Hunting

These Dreams

/ hsoi

I wake up this morning from a dream. I figure dreams, at least in part, are your brain sorting through all the things flying through your head recently.

A dream where I’m in an airport. I have no idea where an airport came from.

I recall having a set of Makita power tools with me. I figure that’s from a discussion I had yesterday with someone about buying a new drill. But talk about a strange carry-on. I even wondered to myself how airport security would let someone take a cordless drill and a circular saw through airport security… but of course, not a 4 ounce bottle of water.

Who else is in the airport? Ted Nugent. I can guess why I’m dreaming about that.

And I go over to talk with Uncle Ted. I cannot remember what it was about exactly, but I remember trying to show him the picture on my iPhone of my first buck but not being able to because that’s about when I woke up.

I’ve got hunting on the brain.

I look at various animals now and while I admire the creature in and of itself, the immediate second thought is “gosh, look at the size of those hams… .can you imagine how big that backstrap would be? mmmmmmm.”

I think I’m hooked.

The amusing part? I believe Daughter is hooked too. She’ll sit and watch hunting shows on TV with me and comment about this buck or that antelope and just love it. I do hope to get her to the rifle club this week.

Mounted

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The rack from my first whitetail buck.

You know, that iPhone camera is OK, but it needs a LOT of natural light to get decent pictures. The above is from my iPhone 3GS, “enhanced” in iPhoto. Good enough to show things, but just not an overall stellar picture. Oh well.

The mounting kit.

The story of the buck.

Ugh

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Two days ago I get the call from the processor: my venison is ready to be picked up.

Crap.

I forgot I need to buy a chest freezer! What with Thanksgiving and family visiting, it slipped my mind. Big thing to slip my mind, I know. I had pretty much settled on something, called the store, they had a floor model I could look at but none actually in stock (too big to keep many on hand). But salesguy said they could have one delivered by Friday. That works. I seal the deal. I call the processor back and explain the situation. It’s a tough call because they need the freezer space so it’s not encouraged for me to keep things around their, but I also have no where to put it. But Friday or Saturday at the latest? No problem.

Today the delivery place calls. Apparently the freezers are out of stock, back ordered, earliest delivery is Tuesday. Uh…. OK, then how come they said there was one in stock… oh whatever, never mind, I’m talking with drones and they can’t solve the problem. So what can I do? Reschedule delivery for Tuesday. Call processor, explain the situation, but the guy that does the game processing is out sick. I hope I can keep a hold of my stuff… maybe pay a late charge, but I can live with that. Plus I’m calling almost every day trying to stay on top of things so it’s not like I don’t care… I’m just stuck.

My only hope is Tuesday doesn’t roll around and they call back with more excuses.

And I was so looking forward to having venison steaks this weekend. *sigh*

Phew!

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

I said that my first buck, I’m going to mount the antlers. I didn’t care what they looked like, it was the distinction of being the first. I’m not really one for dead animals as decor, but sometimes it can have its place (e.g. a mountain cabin setting, sure). And here, some animals of distinction, like my first buck, sure… that’s a keeper.

Finally Cabela’s got these Van Dyke’s buck horn mounting kits in. It’s not the highest quality thing, but it’s Good Enough™ especially for my first. Instructions seem straightforward enough, but it does look like you need a little creativity and to be a little handy with things.

With Wife out of the house for the evening, I commandeered the kitchen and began to prep the antlers. That means boiling the skull cap. Oh lord what a smell! 😯  It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s still not pleasant. Been boiling and trimming off the fleshy bits. Presently the skull cap is about as clean as I can get it, and is dusted with borax and sitting in the garage. I’ll see how it looks in the morning.

Hopefully this will turn out OK and look good in my office. Yes office, because Wife has put her foot down about no dead animals on the walls in the house. She grew up with dead animals as decor, and now that this is her own house with her own decorating style, no dead animals except in my areas (office, garage, etc.). Fair enough. 🙂

I’ll post pictures whenever it’s done.

A shotgun is a lot like a guitar….

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

A shotgun is a lot like a guitar. A lot of wood, a little metal, an element of twang, and damn if I can’t get my dinner with both of ’em.

— Ted Nugent

For full effect, you need to watch and listen to Uncle Ted deliver the above line.

Buck shot with buckshot

/ hsoi

New Jovian Thunderbolt ruminates on the buck shot with buckshot. Implications not just for hunters, but for those that opt for shotguns for self and/or home defense.

The article is not long but the final word is simple: 00 buckshot, not birdshot.

Lessons from the hunt

/ hsoi

On my first deer hunt I learned a lot of things.

What follows is a list of things I learned. It’s in no particular order. It’s probably far from comprehensive. But it is a list of things I learned. And while some things are specific to hunting or shooting, some things are just applicable to anything in life.

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Off to the procesor

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

Just dropped off both of my deer at Johnny G’s. Totaled 100 lbs. of raw meat (and bone), consisting of 4 shoulders, 4 hams, 4 backstraps, and various other bits. Not a bad take I would say. Going to get the backstraps whole but cleaned up, the tenders whole but cleaned up, the doe hams will be steaked, the buck hams will be made into roasts, and everything else ground. The ground is going to be pure deer grind, no mixing with beef or pork or any extra fat as Wife wants to have it pure so she can mix and match it as she pleases. Johnny G’s will let it age a few days but who knows… with Thanksgiving they may not even start on it until Friday. I’ve been reading that aging venison at least a few days is good. Can’t wait!

Thing is, we need a freezer now. We bought a new fridge almost 2 years ago and moved the old fridge into the garage. Both are fairly full, especially in the freezer (what still with all the pork from my prior hog hunts). For some years Wife and I have talked about buying a whole calf or a side of beef, but we never pulled the trigger on the idea. The past couple months we’ve been doing some serious talk about it and have found a few places we might buy from (and keep finding more). Now with all this venison coming, push has come to shove and it’s time for the freezer to be bought. Hopefully we can buy one this weekend and there will be all sorts of sales going on. We’ll start filling it with the deer, then finish it off with some beef.

Meat good. 🙂

Oh yes. Need to finally buy a vacuum sealer too.

On Deer Leases and Boredom

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve spoken with some people who don’t know what a deer lease is, so I thought I’d do my best to explain. Note that I’m still a n00b to all of this so I may not have all the details right.

Essentially a deer lease is an agreement between a hunter and a landowner to allow the hunter to hunt on the landowner’s land. Most of the land in Texas is privately owned. Consequently if you want to hunt, most of the opportunities are on private land. Texas does have public hunts, but they are few and far between. So you need to find someone willing to open their land for hunting, and it’s great that many land owners do just that. That’s really about all it is. You give them money, they allow you access to the land. Exactly what you can and cannot do varies from agreement to agreement. Cost varies as well. You just shop around, the joys of the free market.

So how do you hunt on a lease? Well, most of the hunting down here ends up being done by sitting in a stand or a blind, which will have a feeder stationed some distance away (e.g. 100 yards). Then you sit and wait, watching for a deer. Being creatures of habit, they will have their favorite paths and feeding locations, and hopefully over time they’ll discover the feeder as an easy and reliable source of food, make it a part of their routine to visit it, and if you wait and watch long enough you’ll have a deer.

Doesn’t sound very sporting or much like hunting does it?

It all depends how you look at it.

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My First Deer

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I got my first deer. In fact, I got two deer!

But the way I went about it was not what I expected.

As Mick Jagger once sang, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” That certainly summed up the past week of my life.

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