jesselp
11-19-2018, 08:41 AM
I know that for some of you country folk this will seem like no big deal, but having grown up in New York City this is a new experience for me, and one that I have worked towards for quite some time.
Yesterday afternoon, I shot a deer.
15 years ago, as a resident of NYC, I jumped through the hoops to buy a shotgun and try hunting (my first gun, BTW). Going hunting was always a pain in the butt for me - it involved long drives out of the city, and paying a lot of money to a guide, and over the course of 15 or so years I never saw a damned thing while I was in the forest - either with a guide or without. And I spent an awful lot of time and money trying.
This summer we moved to the Hudson Valley to a few acres abutting state land. Going hunting was no longer an all-day affair. I could sit in my stand for a few hours if I wanted to. And yet all of archery season, nothing. Lots of deer on the trail camera, but nothing to shoot.
This afternoon was the second day of gun season, and I went to my stand around 3:15. About an hour later I hear something and sure enough, there is a doe walking in the woods, but her location was not safe to shoot. So I watched, and I waited, and I watched some more. And then she walked into an area where I knew I could take a safe shot. I placed the crosshairs where I wanted them and slowly squeezed the trigger - nothin. The safety was on! (there's a lesson here that this board has been preaching for years about defensive pistols with safeties - when the adrenaline is pumping, you might forget to take it off safe!) My placement was off, likely due to a rushed shot after I took the gun off safe - the slug destroyed her liver, not her lungs. But she went down as soon as she was hit and never got up, so I count that as a clean kill. It's the largest thing I've ever killed, and the only mammal bigger than a rat. The field dressing process was significantly less gross, but more time-consuming, than I had expected.
And now, at almost 46 years old, I have harvested my first deer. While the rest of the carcass is hanging in my shed, I turned the heart into Hank Shaw's Jagerschnitzel from the book Buck Buck Moose. I had no idea what to expect, and boy was it rich, but it was delicious. I can’t wait to see what else I can make!
(Long story short, after 15 years of trying, I killed a deer and ate its heart for dinner. That's probably normal for some of you, but to me it seems kind of bad-assed.)
Yesterday afternoon, I shot a deer.
15 years ago, as a resident of NYC, I jumped through the hoops to buy a shotgun and try hunting (my first gun, BTW). Going hunting was always a pain in the butt for me - it involved long drives out of the city, and paying a lot of money to a guide, and over the course of 15 or so years I never saw a damned thing while I was in the forest - either with a guide or without. And I spent an awful lot of time and money trying.
This summer we moved to the Hudson Valley to a few acres abutting state land. Going hunting was no longer an all-day affair. I could sit in my stand for a few hours if I wanted to. And yet all of archery season, nothing. Lots of deer on the trail camera, but nothing to shoot.
This afternoon was the second day of gun season, and I went to my stand around 3:15. About an hour later I hear something and sure enough, there is a doe walking in the woods, but her location was not safe to shoot. So I watched, and I waited, and I watched some more. And then she walked into an area where I knew I could take a safe shot. I placed the crosshairs where I wanted them and slowly squeezed the trigger - nothin. The safety was on! (there's a lesson here that this board has been preaching for years about defensive pistols with safeties - when the adrenaline is pumping, you might forget to take it off safe!) My placement was off, likely due to a rushed shot after I took the gun off safe - the slug destroyed her liver, not her lungs. But she went down as soon as she was hit and never got up, so I count that as a clean kill. It's the largest thing I've ever killed, and the only mammal bigger than a rat. The field dressing process was significantly less gross, but more time-consuming, than I had expected.
And now, at almost 46 years old, I have harvested my first deer. While the rest of the carcass is hanging in my shed, I turned the heart into Hank Shaw's Jagerschnitzel from the book Buck Buck Moose. I had no idea what to expect, and boy was it rich, but it was delicious. I can’t wait to see what else I can make!
(Long story short, after 15 years of trying, I killed a deer and ate its heart for dinner. That's probably normal for some of you, but to me it seems kind of bad-assed.)