right next to her.

Many years ago, I was hunting mule deer on the outskirts of a Colorado ski town on some public land that was popular with hikers. A trail followed a creek a long way up a tall mountain. I killed a buck at 10 am, about a half mile off the trail, and about 5 miles from the trail-head parking area. I figured I had the rest of the day to get the deer out myself, rather than heading back to camp to get help like the other guys did when they got theirs. I was young and foolish. When I started up that morning before daybreak, it was quite cold, but dragging that heavy carcass down that trail into the afternoon, it got very warm. I was literally sweating gallons, and very thankful for the creek, my canteen and some water purification tablets. The thin air at high elevation didn't help, but fortunately it was mostly a downhill drag, so gravity did. About mid-way thru the drag, a couple big dogs came charging, barking, and drooling from around a bend. I had saved the heart and liver in a plastic bag. That was inside the carcass, along with some snow I had packed in there, from a shady spot, to try and preserve the meat in the rising temperatures. The dogs quickly ripped that bag apart and tore into those "treats". I dropped my pack, frantically trying to find my slingshot to drive them away. Just then two good-looking women, dressed in flashy jogging suits, rounded the bend and called for their dogs. When they reached the bloody mess blocking the trail, one of them said: "that's gross". I replied: "Bambi was hurt real bad, I was trying to get him to the vet but now your dogs just ate his heart". They just shook their heads and continued up the trail. Several hours later they passed me again on their way back down and without saying a word. Had I known how bad that deer would taste compared to a NY whitetail, I would have just saved the rack and let them dogs have the rest of it.

Having a separate archery season makes sense because deer are less skittish in areas that get moderate hunting pressure, without the noise of the gunshots. Even ML's would take that "silent" advantage away. Having the "silent" season, followed by the "loud" season allows for more deer to be killed by hunters overall, so it is actually the opposite of selfish to keep the guns out of archery season. The result of one "all-inclusive" season would be less deer total killed by hunters and more killed by coyotes, dogs and automobiles. Selfishness is evident within the archery segment from those who feel that the weak, young, old, disabled, or "time-challenged" folks have no business in "their woods, at "their" special time. I could never grasp the mentality of wanting to make it more difficult to kill a deer. That seems selfish to me, at the expense of the deer. They deserve to be killed quickly and efficiently. It is hard to argue that a compound is not more efficient than a recurve or a longbow. The crossbow can take that efficiency to another level due to the elimination of the need to draw with the deer in close, and the ability to shoot from a rest with telescopic sights. Even though I don't agree with the concept of increasing the challenge required to kill a deer, I support the continued right of those willing and able to put in the extra time and effort to do so. Longbows and recurves should always be legal during archery season. I don't expect the elitist bowhunters to ever support letting the crossbow in. The saving grace is that they are a tiny minority of the hunting community and in this country, the majority gets their way. We got to keep up the fight until we get full inclusion for the crossbow however.

The only way you can get fast, good and cheap taxidermy is to do it yourself. Congrats on the nice buck and it looks like you scored on all three. Almost any taxidermist out there can provide 2 of the 3. I have always settled for slow, good and cheap or fast, good and expensive. How is the meat from that one and how old do you think he was? Did you age the meat prior to processing and freezing?

That's better than I did up in Niagara county at last light today, just 6 squirrels there. I am guessing the deer are in the corn where they will likely stay until it is harvested.