We hunt cook when in season and I tried to cook up a youngster. It tasted aweful! I don't know what I did wrong, I boiled it to get the fat off, then baked it in a sause to try to tenderize it. It had an bad smell and the taste turned our stomaches.

I offered to try again with the coon but I was told "NO" so I let it go

We've gotten pidgeon, crow (don't know why , deer, turkey, squirrel, wild and tame rabbit, fish, turtle, quail and dove. We also butcher our own beef and rabbit, raise our eggs. I don't buy much meat, just pork and chicken, and occasionally eggs when the girls are being skimpy The weathers been good, they are going out more and hiding them.

Jacki, and other hunters,

A Fish and Game Cookbook, free on Amazon as of today. Sometimes these deals only last a few hours, but it has a number of good reviews and the price is right.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C4ULOVI

I been fishing since I was five and hunting since I was 18. Not a deer hunter. I just don't like the sit and wait style of hunting. Soon deer season will be over in SC and I'll be hunting small game then turkey in the spring. I do it for the time to be outside and not for the diet and you're right it does cost some money, much more than you save. Hunting or fishing for food is different than for enjoyment. The guy standing on the bass boat is out for enjoyment. The guy sitting on the bank is out for food.

Got one deer a few weeks ago. Going back to camp on Monday. Love the quiet and solitude of the deer stand and take a camera so I can get something to enjoy later even if the buck I want doesn't show up.

Outstanding.

Find a public hunt forest. Get a small game license and a Ruger 10/22 then take shots at squirrels. While you're doing that hang bits of trash in the trees and shoot at them on the way back. It helps with range estimation which is the hardest shooting skill. A lot of urban / suburban people go into the woods and think they're one with nature until they actually try to hunt. Then they realize they've been kidding themselves. PA people are deer, deer, deer and people coming into the craft as adults think that deer hunting is somehow the only kind or right kind of hunting. Squirrels though are how most hunters actually learn.

YES! Shooting is almost anticlimatic. I wish all non-hunters realized this.

Three?!?!?! That SOB! In SC we have only a four week spring season but get five tags. I've never needed all five and I typically hunt 15 mornings.

"Find a public hunt forest. Get a small game license and a Ruger 10/22 then take shots at squirrels. While you're doing that hang bits of trash in trees and shot at them on the way back. Be sure to pick up any trash you hung or shot at and pack it out with you when you leave said public lands. After all, who wants to see a Native American cry, right? Right??

Also, be sure you know what species of squirrel you are shooting at. Learn to properly identify and only target those your local Fish & Wildlife department has clearly designated as "invasive non-native species" in your area. Don't use native species for the sole purpose of target practice since they tend to be threatened in status already thanks to loss of territory/habit to said nasty invaders.

Actually, come to think of it, don't target and kill any living animal just for target practice. Ignore that bit of advice. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it. That's what shooting ranges are for of course; to learn how to zero and shoot a target. The only time it is okay to target and kill even invasive species "for practice only" is when you apply for and are picked/permitted to participate in such a program your local F&W created to specifically address invasive non-native species."

Fixed that for you.

Shooting ranges are great but they do not get anyone ready for the timber. Trying to look through moving leaves, listening to all the noises and figuring out if its a squirrel or a dog. What if you just ding the critter, seeing the blood, hunting it down while Its racing through the timber on 3 legs. Can you stomach it? Or if you hit it the first try and kill it right there, are you man enough to skin it or are you going to start crying about how you killed this innocent animal.

This is not meant for any one in particular, just general.

We hunt, I am used to it, it sometimes is not pretty. At one time everyone had to hunt, there was no stores to buy it from, if you shot it you skinned it.
When I shot my first deer. my husband handed me the knife and told me what to do, there was no room for being squeaming.

Ya, I can read the PMS coming out in me tonight LOL

I hear people talk about how they can't handle the idea of hunting, but they don't like farming either but oh ya, they do eat meat. Irritates the hell out of me.

I just finished canning up rabbit, all of my breeders got an upper respritory infection and I had to cull 15 of them and more will follow this week. I didn't throw the meat out, I canned it up in chilli, want not waste not.

I got my hands on some beef fat (tallow) and rendered it and canned it. Most people cut that off their steak and throw it away (thankfully not folks here)

I canned up pumpkin and roasted seeds, most folks are going to be running to the store in the nest week wanting to buy pumpkin pie filling already canned up for them.

We have otten lazy, we have learned to not be able to stomach blood, we suddenly develope morals on killing animals but we've been eating them for thousands of years.

Hunting is natural, its actually insintual if we havne't been brainwashed out of it. We hunt, not shoot up the timber. Shot gun deer season is about to open for us (Iowa) and we will have 3 tags to use up. We usually group hunt, a group of people walk through the timber and spook the deer out into the open. Others are waiting hopefull at a good spot and hopefully shoot them as the deer go by. Not an easy feat because the deer are not walking and usually jumping something right when you shoot.
I hear all the time people commenting how they would like to have a few packages of deer meat. Really? Did they hunt? Skin and gut it? Carry its huge body back to the truck?

Its really no different than the store, they want it packaged and ready to go. Peaple expect the hunters to give them meat all packaged and ready to go. No muss no fuss.

Except I'm in the mood to fuss tonight.

I don't hunt, but we do raise rabbits for meat.

A really good book for beginning hunters is "Call of the mild: learning to hunt my own dinner" by Lily Raff McCaulou. Actually, it's a good book for anyone!

I didn't even know it was broken.

I don't expect everyone to understand. I don't worry about the squirrels morally or ecologically. There will always be plenty of squirrels. They make rabbits look like nuns.

From the Amazon description:
But Raff McCaulou's perspective shifted when she began spending weekends fly-fishing and weekdays interviewing hunters for her articles, realizing that many of them were more thoughtful about animals and the environment than she was.

Truth. It's because we have to be. If we don't have higher quality interactions with nature then our hunting trip turns into a hiking trip.

Anybody can "see a deer". Not anybody knows where the deer bed, where they go on first light, where they feed, where they breed, where they rest, where they feed again, the social calls to each other, how they move against the wind, what cover they like, etc. etc.

So I'm cruising through Amazon and I find "Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time "
Here is an excerpt, "I lean forward and look down the rib of the shotgun toward the red dot at the tip of the barrel, and position it on the head of the bird only a few yards away, my hands shaking, my heart feeling almost certainly too large to fit in my chest. I wait for my breath to become at least a bit more steady, I squint, and then I slap the trigger."

Can't practice that at the rifle range.

The big thing I saw missing was the part where you go home and make squirrel soup. Yeah, you could clean up the junk, too.

In a few weeks my freezer will be full of venison and whatever you call bear meat from my Dad's yearly hunting trip.


I really should get my license next year. You can hunt a five minute's walk from here. A friend came up deer hunting his first time. He got a big doe his second day out. Learning to shoot accurately enough to humanely bring down a deer isn't the problem, it's keeping from freaking out when you have the opportunity. He had a lot of advice from my Dad, too. Doing something to mask or minimize your scent seems to be important. He had lots of opportunities, he saw four deer in the two days he went out. Very often, you'll see absolutely nothing. I spent a couple hours helping him carry the doe out to where we could get the atv's, so he's giving me some of that venison, too.

The adrenaline rush is overpowering sometimes. Memorizing the ballistic tables is easy. Catching your breath and steadying your heart is tougher. Accurately estimating range is tougher still. Knowing you may have only 15 seconds to take the shot makes it tougher still. Doing this well while jacked on adrenaline is the toughest part.

The old disabled guy who collects brass for recycling at the shooting range I go to has a great plan. He planted junipers where he can see them while watching TV in his recliner. When a deer walks up to eat the junipers, he slowly opens the sliding glass door and takes his shot. He doesn't have much trouble with adrenalin or catching his breath. If he hits him, he drives his riding lawn mower down and drags the deer to a processing station down the road.