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Edited on Fri Nov-11-05 04:02 PM by ThomWV
In a couple of weeks it will be deer hunting season in these parts again. Yearly, right around Thanksgiving, Antlered Deer - Buck - Gun - season opens up here for for about a week and a half. The woods aren't safe. No one in their right mind carries a white handkerchief, blaze orange dots the landscape, and bloody hoods will soon abound.
When a deer has been shot and killed it has to be field dressed (sanitary requirement) and checked at a game station (legal requirement).
Field dressing, which no one makes you do, is simply a quick gutting of the animal to include all of the body cavity back to the asshole. It takes about a minute with a sharp knife. You may not do any further butchering of the animal until the deer has been check in.
Checking in of the deer simply means presenting it along with your hunting license to an appropriately licensed person. They will "Check" and sign a tab on your hunting license indicating that a portion of your legally entitled bag limit has been taken. After that you can do anything with the deer you like.
Most deer will be poorly prepared using generations old family receipts that produce some of the nastiest roasts you have ever run across. Everyone raves about how good it is. Much of the meat (about 25 pounds of deboned meat per animal) gets ground into sausage (preserved) or ground meat (unpreserved). You have to add fat if you want to make ground meat similar to ground beef from it. Deer in the wild have very little fat.
Several years ago a young fellow checked in a dead deer he had bagged about 2 miles from here. The deer was unusual. It was a female deer with a set of antlers. It was also an albino. Talk about hitting the genetic lottery.
Someone shot that Albino female deer that had antlers. I met the guy about a year later. He was still bragging about it. Think about that.
I have nothing against hunting. Used to do it a bit myself. There is a lot of truth in the notion that a $0.25 bullit will put 25 pounds of meat in the freezer and besides that, it is an enjoyable passtime for a lot of people.
Take away the drunken buddys in a smelly trailer and the Cheese-Wiz/Vienna Sausage Sammiches that hunting camps feature for a couple of days out of the year if you will but there's still the crisp sunrise and beauty of the deep woods and fields of fall. That's something that many hunters only get to see and feel a couple of days out of the year. Hunting ain't for everyone though.
I don't blame the guy for shooting a female deer. The animal had antlers and from shooting distance that is all the evidence of sex he really needed. No Conservation Officer or Magistrate was going to fine the guy for killing the deer even if it was technically illegal. But Holy Shit, you gotta ask youself, would you shoot an albino deer? An animal so pure and unusual that a mere glimpse of one in a lifetime would still give a guy a good story to tell right up to the day they burried him. Shit, I've never seen one!
Thank you for taking the time to read this. My rant is now over. You may add to it if you like, just try to be fair.
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