Whence? 'Bu?

Too small, Crid. Muley, maybe?

Oh. Deer.

Flynne- With those ears, it's a young muley. If Amy took the photo, most likely a muley since whitetails aren't in CA. **sigh** And the early season doesn't start until mid-October 'round these parts.

Bow season starts Sept. 15 here in CT. BF's got the calendar marked! (I'd like to get him a new compound bow but he says he likes the one he's got.) Rifle season starts Nov. 15 (my birthday). Can't wait, I loves me some fresh venison, the backstraps are the best! o_O

Hubby wants to outfit me for bow, but I won't be up to snuff to be a responsible hunter this season. Eating the deer in northern IL/ southern WI is tricky since we're in the hotspot for chronic wasting disease. We have to send samples to be tested so we never get to eat it fresh.

What do you shoot with, Flynne? Illnois only allows shotgun, Wisconsin you can do either rifle or shotgun. Bow is allowed in both, obviously.

Why must you continue to promulgate the racist notion that the white tail and not the black tail deer is the preferred standard of beauty?

"If God didn't want man to eat animals, why did he make them taste like meat?" - John Cleese

I don't shoot 'em, Juliana, I just clean 'em, cook 'em and eat 'em! o_O BF prefers his bow for the most part, but he'll also use a muzzle loader and/or a shotgun, depending. I have a .17 caliber rifle (that I won in a raffle) but I think it's too small for deer. I've gone target shooting with the .17 and also with a .22, and I'm pretty dead on (at least I impressed BF with my shooting), but I don't like getting up at 3 a.m. just to go out and freeze my behind off in the woods! BF's so funny, we were walking home last Saturday from the Oyster Festival here, we had gone to see Foghat, and as we were walking, he started singing "I'm a fool for my tree stand" to the tune of "Fool for the City", I was cracking up! o_O

I don't like getting up at 3 a.m. just to go out and freeze my behind off in the woods!

Ain't it the truth? I like shooting them, and I looove eating them. Its hunting them that gets me down.

My friend Ari LeVaux on preparing venison here:

http://www.missoulanews.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=42FA95CD-1372-FCBB-8392DBF0042C7ABF

And personally, WolfmanMac, I get to the grocery store with some difficulty, let alone the woods!

Thanks for the link, Amy, that was interesting, but I want that recipe that Ari cut out of the letter! BF always hangs his deer from the neck while butchering. When we cook the backstraps, I cut them into medallions, and sautee them in a about a tablespoon of butter or extra virgin olive oil, with a little garlic powder (garlic salt dries out the meat and makes it less tender) and cracked black pepper. If I'm going to make a gravy, I'll usually make an au jus using a little merlot, a little more butter or oil, and a touch cilantro. Yum! o_O

LOL- I got started with hunting for two reasons. I told my husband I would kill for some alone time, and the chronic wasting disease was getting out of hand up here at that point. He put two and two together, and I got recruited to help cull the herd. I don't mind climbing a treestand at 4:30 a.m. in 10 degree weather; there is a perfect peace and stillness to the woods for those hours that nothing compares to. Especially in contrast to my hellspawn shrieking and whaling on each other.

Props to you Flynne for cleaning deer!!! I just started Anatomy and Physiology this semester, and had a rather interesting conversation in class with the instructor about field dressing. The expressions on the faces of my classmates were priceless. Little suburban housewife doing WHAT?!?!?

WolfmanMac- have you tried Underarmor and Hothands? Heated cushions can keep your frozen behind comfy too.

Just google Ari LeVaux and venison and you'll find some. He makes the most amazing venison sausage!

Here he is on buffalo hunting:

http://www.alibi.com/index.php?story=16082&scn=food

We pile into the king cab of his pickup truck, which eases through a gate and into the pasture. We drive slowly, as if ambling about on no particular mission. As we approach the buffalo, a herd of faces regards us.

Faces are often cited as dietary criteria among vegetarians. “I don’t eat anything with a face,” some say. This can lead to questions like, “Does a lobster have a face?”

I had friends who were fond of declaring how many years they could claim not eating anything with a face. They also had a signature Jello salad they always brought to a potluck.

Imagine their dismay when I pointed out to them what was in their Jello.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm.......it's like scrapple for dessert.

I sent up a smoke signal to Ari to pop in and post links to recipes, etc.

Juliana, that's truly awesome - BF says my demonspawn could use some time in a tree stand! When BF field dresses, he leaves the entrails, but brings home the heart and liver. He says the coyotes need to eat, too...

Amy, one of my bandmates from long ago had a girlfriend who was a vegetarian, but instead of the face thing, she'd say, "I eat nothing that has eyes, except potatoes." o_O

As to the bison hunting; “It took four shots,” says Mease, “and 30 minutes” for the bull to die.

This, with a 7mm rifle? Dang. We have a friend in Avoca, WI who's a bison rancher, dispatches them with a 50 caliber rifle. YMMV.

Thanks, Amy! o_O

Actually, we use the gut piles to lure the coyotes at the family farm in WI. The cattle farmers are getting hit badly by the coyote who take the calves, so they've asked for our assistance (there's a group of ten of us). There's even been a DNR bounty on the coyotes. There's been a hellacious ripple effect from the chronic wasting. The meat is diseased, and most people hunt for the meat. So the hunting drops, the unculled population explodes, and the predator population explodes as well. They're not so picky about the CWD.

Wow, Juliana, that's got to be pretty crazy out there for you guys. So far, our deer here have got a clean bill of health, but we've got so many of them, especially now with the construction going on in some places that displaces them. The biggest fear here is with the Lyme disease because of the deer ticks infested with it. And of course, there are always the bleeding hearts crying, Don't kill Bambi! and wanting to ban hunting, not realizing that does more harm than good. The herds need to be culled in order to control the population, and to cut down on the car accidents and Lyme disease, but the animal-loving "do-gooders" don't want to hear that.

Flynne - I can tell you that we've got a coyote problem here in Southington. There's been a rash of "missing cat" signs all over the neighborhood.

Which is an indirect result of too-low bag limits on deer and elk. And listing coyote as protected at the same time.

Competition for scarce resources keeps everything in check. Let the food resource grow, and the predator population that doesn't really care how cute bambi is will grow.

I ought to get into hunting, but getting up at 3 AM is really not my thing.

My mom was horrified at the thought of me hunting, considered it cruelty to animals. Then I pointed out to her that the rodent pellets she used caused the chipmunks in her yard to die a horrible and agonizing death. Much better to use a trap that kills instantly, but no, she'd have to clean that up. She'd rather they crawl down their hole and not cause her discomfort with the unprettiness of their demise. Oh, and that the little bastards stop eating her tulips.

Had a low-scale debate last semester in Microbiology when we got to the topic of prions, the zombie viruses that cause Mad Cow and CWD. Young and naive classmate wanted to know why we couldn't just vaccinate all the deer with darts instead of hunting them, 'cause THAT'S JUST MEAN, YA KNOW???.

University of Wisconsin researchers figured out 2-3 years ago that these prions cannot be frozen, burned, or waited out. They're pretty much here to stay, hence the zombie reference. This, after WI DNR has been mulching the dead deer that people dropped off at the disposal sites. Thousands of deer reduced and put into the ground. Ooops. Sort of like a nuclear waste site now....

Brian- you can always hunt in the evening, that magic 20 minute window where the sun's just tipping over the horizon and they come out. The downside to this is if you bag one, they can run 50-100 yards back into the woods before dropping, then you're trekking through said woods in the dark with a flashlight trying to find something possessing natural camoflaging in its home environment.

Don't let this dissuade you- nothing beats the adrenaline rush. Just make sure your heart is healthy first; I enjoy your posts too much to lose you to a heart attack at the sight of your first 12-point buck.

Brian, this is waaaaaaaaay off topic, but...
(love your website) I didn't realize you were in Southington, and I need someone to come here to my office in New Haven and run some cable for me, from the server room to the conference room. Could you, or do you know of anyone who could, run it for me? Of course, you'll be paid. Oh, and we'll pay for your parking, and I'll buy you lunch, if you're lucky. o_O

Heh. Might help if I left an email address, eh?

Notice that Amy's photo of a beautiful innocent herbivore turned almost immediately to a discussion of carnivory. Isn't that refreshing?

Juliana, we're in Wisconsin outside the chronic wasting disease area, but my wife refuses to eat venison anyway. I call her dietary practice "CWD Kosher." I try to get a small deer (okay, call it Bambi) for myself, and if any others come my way, I donate the meat. Yesterday I broiled lamb arm chops for her and the next-to-last hoarded venison medallions for me--on separate grills. My meat was better.

In October I'm going to Montana for pronghorns. she should be able to eat that meat, since antelope don't get prion disease, as far as I know.

Notice that Amy's photo of a beautiful innocent herbivore turned almost immediately to a discussion of carnivory. Isn't that refreshing?

I was thinking the same.

Ari should be around eventually. He might be in Hawaii and not awake yet. He goes and stays on a lettuce farm there. He's truly adorable and a wonderful guy.

Axman-

Carnivory indeed! It's coming up on time to start sighting in your rifle and wash your camo in scent eliminating detergent. Are you getting as twitchy as I am just writing about this? I feel a trip to Cabela's coming on....I think you all got a new Cabela's up that way in Milwaukee?

Wisconsin deer provide some of the most phenom venison. It's all that ethanol and feed corn that they feast on, plus the cheese curds (smile). My dad used to hunt in Georgia and that stuff was downright nasty; gamey, stringy, and tough. Smaller deer, to boot.

We used to donate the meat to Hunters for the Harvest, but our taxidermist knows enough people that he distributes locally whatever we bring instead. Antelope are only susceptible to BSE/ CWD in a laboratory environment, and Montana looks clear for CWD so far, so have an awesome time!!! If you get bored and are having no luck, the prairie dogs are plentiful and the ranchers will damn near kiss you and buy you your ammo or a six-pack of beer if you work on them.

As much as I like venison, and all meat in general, except for most of the reptiles I've tried - nothing beats beef

A thich cut of perfectly marbled medium rare rib eye, the rendered fat and half baked blood oozing across the tounge - makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

That why I own three freezers and raise my own cattle

Lest some dewy-eyed soul wander in here and shriek with horror at the bloodthirsty savages within:

"Bambi" is fiction. Bambi's "dad" didn't know and didn't care who or what Bambi was, having just one use for Bambi's mom. Deer do not form family units. They also do not herd, which is why assorted treatment plans - against disease, or for contraceptives - do not work.

Essentially a rabbit with antlers, the deer's defenses against predation are simple speed and reproductive rate. They live in a world of their ancestors' dreams: cultivated fields of vegetables, interrupted by turnrows offering shelter.

The hunter knows that food costs a life, and doesn't hide from that basic fact. Hunters also pay for the public land you enjoy: the Pittman-Robertson Act actually collects a 10% or 11% tax from every purchase of a sporting arm and uses it to maintain wilderness areas.

Want to help? Go buy a rifle and learn to use it. $60 to $100 will go to wildlife habitat preservation, and you'll be exercising responsibilities commensurate to your enjoyment of your 2nd Amendment rights, above and beyond hunting or other sporting use.

That's part of full citizenship.

Great comment, Rad. (I won't do it, but still.) Very nicely put.

Also, did we establish where the photo was taken? It looks like Arizona-colored rocks formed and lying in Colorado patterns photographed by a coastal California blogger, hence my guess that it was Malibu.

Actually, I was thinking maybe it was in the Living Desert in Palm Springs. Close to Amy and they have some sheep/mountain goat-type critters crawling around there.

Juliana, thanks for the good wishes. Yes, I plan to go out a few days early so I can get in some prairie dog shooting to hone my skills with my long-range rifle. I have been developing handloads and testing them (and me) for accuracy on my home range, but it will help to practice under field conditions in pronghorn habitat. I have accumulated so much stuff over the years that about all there was to shop for was a Montana atlas and gazeteer, which I have been studying diligently.

...hence my guess that it was Malibu.

Doh! *smacks self in forehead* I thought you were asking whether the animal in question was a caribou! Silly Flynne. *hangs head*

Rad, I would be that dewy-eyed "soul" (for lack of a better word). I was going aw and downloading yet another one of Amy's photos to my pic file (I have jigsaw puzzle software installed and, let's be honest, just love pictures, a weirdness my daughter just doesn't get) when I went on to read all the bloodlust. Ewww.

Now that I've offended, let me concede that I have had venison a couple of times and liked it and I don't begrudge anyone doing things I don't do. Shrug. To each their own. And, yes, I do recognize the necessity of hunting to control the deer population and that Bambi is an idiotic story.

(On that note of doing things I don't like and off topic, there's a push here in NY to lower the drinking age back down to 18! Yay! Seems the colleges are pushing for it because the lure of the forbidden fruit has actually increased the number of 18-21's involved in drunk driving accidents. Or that's what they're claiming anyway. Truth is they've better things to do than police students drinking with false ID's on off-campus bars. Yes, last year the nut jobbers seem to think that was the colleges job. I have been bitching about the age being upped since they upped it when I was already over 21 and didn't drink anyway so I'm thrilled it's at long last being fought.)

I'm mostly with lujlp though. Where's the beef? Beef is the best. Though I like mine well done, always have. Cannot live without beef. It is killing me that the grandson's allergic and will never know the joy of a thick juicy steak or a McDonald's hamburger. (Well, unless he outgrows the damned allergy.)

Life without beef and chocolate just would not be a life worth living.

And, seriously, Julianna, there are people out there who still don't know from whence gelatin comes?

Knox gelatin comes from kelp.

So the greenie-weenies can eat that and still feel superior to you.

Some years ago, in the Midwest, my brother took a week vacation during shotgun season. There was a Bambi lover in the area who really ragged him, because he was going to kill Bambi.

He took off, and Wednesday he was back to work, which really supplied a lot of information how his week went.

She ran up, all distraught. "Did you kill Bambi?"

He looked at her seriously, and said, "No, I didn't kill Bambi, but I did kill his mother, and one of my brothers killed his sister. We did run Bambi clear into the next county." (All true, by the way.)

They almost had to take that woman to the psych ward. Heh, heh.

I used to hunt and enjoyed it. I spent two years in the Army. Though I did not go to Viet Nam, something about learning to kill people had some sort of effect on me.

After I came back from the Army, not only could I not hunt large game, I couldn't even squish an ant, for a long time.

I still don't understand this, but I have talked to other non-combat vets who had the same experience.

The strange thing is, if the occasion ever arises, I don't think I would hesitate to summarily kill a criminal who was trying to harm me or my family.

Axman- Good Lord, I need to introduce you to my husband. He has all sorts of different loads with his ammo for different purposes. He also loads 20 gauge shells for me for skeet shooting versus deer shotgun here in IL. His loading bench looks a disaster but to him it's a thing of beauty and serenity.

T's Grammy- sorry about the bloodlusty posts; these things (buckfever, WAHOO!) are seasonal, kind of like getting the itch two weeks ago to go buy new pencils and Trapper Keepers. Catch us closer to Mother's Day when the morel mushrooms start to pop. That's when the REAL craziness starts. No sarcasm, either. Morel hunters are a whole 'nother ferocious breed....

Okay, Juliana, I'll bite (though I'll probably regret it). What the hell is a morel mushroom? Now mushrooms are something I couldn't care about in food either way (which is probably why I don't know varieties). Weird but I just don't taste them at all.

Vegans irritate me far worse than hunters. Hunters don't try to force me to eat venison. They may offer but they don't force. Vegans, given half a chance, would yank it out of my hands.

Can relate to the back to school thing, though. I love back to school sales! Can't have enough pens and notebooks, etc. Even when my daughter was in school, I bought for myself when I bought for her. I have been known to buy notebooks, folders and binders just because they were pretty and love flash in the pan pens that come in pretty color inks. Loving the gel ink with glitter.

Hmmm, I wonder how many pens and notebooks and folders I can find with my grandson's hero, Lightning McQueen on them. (As if, he didn't have enough with Lightning and/or Mater already, including two or three backpacks and a lunch box.)

There now I've succeeded in nauseating everyone else most likely. Myself included.

Wow. Nice flurry of comments generated by your cute little mule deer.

Flynne: I lost that venison recipe when my computer recently crashed, but I'm tracking down my source as we speak.

Tomorrow I have a column coming out with a great venison tartare recipe (not for the faint of heart). I'll link to it tomorrow.