It starts with leaving a warm bed on a cold morning. When the overwhelming majority of your friends are only halfway through their night’s rest or maybe even just winding down to hit the bed, that’s when you get on the road.
At 5 a.m. Saturday morning, cruising through your vibrant town that lives for the night makes you think that perhaps it’s all an illusion. There were never people there. There can’t be. Because now on this crisp Saturday morning, long before the sun has risen, all their young souls lie in rest.
Who chooses to get their groceries this early? I do. And thus, my multi-day “grocery trip,” as it were, continues.
When I arrive to the land of opportunity, I strike off with only the essential equipment necessary to complete my task. Oh, the strange fears found wandering through the woods in the dark! Each tree becomes a bear. Every shrub becomes a man. Every scurrying nocturnal beast leaves me a little unsettled.
Squeezing its way ever so methodically, the sun begins its warning. Having missed my turn on the trail, I must use instinct alone to find my stand. The pressure of the pending sunrise pushes me more recklessly through the woods; until there! I spy my hide in the sky.
Up to this point I’ve waded through a maze of dark brambles and bushes, but the true challenge, climbing the icy stand in the darkness, is my final test before I sit.
Twelve feet? It’s not that high I tell myself as I dangerously hang off the tree, trying to negotiate with a questionable branch how I will get to the other side. I can see the seat. And as I maneuver around the tree I land safely to the arse-busting metal grate that I will sit on for the next 4 to 5 hours. Let the cold settle begin.
Try not to move. I challenge you.
This is where some sort of primal patience that is all but lost in our modern world must be conjured.
Patience, my friend — when was the last time you very consciously and thoughtfully practiced patience?
A single deer hunting season is possibly the longest that anyone will wait for some ground chuck or sausage anywhere in the first world.
I once watched my grandpa walk about 20 feet in 30 minutes. Yes, he was old. But his lethargy was due to the fact that he was ever so precisely approaching a squirrel that we needed to bag to have squirrel pie for dinner. This is patience!
So now I sit in my adulthood, with hopefully more resolve than I had at age 9, waiting for a deer to amble past my stand.
The morning is a crisp, cool one. In autumn, deer go through their rutting phase — an intense display of sudden sexual frenzy. Coincidentally, this is one of the best times to see a mature buck with large antlers foolishly gallivanting through the woods. Something about a doe that wants to breed makes bucks lose their mind and the majority of their logic driven cortex. I’ve also found that deer are more active on cold days.
I see a doe running about 100 yards to my left. A little suspicious, so I keep my eyes on the line of her trail. As if prescribed, here comes a young buck following her trail. He is too young for my liking, so I let him pass.
I hear some movement behind me. I turn very slowly. A beautiful, young 8 pointer is sniffing and checking a scrape he has made. I decide to pass on him as well.
Shortly thereafter, a doe walks about 20 yards in front of me with her yearling in tow. They seem a little wary. Once again, a small buck is following their trail hoping for a good time. I pass on all three deer.
By 8 or 9 a.m. it’s not quite so cold, I’ve thawed out, and I’ve passed on about seven different deer. At this point I feel a twinge of regret on passing on all the deer I have seen, but mainly, I feel fortunate to have witnessed such a wondrous, natural display.
BOOM! From the down the road the signal sounds. I wonder if my comrades have bagged their fancy. My patience starts to seem irrelevant as I hear two more shots.
Around 10:30 a.m. my legs are stiff, my butt is cold, and the deer have stopped moving. I decide I shall tender my resignation. I stand in a wobbly, uncertain fashion, and after another awkward dance between gear, tree, stand, and fool, I am back on the ground. I cautiously sneak my way out of the woods in case of a run-in with some late morning deer.
As I approach the other hunters and vehicles, I remove my cartridges and accept my defeat.
Luke killed 2 does. Ryan killed a small 8 pointer. Robert slept in.
I congratulate them without hesitation knowing that I practiced restraint, a skill that’s perhaps more difficult than spotting a deer or killing a deer. But for each man, his obligations to provide differ — Luke has a large family, it’s Ryan’s first hunt this season, and Robert always chooses sleep over sustenance. But I have only to feed myself and my wife, and we have a few packs of meat left over from the previous season. Thus, the process is extended.
In the middle to late portion of deer hunting season my willingness to simply observe deer weakens and my lust for a successful hunt intensifies. I’ve done my fair share of watch and wait, but as I see my freezer’s innards increasingly diminished, I feel the urge to offset it.
I believe that if you head to the woods with the intent of killing any beast, then you might as well be a songbird watching. You will not see the animal that you came to hunt. The first and last thing you will see is your car. I swear to God.
So I head to the woods with little ambition other than to enjoy a glorious sunrise on an unusually balmy November day. I sit on a high ridge crowned by an oak-hickory forest. The chestnut oaks and white oaks seem to have dropped a wealth of acorns, the perfect diet and attractant for white-tailed deer.
My stand allows me good visibility of the entire ridge and optimal mobility.
To my right I catch a glimpse of a brown flash and a subtle noise. No squirrel moves so quietly or conservatively. I raise my binoculars and scan where I saw the flash. It’s a small buck. I’ve decided I am not shooting any small bucks, so I continue to watch through my binoculars. He seems a little preoccupied with his surroundings. He is not alone. I then see several more shapes materialize. A yearling makes itself known. Then just behind the yearling a long nosed mature doe cautiously steps forward. She is a beautiful specimen and precisely what I am after.
I raise my gun and pick out the cleanest opening in the undergrowth that she is walking towards. She slips into the opening, and I take the shot. Bam! The woods are brought to life! Deer that I couldn’t even see are running in every direction. My targeted doe stumbles down. I know that I have made a clean shot and now my multi-day quest is fulfilled.
I must now be quick and thoughtful so that I waste nothing. I am thankful for the opportunity to have harvested an animal that will provide me with 40 to 60 pounds of lean meat for the next year.
Field Cleaning, Cleaning, and Meat Preparation
The beast lay at my feet, a picture of a distant past. My purpose and goal of the preceding weeks is finally laying at my feet, and coincidentally, a more time-intensive and time-sensitive portion of my process has begun.
When you have harvested a large animal there are several options on how to proceed. The first is the simplest: you take the animal to a butcher (or in this case a “deer processor”). I’ll be the first to agree that you may be able to handle the hunting and harvesting of a deer but not the butchering itself. And that is quite alright, innumerable professional deer processors can be found on country highways throughout the Southeast.
Butchering your own deer is not for everyone. However, this is the option I generally prefer, which of course is doing it yourself.
Hopefully harvested with a clean shot, I walk up to the doe on the ground. I approach from its rear just in case. It appears that I have successfully and thoroughly harvested the animal.
Now for the following paragraph, I suggest that only medical students and hardy Americans continue reading.
I make my primary incision in the inner thigh of the deer, thus puncturing the abdominal cavity without puncturing any organs that would spoil the meat. I run two fingers into the incision, and with my hand facing upwards and my knife cutting from inside the abdomen, I run the knife the length of the abdominal cavity to the sternum. Cutting from the top through the hair would quickly dull your knife and doesn’t allow you to control what you might cut down into. It’s also key to use your non-dominant hand as a guide and barrier between the guts and the knife. If all goes well, nothing in the abdomen has been shot or punctured. Next, I cut through the diaphragm to the chest cavity. The heart, lungs and vital organs are found here, and for an efficient kill, they should be thoroughly disrupted. With care not to puncture anything, I remove the vital organs, the abdominal organs, and the digestive tract. At this point, I have effectively field dressed the animal.
If you are lucky you get to field dress the animal in the daylight, otherwise, you may find yourself doing this whole process in the dark. And in case you are wondering, I have transported a field dressed deer in a sedan, mini-van, SUV, small truck, and luxury vehicle. A large truck being necessary for hunting is a redneck legend and most simply an excuse to buy a beautiful, big truck.
The next step is to skin and quarter the deer. This is easiest and most sanitarily done somewhere you can raise the deer from the ground and with access to a hose. It is generally easiest to hang the deer by making an incision in its hind legs between the bone and the large tendon. I skin the deer from the rear legs down to the head. This can be hard work without the assistance of a wench — no pun intended.
Once the hide and head are removed, the animal finally looks like the carcass that you might imagine hanging at a butcher’s. I simply start cutting away from the carcass in steps by removing the backstraps, the tenderloins, the shoulders, neck meat, the roasts from the hind quarters, and all of the good pieces for grindings found all over the body.
I generally prefer to keep the backstraps and tenderloins whole. They are wonderful steak like cuts that are best grilled or pan seared. The roasts that are removed from the hind quarters are great for a crock pot slow cooked roast. The majority of the other meat goes into the grinder for sausage and burgers.
I walk through the woods. It's cool and beautiful in its early blues and blacks. This is a unique feeling, like Whitman says, "the feeling of health...the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun." I see myself, as an old man, taking my time and doing this again and again.
Story by Gresham Cash
Photographs by Jodi Cash