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Whitetail POI...... What’s your intended Target?
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<blockquote data-quote="nicholasjohn" data-source="post: 2103389" data-attributes="member: 109113"><p>I agree with you about thinning out the does. I used to hunt with a couple of sugar beet farmers in northwestern Minnesota. We shot a ton of deer, mostly does. We shot big bucks, too, but the vast majority of the deer hanging from the loader bucket were does. Their thoughts were that the mama does, each with a fawn or two, mowed down just as many of their precious sugar beet tops as the biggest buck, so stack 'em up, boys. ( They each had a shirt-pocket full of depredation tags, and party hunting is legal there. ) </p><p></p><p>We shot a lot of monster bucks ( some of which dressed out well over 200 pounds ) and we always hunted the first week of November - when they are rutting. When we first started doing this hunt, we were all young men, and nobody could take much time off work. A few of us flew in from distant parts to hunt with these guys, and we didn't want to leave them with a dozen carcasses hanging. So, we skinned & butchered every evening, from the very first day on. We had a four-day season, but we usually filled our tags in the first couple of days, then cut meat for two days and then everybody went home. We ate a lot of venison while doing this, and it was nothing special - kinda chewy; sometimes a little strong tasting. The big bucks sometimes tasted pretty rough. So did some of the does.</p><p></p><p>My old friend Buster, who I used to hunt with when we were growing up back in western Pennsylvania, asked me why we don't do it like we did there. We would shoot them in the two-week season that started right after Thanksgiving, and if the weather was cold enough tolet them hang, we wouldn't butcher until the week before Christmas. This was perfect, and the meat was <strong><em>much </em></strong>better than what we had been eating on our Minnesota hunt. "These guys don't want to it that way." I told him.</p><p></p><p>Well, after a while, we all got pretty senior on our jobs and could take more time off work and do it right. No more hurrying; just hunt for two or three days and spend the rest of the week cleaning up the animals. This left us more time to sleep on the nights when we were going to tramping around in the field the next day, and we also could play a little euchre in the evening after we put the knives away on skinning & butchering days. So, we started letting them hang for a few days. It started with a big old warrior buck that Mikie shot on opening morning. I suggested that we just wash out the body cavity and forget about it until we were done stacking up does, and he said OK. We cut that one up last, after it had hung around five days. Everyone agreed that it was the best tasting animal in the bunch, including some puppy-size fawns that somebody's young son had let the air out of. ( Fawns in that far-northern area weight around 100 pounds.) </p><p></p><p>That was when they all agreed that these two yokels from back east had a good idea about hanging deer to age them. Even just a few days helps, but longer is definitely better. If conditions are right ( or you have a meat locker in your barn ) two to three weeks would be PERFECT. ( Leave the hides on so the meat doesn't dry out and harden off.) When they hang that long, you can take out the backstraps with just your hands, rather than fillet them off with a blade. You do sometimes need to cut the tiny tendrils about every two inches that come of the spine, then the whole backstrap just falls right off the carcass into your hands. It's a beautiful thing, and the dark color of the meat is entirely different than what you're used to seeing. They will be so tender that you can cut it with the edge of your fork, without any strong flavor whatsoever - <strong>even the big bucks with the thick necks. </strong> Try it and see. </p><p></p><p>Where I live now, we shoot blacktail deer in 50 degree weather. There's no hanging in that kind of weather. I'm going to get ( or build ) a cooler to age my deer carcasses in. Somebody makes one that I saw on the internet, but I may be able to put something together myself that will do the trick. It wouldn't need to be much bigger than a telephone booth - maybe twice that size for two deer to hang in. It could be taken apart and stored in the off-season. The best temperature is around 38 or 39 degrees. Hopefully somebody will see this post and chime in about portable deer cooling lockers. There's bound to be a few guys out there who has experience with this.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="nicholasjohn, post: 2103389, member: 109113"] I agree with you about thinning out the does. I used to hunt with a couple of sugar beet farmers in northwestern Minnesota. We shot a ton of deer, mostly does. We shot big bucks, too, but the vast majority of the deer hanging from the loader bucket were does. Their thoughts were that the mama does, each with a fawn or two, mowed down just as many of their precious sugar beet tops as the biggest buck, so stack 'em up, boys. ( They each had a shirt-pocket full of depredation tags, and party hunting is legal there. ) We shot a lot of monster bucks ( some of which dressed out well over 200 pounds ) and we always hunted the first week of November - when they are rutting. When we first started doing this hunt, we were all young men, and nobody could take much time off work. A few of us flew in from distant parts to hunt with these guys, and we didn't want to leave them with a dozen carcasses hanging. So, we skinned & butchered every evening, from the very first day on. We had a four-day season, but we usually filled our tags in the first couple of days, then cut meat for two days and then everybody went home. We ate a lot of venison while doing this, and it was nothing special - kinda chewy; sometimes a little strong tasting. The big bucks sometimes tasted pretty rough. So did some of the does. My old friend Buster, who I used to hunt with when we were growing up back in western Pennsylvania, asked me why we don't do it like we did there. We would shoot them in the two-week season that started right after Thanksgiving, and if the weather was cold enough tolet them hang, we wouldn't butcher until the week before Christmas. This was perfect, and the meat was [B][I]much [/I][/B]better than what we had been eating on our Minnesota hunt. "These guys don't want to it that way." I told him. Well, after a while, we all got pretty senior on our jobs and could take more time off work and do it right. No more hurrying; just hunt for two or three days and spend the rest of the week cleaning up the animals. This left us more time to sleep on the nights when we were going to tramping around in the field the next day, and we also could play a little euchre in the evening after we put the knives away on skinning & butchering days. So, we started letting them hang for a few days. It started with a big old warrior buck that Mikie shot on opening morning. I suggested that we just wash out the body cavity and forget about it until we were done stacking up does, and he said OK. We cut that one up last, after it had hung around five days. Everyone agreed that it was the best tasting animal in the bunch, including some puppy-size fawns that somebody's young son had let the air out of. ( Fawns in that far-northern area weight around 100 pounds.) That was when they all agreed that these two yokels from back east had a good idea about hanging deer to age them. Even just a few days helps, but longer is definitely better. If conditions are right ( or you have a meat locker in your barn ) two to three weeks would be PERFECT. ( Leave the hides on so the meat doesn't dry out and harden off.) When they hang that long, you can take out the backstraps with just your hands, rather than fillet them off with a blade. You do sometimes need to cut the tiny tendrils about every two inches that come of the spine, then the whole backstrap just falls right off the carcass into your hands. It's a beautiful thing, and the dark color of the meat is entirely different than what you're used to seeing. They will be so tender that you can cut it with the edge of your fork, without any strong flavor whatsoever - [B]even the big bucks with the thick necks. [/B] Try it and see. Where I live now, we shoot blacktail deer in 50 degree weather. There's no hanging in that kind of weather. I'm going to get ( or build ) a cooler to age my deer carcasses in. Somebody makes one that I saw on the internet, but I may be able to put something together myself that will do the trick. It wouldn't need to be much bigger than a telephone booth - maybe twice that size for two deer to hang in. It could be taken apart and stored in the off-season. The best temperature is around 38 or 39 degrees. Hopefully somebody will see this post and chime in about portable deer cooling lockers. There's bound to be a few guys out there who has experience with this. [/QUOTE]
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