End of a great week!!
 

So we arrived back home on Monday evening from the Fall Southern. Tuesday afternoon I sat out on one of the food plot stands and a big buck came by trailing a doe. They both disappeared into the hemlocks. 20 minutes later she was back and walked the same track as before. I knew he was soon to follow. 5 minutes later (6:30 PM), here he comes head down trailing. He was broadside at 50 yards. I "bleated" him to a stop and let the bolt fly. Down goes Joe Frazier to my Ten Point crossbow with 100g Sevr TiII mechanical broadheads!! High and wide 7 point buck with a live weight of 200#. This was the 12th year in a row I was blessed to take a buck in archery season.

Mike, that’s a keeper for sure. Congratulations.

You beat me to it this year ! Congrats :cool:

congratulations on a fine buck with the bow....charlie

Great job Mike! I'll see you at the pumpkin shoot tomorrow morning, I have my cooler for the tenderloins. Thx.

So we put a close on the end of another successful PA deer season. After that archery buck I filled two doe tags by the first week in November to close out my bow season. I saved one last doe tag for rifle season (I do every year because it's fun and easy peasy). Yesterday, 11/25, was our opening day of rifle. I sat on my Chuck Central platform where we've taken hundreds of woodchucks. 9:30 a big fat doe came out of the switchgrass at 200 yards. The suppressed 6.5 Creedmore with 3000 FPS 120g V-Max sizzled out and gave me that tell-tale "THUMP". She expired 20 yards from impact. And the people rejoiced and feasted on the lambs and the sloths and the carps and the fruit bats and the breakfast cereals...... She's at the processor being made into tasty treats. Feels like archery just opened a few days ago and now rifle is over for me. Time is certainly going by faster each year. :bigbye:

Virginia gun opened 11/18/23 and I didn’t go , left the following day to go to WV for their opener on the 20th . Got back to VA on the 22nd . But didn’t go out the first time in VA during gun season until the 24th . This little fellar succumbed to a Hornady 139 SST handload in a Mannlicher Schoenauer MC carbine in 7x57 with a nice old Leupold Vari XII 2-7x on top . Shot him at about 7:45 AM at 75ish yards he made about a forty yard death run and saw him roll as I was perched about thirtyfive feet off the ground in a tree .

Great job Mike. Freeze the loins please, I should by down for your year end SxS shoot. Please vacuum pack them so they're not freezer burned buddy. 'Preciate it.

: )

Always vacuum packed. :) This doe will be backstraps and t-loins, trail bologna, hot dogs, maple breakfast sausage and regular country breakfast sausage.

All I kill get put into usable portions the same day . I cut the backstraps off and the fish out and they go in my freezer . Then everything else is cut off the bone and bagged for either stew meat or to be ground and made into burger or sausage . I also keep the heart if I didn’t get a projectile in it . The liver goes with the rest of the innards (out on the hill for the BuZards).

I only need the T-loins and backstraps, thanks anyways. :rotf::rotf::rotf:

Sounds to me like many of you guys are missing a good bet by not hanging the deer for 2-3 weeks. All your store-bought beef has been hung for a long while

By all means hang yours as long as you wish . Thank you just the same I’ll keep following my usual procedure . If I only killed one or two each year I might be more receptive , most years I take atleast ten with some years double that or close to it . You leave that stuff hanging for two weeks it could be six to twelve hanging at once . The fact that I don’t have an indoor place to hang them plays into that as well .

Taking deer during our archery season is not conducive to even hanging a deer overnight. Much too warm and the deer will spoil just overnight. If one has a cooler to hang them, then that’s a different story. That said, we have one in the planning stage. 😁

I know a guy in southern MD that bought a straight truck that had a working refrigerator body on back but the truck motor was popped . He drug it home and parked it beside his shop where he could run a electrical cord to the the frig unit thing worked great . We were gonna buy one of those six piece deals four walls a roof and a floor with a small refrigeration unit . Mostly for June thru august but I know darn well we’d have crammed them in there and been in a situation where we had it filled and needed to get Uhm done before killing anymore . Actually it’s not hard to build one from scratch . Make a not to large box building of maybe 8x8 inside insulate it well I’d do it with white styrofoam then cut a window to fit a medium size air conditioner and you’re good to go . That would work well where your dog kennel thing is beside your house Mike .

Aging in a walk-in cooler has been a tremendous solution for our processing. A 12,000 BTU air conditioner and a CoolBot set at 37F. Fired it up mid September for moose and bear and it’s been running ever since. Located in daylight cellar with adjacent processing room. Solved so many issues and vastly improved our quality. We’ve always considered game processing “part of the hunt”, now it’s an enjoyable part. Yuengling seems to be the amateur butcher’s beverage of choice (not sold in Maine) so we rely on friendly southern smugglers

Craig, that’s the plan. Frame up, insulate, add an air-conditioner all in a corner of the lower pavilion. Already have electric in there so no biggie.

I suspect if I had to deal with Bullwinkles or elk I’d have to rethink my practices a good bit . I used to drink one Bass Ale for each deer I killed after I’d finished making them into edible portions . Now since Bass was absorbed by AB they no longer see fit to import it into the USA .

I have read ad nauseum about hanging and aging deer and meat. I got a doe a week ago and the temps overnight in my barn were 34 and during the day in the shade were 40, she hung 5 days until it warmed up. Issue of course is skinning the damn things but I always hang and if I can't, I quarter it, wrap and place the hunks in a spare fridge for 1-2 weeks. I also hang pheasant, grouse and woodcock as long as I can. They do make little meat aging units but dang they're like $5,000. I have hung deer in temps up to 50 for 3-4 days without any issue at all. Try it, you'll like it. Of course my barn is north facing and in shade mostly and stays cools with air flow. The longest I've hung a deer was 15 days and it was fantastic, the weather was perfect. This will not be settled on this discussion I promise that. The non-hangers are close minded : )

I killed a rather decent 8 point buck the first day of the season a number of years back in the Poconos , temp that week never got above 15 . The morning I killed it I had it up in a tree behind the cabin within two hours of pulling the trigger and I’d say it was froze solid when I tied it off . Took it down five days later to head back to VA and it was a block of ice so to speak . I needed to use a hammer handle to get the hide off once back in VA . I caped that deer out to do a shoulder mount as well , without a doubt that was the most difficult skin/cape job I’ve ever done out of 370+ deer and ten bear ! Close minded perhaps , but you know not of what you speak until you put yourself in each individuals shoes .

I would think I wouldn't have to tell you NOT to freeze the damn thing solid Craig.

You’ll need to talk to the man above on that one :rotf: I will say that Pocono buck had some of the largest backstraps I’ve ever removed from a carcass.

:rotf::rotf::rotf::rotf::rotf::rotf:

Call me close minded
 

Each to his own,

Our deer are generally undressed within 3 hrs of being harvested, and deboned and on ice within 6 hrs.

We’re fortunate to be able to have the nice area to make this happen, our deer don’t hang other than when being skinned, works for me

Ours go to one of the local processors ASAP. Which processor is determined by what they make and what we're in the mood for.

Down here getting them butchered on the average is about $160ish . I used to take them to a country butcher shop if someone wanted one processed . A lot of times I’d kill a deer and give it to someone and they’d ask me to take it to this shop . Anyway if the deer was skinned it saved them I think $10 and when you brought it in skinned they’d immediately hang it in the cooler , if you brought it with hide on they’d stack them up on the back deck and skin them that evening so I always took them in skinned if for no other reason then they’d get hung in the cooler right away .

I've seen places that charged MORE if they were skinned than if they weren't. They said it was because almost everyone who brought them in skinned left hair stuck on the carcass.

Stan, most places around here charge more for skinned deer due to the fact that most guys don't take care of the carcass and it goes to the processor with more hair and dirt on it than if it's left with the hide on. One processor will not accept any deer before the second week of November and they only want deboned meat unless you want a hindquarter smoked.

Usually once a year several down here will put a bunch of boned venison together and someone takes it up to an older butcher shop run/owned by a German family . We’ll get them to make several types of sausage , kielbasa and some other stuff . I asked a couple times if they complained about the meat because every now and then we might have a hair or two on some of it . The guy I asked told me the old man they take it to commented what we brought was cleaner than anything he got from his PA customers :cool:

Back in September I enjoyed some venison sausage that had been made at a deer processor near Neeses, SC, which is about an hour from me. It had no greasiness at all, and had really good cheese bits in it. It was cased sausage, and was precooked. All it needed was to be heated up good on the grill. It was vacuum packed and i surmise it was pre-cooked using the sous vide method. It was out of this world, and I intend to take at least one doe to them at the end of this season to have made into that sausage. No telling what it will cost!

We’ve gotten hot dog looking things that have cheese in them . I’m pretty much smoked dogs or some kinda kielbasa stuff . Guy that’s works on the farm across the road from me has a butcher shop at his house . I understand he makes deer bologna , deer Slim Jim’s and a bunch of other stuff . I’ve heard good things about his work but I’ve not had anyone do a deer for me in twenty years . The stuff that comes from PA I’m usually given some because I throw in a good portion of what they take .

Got the call yesterday to pick up my deer today. For a cut, grind vacuum pack and process 10 lbs of maple sausage, 10 lbs of country sausage, 10 lbs of hot dogs and 10 lbs of "trail bologna", the bill is $180. That's darn good!!

No steaks or backstraps?

Mike that was a good deal. A buddy of mine took his deer to PA to a processor a few years back, I won't name, and he got 80lbs back (supplemented obviously with pork or whatever) and his bill was $450. What!???

Wow $9 a pound ! If I had a typical year and let’s say killed ten that processing bill would be to rich for my blood hell one at that price is to rich for my blood . My biggest expense is freezer bags .

But you only kill small doe and buck of the year so you won't pay that much. :whistle:

Backstraps, tenderloins and burger with their own beef fat added. He is a beefer farmer. No steaks. We had a whole hind 1/4 done up in minute steaks from the buck I killed. Sammy doesn't like venison steak so I don't bother. Gave another doe to our daughter and her hubby and donated one to Hunters Sharing the Harvest.

Had trail bologna so far and it is deeeelicious!! Sammy has to shoot a deer so we can have more made!!

I'm sure I know that processor. :shock:

$450 for 80# is $5.62 per pound on my calculator

Yep the calculater in my head needs a new battery I think.