Anything for a Buck

The morning after Gabriella's sleepover, Mark got up at 4:30 in the morning (yeah, you can bet he wasn't happy about the midnight gigglers) to go deer hunting. He has gone deer hunting every year for six years straight. It's tradition. He starts growing his beard for it in September (no beard this year, however: he's in the Branch Presidency, and has to look presentable on a weekly basis, much to his sorrow). Last year, he took Hyrum with him and went elk hunting in Utah for two weeks. Always an enjoyable experience, never yet a return on his efforts.


But this year, Mark got his buck. He even got a respectable 7 point buck (for those of you on the other side of the Continental Divide, here in Missouri, they count all of the points, not just on one side). Now, I have to be honest. I'm a corn-fed city girl. I like my meat dead and completely unrecognizable before it gets to me. I'm not sad at all that we've gone six seasons with nothing to show for it. I don't even know how to cook venison, except to make stew (thanks to my Vernie friend, who taught me how to make it taste like yummy beef stew). But I married a guy who likes his meat darned near raw, and it's best if he knew it personally before it died. So, I knew this day was coming.


Anyway, Mark got his buck first thing in the morning (7:30, I think he said), and then promptly got the van stuck in the mud. Some friends with a burly pickup truck pulled him out, and then another group of hunters with an even bigger and burlier truck helped him get the deer and load it. When he brought the buck back to the house, the girls wanted to see it up close. I snapped a few pictures, and then Mark was off to Ed's house. You see, Ed has a workshop with all the necessary gadgets to process the deer. So Mark and Ed spent the better part of the day making venison steaks and venison roasts and ground venison. Now my freezer is full of meat I'm not sure how to cook (any suggestions?). But I'm not complaining, because I would MUCH rather have it in my freezer than hanging from a tree in my yard! He even cleaned out the back of the van with bleach so I didn't have to smell dead deer whenever I go somewhere in the van (still have to get the mud off, but I'm waiting until after Deer Season is over...) And I'm sure I can find a good wild game recipe or two online if I really wanted to.


The season is young yet. Mark still has two doe tags to fill. He was out there in the cold and wind just this morning, 12 feet of the ground in a deer stand. Didn't see anything, but that won't keep him from going back again tomorrow!