Here is my most recent article from The News Journal.
I am occasionally asked what I do with the deer I harvest during a hunting season. Assuming that I had a productive season and actually harvested game that produced venison for my freezer, it’s easy enough to just say, “I eat it.”
However, after fielding the question again this week, I realized that it demands a more detailed response. Many people truly don’t know what hunters do with the meat they harvest, so allow me to explain.
An adult Delaware deer typically weighs anywhere from 110 to 210 pounds, but most tend to fall somewhere in the middle. For a 160-pound deer, less than 40 percent of the animal’s weight is edible meat because much of the weight comes from organs, bones and hide. Using this example, a hunter would get about 60 pounds of venison for his or her freezer.
Just like beef, a butcher can cut venison into various steaks, chops, tenderloins and roasts, and can grind the meat like hamburger. Offering more variety and making the meat of a single deer last even longer, some deer processors and specialty butcher shops mix the venison with beef or pork and produce Italian sausage, kielbasa, Slim Jim-like deer sticks, bologna, jerky and other types of fresh and smoked items.
I make a concerted effort to ensure the game I harvest is eaten, but my family can eat only so much deer. Therefore, rather than letting any meat spoil, I readily give venison away to friends and neighbors. On more than one occasion, people have offered to pay me for the venison I give them, but I politely decline and inform that it is illegal to sell or buy any meat from a deer harvested in Delaware.
Another way of ensuring my deer harvest is eaten is by preparing various venison dishes and sharing them at the game dinners I attend each year. Many hunt clubs and other sporting organizations hold annual dinners where hunters celebrate the end of the hunting season by sharing their harvests, recipes and hunting tales.
The game dinners are frequently potluck events, where venison is represented on the menu in the form of traditional dishes — like grilled steaks, bacon-wrapped tenderloin and southwest chili — and in some non-traditional dishes — like orange-glazed venison medallions, venison fajitas and sesame-crusted venison skewers.
As an ethical hunter, I am aware of “all that meat” I have in my freezers. I take frequent inventories and adjust my hunting accordingly.
Most importantly, I follow a rule that one of my hunting mentors taught me: Limit your kill, don’t kill your limit. It just doesn’t make sense to harvest more deer than you can use.
