Wednesday, October 3, 2012

What's for Dinner?

Yesterday found me doing something in the kitchen I never thought I would.
I was packaging up cuts of venison (yes deer meat!) to put in
fridge and freezer. And to actually prepare sometime soon.
I had to quickly Google how to cook deer meat.

Deer meat is something so foreign in this house 
(and the house I grew up in), I don't even know what it tastes like.

The aforementioned deer was hunted and shot
(with a bow and arrow!) by this angelic looking child:


Sorry, that's misleading. 
Of course he is now 22 years old, not a child anymore.
Still mostly angelic, except when he is staring down a deer.
I'm just trying to figure out how this cutie-pie could kill a deer.

There have been no hunters in my family that I am aware of, ever.
His father doesn't hunt, and also has no hunters in his family.
Yet somehow our son has been bitten by the Outdoorsman Bug.
He spends all his meager income at Gander Mountain and Cabela's.
It started with an obsession with fishing.
(the poor kid, no one in either family fishes either.) 
He has pursued and learned all this with like-minded friends. 
What his friends don't know, he learns by Googling.

I've spent many late nights packaging up fish fillets that he's brought home.
But somehow, I just wasn't ready for the deer meat.

I know all the pros and cons of hunting. After moving to western Pennsylvania,
where hunting comes second only to Steelers football, I came to the conclusion
that if people hunt responsibly, follow the laws, and do not waste what they kill,
well, I could live with it. After all, there are many many deer in Pennsylvania  ~
starving to death during the winter from a scarcity of food is a far worse death.
And. I'm not a vegetarian. I know a visit to a slaughterhouse would
quickly have me transferring my sympathy to the cattle.
And feeling like a hypocrite if I condemned deer hunting.

But I just thought it would always be one of those abstract ideas,
like you could say in conversation: “I suppose hunting is alright
as long as one hunts responsibly.” And then move on to the next subject.
I never thought deer would be on the menu at home!

Well. I'm off to find a recipe for Venison Stew.
I figure that's a good thing to start with.

 What do you think about hunting?
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1 comment:

  1. I don't hunt, but my husband and dad do and D's teaching our sons to hunt, one at a time. I think it's useful and helpful, esp. deer since they're very populous in a land of suburbs and cornfields, without predators to control their numbers. Plus, I'd rather my family get a deer hunting than pick one off driving!

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