IT'S COMIN' RIGHT FOR US!

Massachusetts is a ridiculous pain in the ass when it comes to deer hunting, so the only thing that I've been able to do is turkey hunting. It wasn't very sporting, (flocks of them come into my backyard) but it definitely was delicious.

People kept calling the cops after hearing gunshots, though. That was frustrating. I made sure not to do it at odd hours, and people still kept calling. Oh, the horror, someone shot two shotgun rounds.

 

I hunt pests around the farms I live on. Foxes, Groundhogs, possums, raccoons...


Most of my experience comes from trying to kill Groundhogs, which are ridiculously durable. I've put .22 magnums in their head from 10 yards and watched them run off like a bee stung them. So I took to using a Hoyt bow to get them. But they got wily about that, and would run if you got within a hundred yards. That didn't stop me though, so I started taking long range shots. Vast majority of the time I'd miss, but it was so damn gratifying to get one of those fuckers at those distances.


I never really learned how to "Hunt." I was taught good firearms aim and practice, and grew up in the woods, but never went on an official hunt. It just comes naturally to combine the two.

 

I don't hunt.

For those who hunt and actually eat what they kill, that's cool, I have no problem with it. Same for those who bow hunt, because that takes a shitload of skill.

For the drunken retards around my town in RI who want to sit in a deer stand, get hammered, and shoot the first thing that wanders across their path so they can take a picture and put the head on the wall, that's not a sport, and well... Fuck them. "Sport"? The people around my area that do that stuff couldn't run 100 yards if there was a gun to their heads. Run the animal down and kill it with a knife, now that would be a sport.

 

On a similar note, the people who throw out deer bait and then shoot them when the animals come to eat aren't hunting either. They're harvesting. I have nothing against someone who does this in a place where deer are overpopulated and then goes home and turns said deer into snawsage, but the people who do this and actually consider it to be hunting? Fuck that.

 

I hunt, on land,on water and underwater with spear guns, bows and arrows, shotguns, rifles, hand guns rods and reels.

I enjoy the whole process of it, the planning, the stalk, the kill,the butchering, the eating.
My favorite thing to hunt is bull elk, they weigh 800-1000 pounds and are tough animals. If you want to kill a big bull elk you will have to suffer a little. Making a 1 hour hike at 8000 feet in pitch black at 4am , hunting for days on end and not seeing anything, making a 2 mile uphill stock and getting a 1 second look at the elks ass as he disappears into the woods.
I hunt them with a rifle, a 300WSM 185 grain bullet that will kill an elk dead at 400 yards. I shoot a big nasty bullet because I want my game to die fast, they suffer less and the meat is much better if it is a quick death. I have only dropped and elk 1 time with one shot and that was a downhill 250 yard shot that hit spine then vitals, usually it takes a few.
Once you have one killed the real work begins, you have just killed a huge animal so you have a huge responsibility to make sure it is properly taken care of.

Some have eluded to the playing field not being equal, I would invite any of you who believe that to come underwater hunting with me at any number of islands I dive in the Pacific, where mako and white sharks well in excess of 1000 pounds are not uncommon or take a walk with me in pitch black in areas where bears and mountain lions thrive, I may be the one with the gun but I am not master of either domain.

I do not have any good hunting stories that most of you would find interesting, most of the good ones are recounted a few times a year with people who were there and experienced it. They are usually 10-15 minute stories that involve many different people and quirks they have.

 

I do not hunt. As I eat meat, I feel that I need to remedy this. I think that if I can't handle killing and processing an animal into some tasty burgers, then I probably shouldn't be enjoying the savory taste of that grilled ground-up critter tissue.

I am tempted to move to a state where wild boars are a nuisance/varmint species, so that I may have a constant supply of pig meat. After all, the most delicious flavoring food can have is trief.

 

Welcome to Mississippi. You can hunt hogs 24/7, with the weapon of your chosing. I think you can even use class 3 firearms.

 

I looked up Mississippi's hog hunting regulations, or the lack thereof:

I don't know if that does in fact include the fun class-3 guns, but fuck it. Got a spare couch?

 

You would be in the wrong area, for hogs, in my part of MS. They are here, just not in great numbers. The west side of the state and into the delta are overrun with them.

That would be your best bet. There are plenty of farmers that will let you kill all you want... for free.

 

Here is a hunting video, this is an antelope I shot last year and an example of why you make sure you have enough gun for the job. It is not like the movies, there is not guts everywhere, there is a single shot and the animal expires. This was the best game meat I have ever eaten, 7 hours after the video the backstraps were grilled to medium rare and consumed.

#This may be disturbing to some people so please be warned, this is video of an antelope getting shot#

 

I know some will age entire deer for tenderness and flavor, but I think only bigger/older bucks will benefit. One year I shot two yearlings and the roasts I got from them were incredibly tender and tasty. However I have never aged a deer or a cow, so I don't know. One of our members- Nettie- owns a meat locker, so I'd ask her about aging.

I typically eat wild game the day I get it and there's too much meat for that, I freeze it right after butchering. As far as I'm concerned, killing your quarry as fast as possible, getting it field dressed and cooled down as fast as possible, and butchering/preparing it as cleanly as possible is how you get quality meat. The organic/free range/additive-free part is already there.

 

My very one sided, totally self serving opinion is no.
I do not age game meat, it is killed, gutted skinned, cooled, quartered, butchered and packaged and frozen as soon as possible. If I am out in the woods, I will bone out an animal and get in on ice until it can be packaged and frozen.
I treat game meat like I do sashimi grade fish, get the blood and guts out and get it cooled down to about 33 degrees.

 

From rep:

"Okay, your mom was cool with it but your dad would have flipped out? What kind of guy was your dad?"

Well, believe or not my dad has been a rocket scientist since the 1960s. After years of helping to build more accurate ways of killing lots of people he is pretty anti killing of anything. Esp in his back yard where it is illegal to discharge a firearm.

 

Butchering deer isn't too bad. I do it KISS style and just cape them, carefully cut out the backstraps and tenderloins, quarter them, cut big roasts out (and those get sectioned too into manageable chunks), and pick out any scrap of meat that can go into sausage/bratwurst. If you're making sausage, nothing goes to waste. Sadly I haven't shot any deer big enough to consider making steaks, but that day will come.

Any good recipes for grilling venison? Can it be done without making leather?

 

I've had venison that was both gamey and mild.


Is the gamey taste from the preparation or the quality of the meat?

 

Cook it in your beer cooler. Seriously.

I've done this dozens of times, with everything from chicken to buffalo bottom round, pork tenderloins to ribeyes.

Just make sure when you put the hot water into it, you have an accurate reading of the temp. I usually heat it up to about 20 degrees higher than what it needs to be, dump it in, let some of the heat dissipate, and when it's 3-5 degrees from what I want my meat to be at, I dump the bag in. Also, let your meat sit out for an hour or so before you put it in.

When it's done, just give it a quick sear and serve.

Could be both. It's like asking a girl why her cooter doesn't taste like another chick's. Too many outside factors to narrow it down to just one. In my experience most of the time I've had really gamey venison it's been from either an older animal or someone cooked it the wrong way.

More often than not people want to treat venison like beef, ie: sear and serve. Not surprisingly, most people fuck it up.

 

Marinades make everything better. There are lots of products used by commercial meat retailers to make shitty cuts more palatable, but enzyme based tenderizing agents are found in fruit like Pineapple and Papaya and a few others. If I have awful meat of any variety that I want to grill, I throw it in a ziploc bag with some pieces of papaya or some pieces of pineapple over night. Just be careful not to forget it for a few days or you'll find a ziploc full of meat paste with some chunks of fruit sitting on top.

 

The chemicals dumped into the blood by a fight or flight reflex trigger (pain, fear, exertion, etc) demonstrably impact the taste of meat. There's a lot of argument for the benefit of single shot, near instantaneous kills or humane slaughter of stunned domestic stock leading to better tasting meat.

I'm not sure there's going to be much difference between a slow bleed out and slightly faster bleed out while being chased. I'm not sure that being shot and bleeding out slowly would result in an appreciably lower level of those chemicals than being shot and chased.