With the impending apocalypse, one has to ask themselves a few questions. Will society completely collapse? Will I be able to fight off the brain hungry zombies? Will I be able to obtain food for myself? One weekend during deer season, Vin and I set off the answer one of those questions. Neither one of us had ever killed an animal before nor had we even been hunting. We were determined to reason our way through our lack of experience.
After doing a little searching on the internet, we learn that a .308 caliber rifle with a scope would make short work of Bambi and put the meat a little closer to our stomachs. After that purchase, we set out to the rifle range to hone our targeting skills. Within an hour of target practice we were able to group our shots to the size of a donut hole. Time to test our skills.
After a couple of phone calls, we were able to get permission to hunt at a family friend’s 250 acre farm in another unnamed state. We had been told that some of the locals were unsuccessful this year and had not bothered to hunt in the new snow that had fallen. Not a good sign. Though we had never tracked an animal before, the snow made it easy for us to look around and discover where deer had been recently. It seemed reasonable to us to wait around where the tracks were, holding our guns. The first night of this method left us a little bored and we wound up hiking around the hills all evening. At daybreak we saw 2 deer running away from us and realized they easily heard us crunching in the snow.
The next evening we decided to try a new method. We decided to wait near where we had seen the two deer cross the evening before and stand silently out in the field. After two peaceful hours of standing in the field, Vin tapped my shoulder and pointed at a large doe walking across the field. I aimed and shot the doe and in 4 seconds the whole hunt was over. I hit the heart and the deer. It took one step and died. As we approached the deer, we saw the blast of blood and gore from the exiting shot sprayed out nearly 30 feet past the deer.
Now came the more interesting part about which I had more questions. I had watched people gut and bleed out a deer on YouTube until I felt I could do it with my eyes closed, but now the knife was in my hand. The first cut to open the belly without cutting into the organs took almost 10 minutes. . I had read in Wikipedia you have to be careful. If you puncture the stomach or intestines, the meat can go bad. It turns out I was being too careful and had barely cut the skin. Finally Vin and I figured out what to do and cut out the belly.
Next order of business was to cut the windpipe and veins out of the way. I had seen people reaching into the carcass and moving the knife around near the head, but no one had a good shot inside the deer’s chest cavity of what to do. After moving the organs out of the way, it was pretty self-explanatory. Just cut the pipe.
The part I had been the least clear about was removing the anus and the rest of the organs. One has to cut around the anus making sure not to cut the intestines. This was a little harder to do than YouTube had let on. After about 20 minutes of trying to gently slice the anus out, we stopped being subtle and really started cutting. That’s what it took. We realized how close to worms we really were, just a mouth and an anus with everything else in between. Because of the cold we had no problem with the meat spoiling, so we hung it out on a tree to drain over night and the next day took it to the butcher.
The doe netted us 30 plus pounds of meat that was delicious. Maybe it tasted better because of the work it took to get, but definitely one of my more favorite steaks. I had purchased a food dehydrator and made a giant bag of jerky from a recipe I found on, you guessed it, the internet. I labeled it “people jerky,” with a pleasant graphic and gave it out as gifts.
I am happy to say I learned a new skill, and proved to myself that I could under some circumstances, obtain my own food. In fact if you don’t add up the cost of the gas, time off work, supplies, gun, knife, scope, target ammo, butchering , dehydrator, or jerky ingredients, it only cost one dollar for the bullet to kill the deer.
Eric’s Stolen People Jerky Recipe:
- Enough sliced up deer meat to fill a freezer bag
- 2/3 cup of soy sauce
- 2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 2 teaspoons of seasoning salt
Mix up sauces and powders and add to bag of meat Move the meat around to insure sauce covers all the meat. Leave for 24 hours to marinate. Bake meat and sauces all the way through in a pan until it reaches 170 degrees. Take meat and lay it out on dehydrator strips. Dehydrate meat until it is jerky. Don’t dehydrate raw meat. Cook it first or its just dehydrated raw meat.
