One of the more frequent comments that I have received on Backyard Deer Hunting: Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound is, “I don’t know if I can actually kill a deer. I see them all the time, but I don’t think that I can shoot one.”

  A less sympathetic person might reply, “You are not hungry enough

A very old doe with large-size head and shrunken body size caused by its inability to chew its food.

yet.” While starvation will drive people to eat anything, even occasionally each other, it is thankfully true that the great majority of us have never been taken that far down the road towards  starvation.
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  We would not wish that on ourselves, and we should not wish it on the deer either; yet that is what happens as deer get older. Their teeth wear to the point where they can no long chew hard foods like acorns and grains, can’t utilize the food that they eat and ultimately weaken to the point where they die or are taken down by predators.

  It is also true that if deer are overpopulated, they will eat nealy everything green that they can reach

Over population results in diseased deer like this one on a Federal refuge.

 even if it has little nutritional value. Again the population weakens, becomes subject to more diseases and the animals die. By managing the deer population by taking animals for our own consumption we reduce this problem, feed ourselves and also help maintain healthier deer, because there are fewer of them stressing limited resources.

  The best way to train yourself to hunt is to start on small game like

Squirrel stew made from the de-boned meat from five squirrels, tomatoes, corn and onions is one of the recipes in my book.

squirrels. These are abundant, are cleaned something like deer – albeit on a much smaller scale, and they produce some tasty eats. Teach yourself to shoot well, take the animals with one shot and then recover, clean and cook them. If you can sucessfully hunt squirrels, it is comparatively easy to scale up for deer hunting when the season arrives.

 In Georgia our squirrel season starts on August 15 while Virginia’s is even earlier. These early season hunts allows a person to become use to the concept of hunting and teaches some valuable skills, such as being patient and letting the animals come to you. When the woods are wet, you can stalk squirrels as they feed in the trees on pine cones and other nuts. Much of the time the woods are too noisy for stalking, unless you walk very slowly and carefully through the dry leaves on the forest floor.
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