Backyard Deer Hunting
Converting deer to dinner for
pennies per pound
by
Wm. Hovey Smith
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. Setting up your hunts
Finding an area
Getting permission to hunt
Local regulations and licenses
Hunter safety instruction
Chapter 2. Getting the gear
Clothing
Hunting boots
Butt comfort
Crossbows
A crossbow hunt
Conventional bows
Guns
Muzzleloading rifles
Accessories
Recommended loads
Sighting in and shooting
Cleaning
Hunting with muzzleloaders
A muzzleloader hunt
Cartridge Rifles
Calibers
A cartridge gun hunt
Shotguns
Shotgun cleaning
A shotgun hunt
Used guns
A second gun
Knives
Sharpening
Sheaths
Hunting knives
Deer stands
Built-up stands
Ladder stands
Climbing stands
Metal tripods and towers
Insects
Chapter 3. Scouting for deer
Your, a friend’s or family lands
What to look for
Recognizing deer sign
Tracks
Beds
Deer rubs
Scrapes
Placing deer stands
Food
Water
Travel paths
Prevailing winds
Ground blind or tree stand?
Ground blinds
Tree stands
Preparing for
opening day
Essentials
For longer hunts
Baiting
Walking out the door
Chapter 4. Deer hunting
Stay put, kill deer
Labs as deer decoys
The responsible hunter
Can you physically do the hunt?
Safety
Ten commandments of firearms safety
Added precautions for muzzleloaders
Archery safety
Added precautions for crossbows
Safety with knives, spears and axes
Interacting with partners
Buddy hunts
Relations with your host
Respecting the land and the game
How much time?
When should I go?
Chapter 5. Humanely killing big game
Game anatomy
Making that first shot count
Learning to use new hunting tools
Size of the sure-kill area
Chapter 6. Finding and extracting your deer
After the shot
Double-duty retrieve
At the shot site
Where is it?
Using dogs
Labs as deer retrievers
Deer drags
Drag sheets
Homemade deer carriers
Deer sleds
Processing in place
Packing it out
Chapter 7. Skinning and cleaning
Skinning tools
Deer skinning
Mechanical aids
Tanning deer hides
Cleaning deer
Getting started
Simple tools can work
Saws
Axes
Clippers and shears
The yuk factor
Safety
Chapter 8. Larger and smaller game
Really big game
A packer’s share
Some dos
Some don’ts
Small game
Squirrels
Rabbits
Birds
Large fowl
Chapter 9. The road-kill café
Salvageable deer
Cleaning
Sorting and packaging
Deer for your pets
Chapter 10. Long-term meat storage
Basic butchering
About hogs and bears
Wrapping
Canning
Drying
Salt and sugar-cured meat
Chapter 11. Cooking
Basic implements
Small electric appliances
Where do I get this stuff?
Basic foodstuffs for the kitchen
Outdoor cooking
Sheet iron cookery
Deer Recipes
Basic deer burger recipes
Pan-fried deer burgers
Grilled deer burgers
Deer puffball meatloaf
Deer potato skillet
Sausage making
Southern sausage seasonings
Italian sausage seasonings
Bratworst mix
Boudin
Sausage loaf
Sausage potatoes
Sausage sweet potato soufflé
Eggplant deer sausage savory
Dill deer potato salad
Spaghetti sauce
Cooking pasta
Deer chili
Weather day beans
Cut meat recipes
Gaucho deer
Shish ka-bob
Deer roast and pot roast
Deer roast
Pot roast
Cubed and country-fried steak
Cubed deer steak
Country fried deer steak
Deer stew
An adaptive Indian curry
Other critters
Squirrel stew
Steamed rabbit and onions
Road Warrior pheasant
Road Warrior duck
Duck rice
Cooking large fowl
Giblet gravy
Turkey dressing
Egg bread
Hoecake
Southern cornbread dressing
Poached pecan panfish
Vegetables
Sweet corn roasted on coals
Roasted yams or sweet potatoes
Hunter’s ratatouille
Garlic-ginger-olive potatoes
Socko succotash
Bean soup
Enhanced pork and beans
Desserts
Homemade apple sauce
Fruit or berry bread
Poached pears
Fruit bread
Homemade pumpkin pie
Pumkin pie spice mix
Putting on the Ritz
Mississippi white sauce
Supplier’s Addresses
Index
Author’s books and publications
Backyard Deer Hunting
Converting deer to dinner for
pennies per pound
by
Wm. Hovey Smith
Introduction
This book is about providing information on how to find, kill and ultimately eat deer and other game animals that live near your home. North America. The information is also applicable to wild hogs, bears and other big-game species.
My objective is to explain how to put meat on your family’s table as inexpensively as possible. I used deer in the book’s title because whitetails are the most frequently seen big-game animals in
Although outdoor writing may appear to be a glamorous profession; it is more often an obsession, rather than a vocation. Writers are paid little, late, have their work as often rejected as accepted and may spend hundreds of hours producing materials that never see print. I have often fed my family on deer and other game shot a few hundred yards from my house. I have drawn on my experiences in feeding a family when my income was sharply reduced. You can do the same. This book is designed to take someone who has never hunted through every step required to kill, clean, process and cook big game.
I have done everything that is described in this book. I have salvaged thrown-away hunting clothes from a Dumpster, drug road-killed deer off the roadside and safely consumed them. I have used nearly every knife, gun and crossbow that I have described. Where expedient items can be used or adapted, I have recommended them. Although in some categories it is impossible, most of the products that I have recommended are American made. I have concentrated on the least-expensive really workable items of their types that are available.
This book is not about looking good, owning fancy gear, impressing anyone or putting trophy heads on the wall. This book is about killing deer, wild hogs, bears and other meats-on-the-hoof and eating them. Although born in Georgia, I have spent significant parts of my life in Arizona, Alaska and Minnesota and have commonly hunted elsewhere. These experiences have been used to provide much of the information in this book.
I have always felt that my books should consider topics that were not beaten to death by other authors. My two previous outdoor books, Practical Bowfishing (Stoeger, 2004) and Crossbow Hunting (Stackpole, 2006), have been noted for their complete treatment of the subject and the inclusion of information on game processing and cooking. Backyard Deer Hunting follows the same format.
You, the reader, will be frequently addressed in this book, and I will offer my best guidance on a given subject expressed in simple language. Does this mean that I know everything about everything? No. However, I have hunted all of my life, lived in many parts of the country and mostly eaten things that I shot. I almost never buy meat, but live off the deer, hogs, wildfowl and small game that I hunt. I have published 13 books and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. I have accumulated in some 67 years a great deal of knowledge that I am more than willing to share in as straight-forward a manner as possible.
Some photos in this book show big-game animals being killed and butchered. If you are going to kill and clean animals, you need to be prepared for the results. I will attempt get you ready to do these necessary tasks. I have seldom met people that I could not teach something to or learn something from. You should adopt the same attitude in using information from this book.
You can also learn from other hunters’ experiences to add to your store of practical knowledge. Grandpa or even Great Grandma may also have useful information about wild game from a time when much of the meat on the family’s table was killed by the same hands that served it. It is proper that this should be so. It does honor to the animal that gave its life and to the hunter who killed the animal to provide food for his family. This is a practical demonstration of the eternal cycle of life, death and renewal that is much more realistic than the plastic-wrapped packages of meat at the butcher counter.
Women can hunt too. Although hunting is often considered a “guy” thing, women can be as good hunter-providers as men. The typical stereotype is that men hunt and women cook, which is bullshit. I know, and have known, many women who were excellent shots and hunters and many men who were marvelous big-game cooks. In a family, it is most true that the person who kills something is the one who is also going to have to clean and cook it. When it can cost more than $150 to get a deer processed and you can do the same job with $15 worth of materials, it makes since to do as much of this as possible. Particularly, if you are out of work and have more time than money.
Teaching yourself to hunt is a productive activity that brings financial and psychological benefits. Although every hunt may not produce game, you are going to do it better next time, and hunting gets you out of the house. Financial hardship brings stress on families, and it is good to periodically step away from the noise of everyday life, enjoy nature and accept any gifts that might be offered.
There is no reason why your spouse and kids cannot participate. It often helps to have another pair of hands when processing meat or cooking. This provides the spirit that “we are all in this together.” Think about the life that your grandparents had. Everybody in the family did something to keep the family going. There was work about the house, in the garden, in the yard, with the livestock, in the kitchen and keeping the family in clean clothes. This was more about doing the job that needs to be done and not about “my job” or “your job.” I have lived alone most of my life, and with the death of my wife five years ago am alone again. Whatever gets done at my house, I do. If I can live by myself and maintain a reasonable lifestyle, that means that a family with more pairs of hands can, at the least, do equally well.
Some very practical reasons for consuming wild-game meat are: 1. It taste good. 2. It is free of antibiotics and other things that may be injected in commercially-prepared meats. 3. Wild game meat is naturally a low-fat product. 4. You know exactly how your meat has been treated and what went into it.
5. Removing excess game animals keeps the wildlife population healthy. 6. Animals taken from near-urban areas reduce deer-car collisions. 7. Hunting provides a psychological getaway while also providing outdoor exercise to relieve stress. 8. When done close to home, hunting provides low-cost, high-protein meals for better family nutrition.
The need for this book was recognized by many publishers once I presented the concept, but none felt that they could publish it rapidly enough to be available on by mid-summer of 2009. Fortunately, Author House, a print-on-demand publisher, provided a means to produce this book in time for it to reach the hands of those who needed it.
Thanks also go to fellow Georgia outdoor writer, author and friend, Jeff Samsel who edited the book. Samsel’s contribution was valuable because he is a fisherman who seldom hunts and could view this material as a perspective user, rather than as an expert advisor.
Wm. Hovey Smith
Whitehall
Sandersville, GA
February, 2009