I got Outdoor Edge's dvd on wild game butchering a few years back. Toughest part is angling around the pelvis. I disagree about working with the leg cuts. Do you just mean the lower shanks that are used in making osso buco? Though they are more sinew filled, unless you have a dedicated meat saw blade or bandsaw to make shank cuts, tossing the meat through the grinder ain't that bad. I usually do keep the more sinewy ground meat separate for heavier spiced longer cooked dishes then the meat I use for burger and meat loafs. The rear upper leg steaks, all the rounds, are great for jerky or thin slicing. My first butcher used to cut those cartoon steaks out of the rear leg with the bone in the middle. I never liked it and his refusal to leave the tenderloins whole is why I started doing it myself. If I ever make a dedicated area for doing this I'd get the drain and rig up a cooler with this AC wiring device. Few things Ive learned over the years: Learn golf ball skinning technique. Cut your flanks first thing when you are doing your tenderloin. I notice people forget about them and they make damn fine fajita meat. If you want to make any amount of sausage, over 5 lbs at a time, get a dedicated stuffer or a jerky gun with the stuffing tubes. Using the meat grinder to stuff through tubes is next to useless, takes more time, and backs up enough in the auger you'll ruin the meats consistency and mouth feel before it makes it into the casing. Sous Vide cookers cooke the best backstrap steaks you'll ever eat. Use the lungs, heart, and liver to make Boudin. Two hands are better than one. Anyone got any tips for the neck roast/meat? It always looks like a ton of meat then after cursing and struggling to remove 50 percent of it I usually give up.
I treat it like a turkey carcass and put it in a big soup pot full of water for a couple of days and make killer beef consume out if it, and use the meat from it for a shepherd's pie or something similar.
That’d be what I meant in the lower portion of the shank. I didn’t realize osso buco was a thing when helping, and my buddy didn’t want any bone in cuts. You make a good point though that it isn’t the worst through a grinder, it just plugged up the one we were using pretty well so we gave up on trying to fully clean out the lower shanks for presentable cuts. I’m hoping this year to get in on some good bone in cuts, but with CWD being a huge thing now in my area, I’m real hesitant to try a bone in neck roast, despite how good it’s supposed to be.
I was gonna go out for deer season this year, if only a day or two. But with all the flooding the creel running through our property is still too high and can't be crossed. So I'm not gonna bother.
I got invited on a hunt. It's a private plantation (no that kind) in Georgia, and these were mostly pen-raised birds. I had been to some in south Georgia, but not this one east of Atlanta. Quail, chuckers, pheasant. First pic was Thu afternoon, second was Fri morning. Those are the guide's dogs and trucks. I shot one of my Dad's guns that's about the same age as me - never shot it before. Remington 1100 20 ga bored imp cylinder. It only has a 26" barrel, but I was quite pleased with it. Good times.
What the fuck is wrong with people? (This is disturbing idiocy) The posters of the video point out that there are some places where this is legal. Legal or not, where is the sport in this? I love hunting, and have hunted all kinds of things. But, do you guys hunt animals when they're asleep? Shooting quail when they're on the ground or dove when they're sitting on a wire, finding a turkey roosting in a tree in the dark and shooting it down with a rifle? Why, why do these things? I don't get it.
If I was in a survival type scenario like where my car broke down in the middle of nowhere and I had to eat, I would absolutely do it. The people who depend on whale meat in order to just get through the winter and stay alive, I get it. For sport? If there are literally ANY other options? Fuck no. Right now there’s a bunch of turkey in our pasture. Guess what season it is? If I wanted to hunt turkey though (and I don’t), I’d still setup decoys and call them in. It’s just the right thing to do. Feral hogs are the only exception. If I find them when they’re asleep, all the better. Hopefully I can exterminate a few more that way. I hope they all go to hell.
Started getting my daughter into the outdoors by putting out corn in our woods and a game cam to capture some shots of the deer. Our property butts right up to a few hundred acres of town-owned green space where hunting isn't allowed, so the deer are all over back in there. Here's our starting lineup this year. There's a scrub buck with one horn I named "Derpy", a spike, and a four, five, six, and eight pointer, along with probably 4-6 does. We've gotten a few raccoon and a fox on there as well.
2019 was a good year. I checked off some boxes I'd always wanted to and am still sitting on well stocked freezers. Feels good. I had the stupid goal of catching a muskie out of my canoe and did it with a 40" tiger. Trolling an X-rap in shallow water with the rod held with my legs as I paddled (was tired after cranking bucktails all morning), and it hit like a freight train. My wife is a champ and not only paddles with me but got this photo of the moment it finally slipped in the net. Felt like years of catching pike out of the canoe all culminated in that moment. Yes I have a bigger net now too. The best part is how much bigger those fish get, and that one is still swimming around too. Shooting for 50" this year, go big or go home. Up until last year I'd also yet to catch a stream trout, and then I basically went balls deep in the Driftless region of Wisconsin. Brook trout. Brown trout. I went out to Glacier National Park in August, hiked up to a lake, rolled my pants up and waded in cold ass water up to my thighs bare footed, and caught a gorgeous brookie on the first cast. Just finished up a really good ice fishing season. This was the year where I finally hit it hard and a co-worker lent me a Marcum M5 and auger so I got to plunder lakes on my own. Learned a whole lot and put a whole lot of fish on the ice. I still feel like its an act of desperation compared to how enjoyable fishing summer evenings is, but man its something to pick up and stack crappies on the ice like firewood. Hunting-wise I didn't bag any turkeys but enjoyed some really good small game and pheasant hunting. What ended up being noteworthy was my first out of state deer trip (hunted the family farm in Illinois) and more photography. Somehow I managed to snap pics of both deer I ended up taking before getting the gun up and sealing the deal. On both occasions I passed on young bucks in lieu of the doe they were chasing. Minnesota deer. Illinois deer. Also a real highlight was a coworker buddy hunting with me and taking his first deer. Third person who has tagged their first deer with me, sitting in my spot with me and shooting a rifle that I'd worked on. Look at that smile. At this point that is more fulfilling than tagging my own. Now I'm gearing up for turkey season again and am tempted to go wade around trout streams a bit. Nice thing about my favorite activities now is how they're naturally self-isolating.
I love turkey hunting. Went up to my spot in central MN last Wednesday. Left home a little before 5 am and spent the drive warming up my call and trying to not freak out as I saw birds out strutting in fields along the highway as the sun rose. I got settled in a blowdown along a pasture edge at about 7 am and was hoping to call in a solitary dinosaur tom. To my back was a little slough, a strip of pine trees, and then a larger pasture where most of my deer have fallen. At 7:30 am a tom went strutting through the pasture behind me, gobbling at me every few minutes as I was working on my mouth call. Of course he left and went away to pursue his regular girlfriends. I got up and made a big circle through the 80-acre property, looking for other toms and antler sheds, and ended up back in the strip of pine trees about 100 yards from my first spot at 10 am. Resumed soft calling, just soft clucks and purrs with the occasional yelp, and after a few minutes I heard a twig snap behind me. Peeked behind me and sure enough here's this tom again, just 25 paces away now. I got lucky twice as he had his head down and didn't see me looking, and then he stepped behind a clump of trees and allowed me to do a 180 with my gun and be ready to shoot when he re-appeared. Clucked once to make him stick his head out and bam. https://i.imgur.com/mSusvtx.jpg I used my Mossberg Maverick 88 12ga with a Carlson's Longbeard XR .660" choke, 1 3/4oz Federal TSS #9 (which outperforms everything else I've tested by a long shot), and had the gun drilled and tapped so I could install a red dot. The patterns the gun produces are stunning and the red dot makes it stupid simple to make accurate shots, even in awkward shooting positions like being wrapped around a tree like I was. https://i.imgur.com/74r0LsU.jpg I have to say the gun was still a minor part of the hunt, as the most important factors were still my positioning and calling, but I've never dropped a bird with so much confidence before. I'm really contemplating just getting another ratty ole pump 12ga for waterfowl hunts and leaving the Maverick set up as-is for gobblers now.
Nice job! Never done any turkey hunting before, myself. They've fully and densely reintroduced themselves near where I live to the point that they're causing major traffic accidents by plowing through windshields at dusk. Kind of tempted to give it a go next year.
Turkey hunting is my favorite. I know some other states have different rules and seasons, and I have no idea what Canada is like. But, in Georgia, you can only hunt in the Spring, and it is during mating season. For other types hunting, you are hoping to draw the quarry to food, or be in the right place to ambush them during their normal activities. Fishing, you are hoping to convince them to take your food, or catch them in a net during their normal activities. But, turkey hunting is straight up sexy time. You need to convince a gobbler (can't kill hens in Georgia) that you are either a silky sounding, sexy hen and he needs to come get some. (Or, you might convince him you are another male threatening his women or his territory, but using gobbler calls is less successful.) Also, you have to be good enough calling to flip around the normal order. Typically, when a Tom gobbles, he is saying, "get over here, woman" and she needs to oblige. He doesn't want to go to her. On top of that, you need to have strategy to know when to sit tight, or when to get up and move to a better location. You can hear gobblers from a mile away. Is he coming to you, or are you going to intercept him? Oh, you're moving? Guess what, the one you heard was across a lake you'll never get to, and you just spooked one in between that had been silent. Hunt over. Oh, he's coming to you? He's gobbled twice more, each time closer and he's coming in at 9 o'clock? Wrong, he circled around the other way, comes in at 4 o'clock, and when you shifted a bit because your ass was falling asleep, you just spooked him. Over. And, there is the bonus that turkeys have full color vision, can see a 270 degree field, and have three times better eyesight than humans. They can't smell, but they have fantastic hearing as well. You better not move and you better be in full camo with a facemask. When you hear a gobble close, it is very exciting. But, there is no sound quite like a turkey drumming in full strut at 40 yards out. You can watch that on video, but I assure you, when the woods are quiet, maybe a squirrel scampering, a bird twitting, a gentle leaf stir in a light breeez . . . and then you hear that drumming? The hair on your neck will stand up. And, it is all the more sickening when you hear one putt that you didn't know was there, because you were looking the other way. No, you can't shoot him, because though he can't fly far, he can fly in a short burst at 50 mph, taking off instantly on those powerful legs. (By, the way, you better kill him dead, because if you walk up to put your foot on his neck, and he's just wounded, plan on getting some spurs in the shin.) I think it is the most challenging hunt and most fun of all "ordinary" game.
You guys know they sell turkey at the grocery store, right? Seriously though, 95% of my hunting experience was with my dad who really never killed shit. Looking back I see it was just an excuse to go hang with the boys, get drunk, cruise around the woods in our huntin' buggy and hope to stumble across some unlucky beast. It wasn't until I worked with a guy who was a true hunter that I realized how hard it really is and how smart the animals are. I miss Dewercs and his stories/photos.