Blogging Again . . . In the Catskills

Well, I have decided to start blogging again. Who knows how long it will last. Since my last post, I have graduated from college, found a job, and moved to a new region. I believe it was 2008 when I took up hunting again. That was in Washington, a place I had never hunted before,  pursuing an animal I had never hunted before with a weapon I had never hunted with before. It was a steep learning curve, to say the least, but I justified the time and energy and expense with the belief that the rewards (meat in the freezer) would eventually come once I gained enough familiarity with the area and the quarry. Then after two years, just when I was starting to gain some confidence--I moved, all the way to New York. 

This time the learning curve was not as steep. I had hunted whitetail before and was familiar with the tactics for doing so. Plus, I could use my gun. Still, I invested considerable time scouting the new area to learn its ins and outs. Over the course of three years, I switched between hunting public land, to participating in the various components of the Cornell Deer Hunting Program, to hunting private land, and then a combination of all three. In short, I never really got my bearings with the land and the habits of the deer, though I did manage to take a couple deer. Had I stayed, this would have been the year that I felt comfortable with the area and I would have been able to script a pretty solid game plan. Then I got a job. 

Now I'm in a new region: the Catskills of New York. And so, I start the cycle all over again. It's a process I truly enjoy, but it is also very time consuming. And if history is any indication, it doesn't bode well for filling the freezer. I have always regretted not blogging about my experience of learning how to elk hunt. There were so many fresh thoughts and experiences and insights that have now slip my mind. It is a bit of a pity. And so, not wanting to make the same mistake twice, I figure I'll document my experience of learning to hunt the Catskills.

I have no justification for including the picture below. Just that  I almost stepped on the fellow while scouting, and I'm not quite sure what to make of sharing the woods with this new predator. At the very least, can't have a blog post without a picture, right?

Mushrooms

It's been raining for the past couple weeks and that can only mean one thing: mushrooms.

I generally do most of my foraging at the Finger Lake National Forest. There's no particular justification for this preference; it just happened that when I first moved here the FLNF is where I went and now it has become somewhat of habit. I've done alright there with fruits and berries, but the mushroom harvest--save some Chicken-of-the-Woods and Oysters--as been lackluster at best. 

So I decided to explore some more options. Yesterday I headed up to Yellow Barn State Forest. It has one snowmobile trail through it but lacks hiking and mountain bike trails, which I always view as a positive. 

I took Maizie, who was asleep for most it, so I couldn't cover a lot of ground (she refuses to ride in any type of backpack so I have to carry her). Its got a good mix of Oaks and Hemlock, a stream or two, and some open field areas. And for what its worth, its got a nice feel to it as well. 

Sometimes I have a tendency to walk to fast in hopes of covering more ground. The thought is to walk fast until I see some mushrooms and then slow down and search the area more thoroughly. It almost never works; I usually just walk right past them. Good thing, then, that I have Maizie to slow me down. I always find good stuff with her for this reason.  She forces me to stop and then I begin to notice some type of foot laying just underfoot. 

Yesterday was no different. I found some boletes while stopping to give her some water and what I thought was my first cauliflower mushroom (Yay!), but it turns out is something else I can't id. In fact, my "All That the Rain Offers" book is missing some I can't even id the boletes. 

What I thought was a Cauliflower. Oh the joy! And the subsequent disappointment!

It was almost too cute to harvest. I believe these are the "choice" boletes. They sure smell choice!

Easy to see why I likely walk right by so many mushrooms. It took me five minutes of sitting in the same area before I was able to see this mushroom about five yards away. 

Don't know what this is but it looks scary so I left it alone. Curiosity kills the mushroom forager. 

Maze after waking up from her nap and finding herself in a forest. Must be a cool experience.

That's A Deer Season

Too much wind and swelled rivers made for an uneventful last day of hunting. Deer season is officially over. I have to say I'm happy it is over, it was consuming way too much time and beginning to feel jobish. 

In all, it yielded 75lbs of meat from two deer, a four point and a small doe. I'm not sure how far that will take us, but I suspect at least into summer. We generally eat about 3lbs of venison a week, so some quick math says it will last till July. We'll see. Hopefully I can add some fish, small game, and/or a turkey or two to the freezer to supplement the deer meat.

All in all, not a bad season. Next season should be even better. I should have at least two private properties to hunt and I'll have priority to reserve my spot at Cornell Plantations (due to shooting the doe). On top of that, I have the deer patterned in 2 of the 3 properties I'll hunt. That means less scouting and more hunting.

My kid, who now comes a little past my knees and loves venison, next to the freezer. The freezer is 3.5 cu. ft, about perfect for what we need. 

With the deer pelt from my first deer, which I hope to tan once the weather gets warmer, nearly fills the freezer. I guess there's a good side to everything. In this case, not taking a third deer has allowed me to store the pelt of the first. 

Last Day

The special Deer Management Focus Area season in Tompkins County will conclude tomorrow. That will be it for deer season until October 1st. I'll be hunting Lick Brook until about 11 and then I'll have to turn it in for the season.

On Sunday, I hunted Frost Ravine for the first time. Had a big doe within 60 yards, but passed on the shot due to a little confusion over the property line. Kind of regretting that decision now. After checking the map, deer was clearly within the property line. Always best to play it safe though.

So tomorrow or bust.

Update: Just checked the weather, which shows 30 mph winds for tomorrow. Terrible for deer. I'll try not to be lazy and stay at home.

Butchering Deer in My Apartment

Like most butchers, my butcher charges a flat-rate fee per deer. In this case, $65 per deer for the basic cuts. If the deer weighs 40lbs, it costs $65. If it weighs 240lbs, it still costs $65.

The first deer I took to the butcher this year yielded 50lbs of processed meat, so a little more than a dollar per pound. I can live with that. But the last deer I killed barely weighed 50lbs dressed (i.e. with the guts removed), and I just couldn't justify taking it to the butcher for that price and the meat it would yield. 

If I had a garage, I would simply process it myself. But I don't. And I don't think my neighbors or landlord would appreciate me hanging a deer in the yard. Still, I wasn't about to pay $65 to have it processed.

After a consulting a friend, we decided to take it to his friend's farm, quarter it, and then process the quarters in my apartment. He tried to convince me to do the whole process in his basement, but dragging a dead deer into an apartment complex in downtown Ithaca and butchering it in a communal basement just seemed like a really, really bad idea. So we drove out to his friend's place.  

It was well past dark when we arrived. The barn, long ago abandoned, lacked lighting of any sort. With flashlights in hand we hung the deer from the rafters and  began to strip the skin from the carcass. I'm sure from a distance it was a sight to behold: two guys skinning a dead animal hung from the rafters of an abandoned and darkened barn.

It has been nearly 15 years since I've last skinned a deer and to say I was a little rusty is an understatement. Worse yet, I have never quartered a deer before. Although my friend was slightly more experienced, he also admitted to not knowing exactly how to quarter a deer. I have heard nightmare stories about novices ruining the majority of the meat simply by making the wrong cuts. As we stumbled through the process, without much clue as to what we were doing, I worried we would be left with nothing more than a pile bones and a rotting carcass. 

But persevere we did! in about an hour's time we had the deer quartered and loaded back into the truck, with each quarter resting in a game bag and then placed in a large cooler. At the apartment, I carried the cooler to the porch, made a run to the local grocery store for freezer paper and cling wrap, and returned back home just short of 10:00 PM. By 1030, I was ready to start cutting, only I had no real clue on how to go about doing it. So I started doing Google searches, piecing together information from websites, blog posts, and Youtube videos on how to process a deer.

It went better than expected, although it took much longer than I originally anticipated. I would bring in a section from the porch, unwrap it, and then Google something like "process front quarters deer," referring back to the webpage as much as needed. At 6AM, I put the last package in the freezer, cleaned up the kitchen, and laid down on the couch. I had a hunting spot reserved for that morning and I told myself I was only going to take a half-hour nap, but 
it had been 25 hours since I last slept and I didn't wake till noon. 

I did the back straps and rib cage first. It seemed to take forever and maybe yielded four, one pound packages--leaving me feeling ill once again for shooting the deer. 

The shot must have hit the stomach because the entry and exit points in the rib cage were filled with half-digested stomach contents, leaving me unsure of what meat to keep. Ultimately, I played it safe. If it smelled bad, I threw it in the scrap bin.

I did the front quarters next. The bullet exited from one of the front shoulder (it was a quartering away shot). After reading some articles, I decided to keep everything whole as shank and roast. I figured this is the best use of the meat since the deer was so young and the meat would be tender. Plus, I don't have processing equipment. 

The shank and roast from the front leg that was shot. I was able to piece everything out simply using the fillet knife shown and, in a few cases, some elbow grease. As you can see, the front legs didn't yield much either. At this point, I had determined to never again shoot another small deer.

I know it's not the biggest, but something changed in me when I lifted the back leg out of the bag and set it on the cutting board. It had a heft to it that the other parts were previously lacking. 

After some Google searches, I determined the back leg should yield five roasts. Luckily for me I have some magic up my sleeve, because both back legs yielded about seven roasts a piece. That's fourteen roasts! I was only able to determine the sirloin, which I believe is at the bottom left. All the others are labeled "roast, top, round, chunk, etc."

All and all, not bad.  I've finally learned how to overcome the spatial constraints that an apartment presents (answer: quarter it somewhere else!). And gained some processing confidence, too! It is pretty self-explanatory. Next time, I'll likely just debone the deer in the field and process it at home again. No sense paying the butcher if you can do it yourself.  

New Knife

I'm experimenting with various knife set-ups. My father always carried a fixed-blade Buck knife that went about eight inches from tip to tip. Until recently, I just assumed having a knife of that size was necessary for gutting and skinning deer. Then I watched a video by the Montana Game & Fish Dept. that shows how to gut, quarter, and debone a deer in the field. The guy used nothing more than a small pocket knife for the entire process. That's a huge advantage for people who hike into remote areas, where every ounce feels like a pound by the end of the trip or means you have to carry less of something else, such as food or medical supplies. Currently, I don't have to worry about that since I'm rarely more than a mile from the truck, but hopefully that changes when we move back west and I get to hunt those big wilderness areas again.

That raises the question, just how small of a knife can be used without sacrificing performance? 

I had read about a guy who uses a "taxidermist's scalpel" with exchangeable blades to gut, quarter, and debone elk. At the time, I really didn't know what he was talking about but it recently occurred to me that I may use something very similar in my profession (pictured). 

So, I decided to give it a try. And it worked, somewhat. I was able to gut the deer no problem, but it wasn't sturdy enough to get the rib cage open. It also worked for skinning the deer, although probably not the most efficient. I used my fillet knife at home to debone, so not sure if it will work for deboning. My fear is that the blade is simply to small to accurately find and follow the bones and too inflexible to work around them. For the entire gutting and skinning process, I used one blade and it still has some life in it.

The advantages are obvious:

1) it is extremely lightweight 2) it fits in the license holder that I wear on my back, meaning I never have to worry about forgetting my knife, and 3) the blades are extremely sharp and also exchangeable, meaning I never have to worry about sharpening blades or carrying a sharpening stone with me. 

The disadvantages are that it is inflexible and may not work well for deboning and that its not very sturdy, which I'm guessing is only helpful for opening the rib cage. 

There are tradeoffs to everything, but if I can get a little better at using this knife I see no reason for lugging around a larger one. 

They can be found at any art store and have a variety of different blades.

Between the Shot & the Truck

Took down my second deer of the season last Saturday. Like my first deer, I shot it with my 12-gauge at Cornell Plantations' Lick Brook Conservation Area. It was a small doe. I contemplated not shooting it due to its size, but it was the first day of the newly-minted antlerless season in Tompkins County and, well, the deer was antlerless. So when the deer offered a quartering-away shot at 40 yards (ironically, the upper end of my range with that gun), I leveled the sight and squeezed the trigger. I expected the deer to drop instantly, but it just hobbled quickly over the hill, leading me to believe I had made a poor shot.

The land isn't but twenty acres, and I worried a bad shot would have me tracking a deer across property boundaries, which would involve a long process of contacting landowners to gain access to their land. The standard wait time before you start tracking is twenty minutes and then possibly longer once you see the blood and determine the quality of the shot. At the  twenty-minute mark, I started creeping slowly toward the deer. I figured there was a possibility of a jump shot once I crested the hill, but as I did so the deer lay dead not more than 15 yards from where it stood when I took the shot. 

I have heard the popular reaction of people who approach near spiritual heights at this moment, thanking the deer for all that it will bring them and all that nature has brought them and the opportunity to share such a special moment with loved ones and yadayadayada. I call bullshit. The only feeling I've felt these past two deer is pure utter sadness and guilt--the kind of guilt that makes you sick, not puking sick like that kid up in Alaska did when he shot that moose in that movie, but sick enough to make you feel dirty. 

It was smaller than I had originally thought, maybe eighty pounds undressed. A kid, not yet a year old. Even it's facial features looked youthful. I had justified the shot on the basis that it was an antlerless season, and that the objective of such a season is to obviously take an antlerless deer to reduce the herd. It also fulfilled a Cornell's requirement to harvest an antlerless deer. And now, all I could think was what a miserable excuse that was to take a life and how I would never shoot a deer just to fulfill a requirement again. But what's done was done. So I got out my knife, slit open the belly, and started tugging and slicing at organs.

With the guts out, she couldn't have weighed but sixty pounds. If not for the fear of getting shot, I would have just slung her on my shoulder and carried her out. I dragged her by the front legs, her head pinned backward by the forward motion, bouncing on and off rocks and slight undulations in the ground. At one point, her head got stuck between two small trees and rather than bend down to free it-- I simply gave her legs a good clean jerk and she popped free. As I approached the truck, a pair of hikers pulled up. They obviously saw that I had a deer, but I didn't want to drag her into the lot with them there. It's just a tough sight for non-hunters to take in. So I retrieved a tarp from the truck, wrapped her in it, and carried her the remaining ten yards to the truck. It was a fitting end--me heaving loaded body bag into the back of my truck, mildly embarrassed and ashamed.