Okay, so I didn't really kill anything myself...yet. *g*
If you've read Clare's blog already, you've no doubt heard about this and seen some of the pictures. My pictures are a little more gruesome than hers though, because I took some pictures AFTER I'd finished skinning the deer (and before we cut it up), and then some pictures of the resulting venison we obtained.
As you can tell from the one picture, one of the deer's back legs what shattered by the impact and subsequent running over by the truck that hit her. Numerous leg bones were literally shattered and had to be picked out of the meet from time to time. Now, I've never been hunting before, being strictly a fisherman, but I bought my first hunting license the other day, and I plan to stroll the woods of Clare and Josh's property, looking for something to stock our deep freezer with. But today's experience was a first for me.
Now most of us have seen the unfortunate deer on the side of the road, that's been hit by a car, but it's another thing entirely to see one actually GET HIT by a car (or a truck in this case.) I saw the doe run out into the road, and had time to say "Look out! Deer!" before the truck smacked into her hind quarters and sent her under his tire, then sliding across the road 10 feet or so and into a ditch. The man pulled over, about 20 feet up the road, and as we drove past slowly (making sure he was alright), he was getting out of his truck and shaking his head. Obviously he wanted to see what kind of damage had been done to his vehicle. Clare and I wondered if he would put the deer in his truck and take it home, or just leave it on the side of the road. Fortunately for us he chose the latter.
So we opted not to go to Wal-Mart (much to Jack's dismay), and drove back to where the deer was laying in the ditch. Other than a leg that was bent at completely the wrong angle, there wasn't much visible damage. Fortunately the deer WAS dead already, so we didn't have to find some way to put it out of its misery. We just had to figure out how to get it into the back of Clare's SUV. Grabbing a pair of legs each, Clare and I managed to haul the poor thing out of the ditch, and lift it up into the back of the car (she was pretty heavy for her size!) Then Clare dropped me off at my house to change and get a knife, and she headed home.
After quickly changing into something I didn't mind getting dirty, I drove over to Clare's and we proceeded to hang the deer up by its legs like we'd seen illustrated in a book. Then came the fun part. Clare has SORT of field dressed a deer before, when she was spending some time on some land in Pennsylvania with her Siberian Husky, Lucy. Lucy brought back a small deer that some hunters had killed in the woods, and Clare skinned it and attempted to brain tan the hide. This was more experience than I'd had! Now I know the general concept and procedure for field dressing a deer, but I'd never actually tried to do it. It was quite the experience, let me tell you! I kept saying that I'd make a better furrier than a butcher, because I was able to get most of the hide off easily in one piece, but I had little to no idea where I needed to cut to remove the internal organs, and just what body parts I COULDN'T cut, if I didn't want to ruin the meat.
So Clare and I started cutting into the doe, but Esme was not happy with the weather outside, so Clare took her back inside, attempting to get her to lay down for a nap, and I was left more or less to myself to try and figure out how to dress the deer. Apparently I didn't do TOO badly, and we were able to get a fair amount of meat off the doe. Right now it's soaking in a new plastic trashcan out in the yard, that's full of water and 32 lbs of ice at the moment. Kelly and Adam (who was the one who cut most of the actual meat off) told me that the longer I soaked it in ice water, the more blood would be pulled out of the meat, and the less "gamey" it would taste. I just hope the meat is okay, and that nothing gets into it. Now Monica and I just have a LOT of venison to trim up and prepare for the freezer...back strap tenderloin, shoulder roasts, meat for stew and grinding...if all goes well we should have lots of delicious meat to put in the deep freezer and eat on for months to come! The next one I'm going to kill on my own though, and without the use of a car. ;)
So anyway, here are a few gruesome pictures of the afternoon's festivities.
Before
After
I know that one bit of meat kind of looks like a fish, but it's not. It's one of the backstrap tenderloins, the best cut of meat.
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