Unfortunately, I have a wedding next weekend and won’t be able to get back to the woods until mid October, and it’s driving me nuts! Until then, I’ll be hunting vicariously through you guys.
im going to do what I can to hunt Friday, weather looks great! as for right now, drinking home made wine and eating fried crappie perch left over from last ice season
Let it ice age dude if you kill one. Let it sit on ice till the next weekend and don’t push yourself through the week to get it processed. The meat will be fine and you’ll thank your self later.make sure the ice is topped off and the drain is open on the cooler.
I meant more from the perspective of track, gut, quarter. I believe the current rules in WI are that we cannot transport deer across county lines without removing head and spinal cord to prevent the spread of CWD (don't quote me, rules change every year). Couple hour deal to go from releasing an arrow to inside of a cooler. I am fortunate to have a lot of opportunities for does so if it's not the perfect scenario I usually pass. The Sunday evening hunts are usually reserved for bucks only.
If you’ve got the space for it in your basement/garage a cheap top-freezer style refrigerator works great for aging and they’re pretty cheap (you can often find them on Craigslist/fb marketplace for under $100). Just skin and quarter it then put it in the fridge and process it a quarter at a time over the course of the week. The key to the fridge is you want one with wire shelves instead of glass, which means you gotta look for the ****tyist most inexpensive brand possible. Anything other than the most absolutely basic of fridges is gonna have glass shelves and **** like drawers and veggie compartments and you don’t want any of that for aging deer because it blocks airflow. If it includes an ice maker then it’s probably too fancy (although one that’s “ice maker ready” is a bonus. That’s what mine was so I got an ice maker, removed all the shelves from the freezer, and built a sheet metal ice tub that fills up the entire freezer compartment. Buying bagged ice is now a thing of the past). You can also make some additional shelves for it using wire closet shelving material from Lowe’s and make it so it will easily fit 3 to 4 quartered does at once. I like to wait until after the season is over to do all my grinding. I’ll age the quartered deer for 5-7 days then break down the rear quarters into roasts/steaks and cut up the front quarters, neck, and rib meat so it’s ready for grinding then put it all in the deep freezer. When the season is over I’ll set aside a weekend for grinding and sausageing then right before bedtime the Thursday before I’ll pull out all 6 deer worth of grind meat and put it back in my aging fridge to thaw. That timing works out perfectly for me because by Saturday morning the meat is the perfect consistency for grinding… it’s thawed just enough that you can pull it apart and get it fed into the grinder, but it’s still semi-frozen so it stays cold enough when you grind it that it doesn’t gum up the grinder. Doing all the grinding at once is almost a necessity for me because NC deer are pretty tiny. If I did the grinding and sausageing one deer at a time it wouldn’t be practical to do something that uses a lot of meat, like summer sausages. I prefer to use all the cuts from the rear quarters for roasts and steaks and I like to use 4” casings for summer sausages (keeps them from drying out as much in the smoker). If I did them with a single doe from this area and only used the meat from the trimmings plus neck, ribs, and front quarters I would only get like 2 summer sausages and that’s a lot of work for 2 sausages. Plus it saves a lot of time overall since a significant amount of the time involved in grinding and make sausages is actually spent just getting everything set up and prepped beforehand and getting everything cleaned up when your done.
Was hoping to hunt this front on Friday, but the Mrs has planned some family stuff. I have PTO end of Oct then will get some time in beginning of November depending on how October goes
Well I unfortunately will not be bow hunting this weekend. My mother in law always overplans stuff when we come home and then I’m the bad guy when I hunt. Even my wife is frustrated this time which is surprising. I will try for two hours to shoot a doe with the rifle with my son. I have the first week of November with my bow already set up, and then 2 weeks at Christmas I will get out. I now have a work trip to Missouri the first week of December I will go 3 days early so I can hunt then as well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
All of us have been where you are man. Priorities first. Without the family I promise you there would be a lot less hunting even though it may not seem like it at times. Some of the biggest bucks ever killed were taken on a split second decision to hunt or a day they thought they would never see anything. Don’t sweat it, there is still plenty of time.
I wish my cell cams are showing tons of large does just ready for the freezer but I won't get out for aboht2 weeks
I leave next Friday or Saturday ( still making my mind up on which day ) for northwest Missouri. Will be hunting all next week there. Mathew’s ( Halon ) is shooting good. Broke the string on my crossbow.no clue what happened. I installed some lighted NAP nocks and the string would go under the nock when I pulled the trigger. Totally bazaar. A couple times with that happening and the string was toast and broke. Im gonna put an old string on it if I can not find a new one. Hoping to have some bone on the ground by this weekend or next week for sure. We need to get some points on the board.
was having some weird flight with my arrows and couldn't fix some fletching contact with cables. Just stripped by wraps/fletchings and will be putting on a slightly lower profile vane, going with AAE Hybrid 23. If they don't work its not that much work to either go back to Max Hunters, or do a 4 fletch with the Hybrids or try something completely else. Color options were thin, guessing on time of year/season. Going to be bright, flo yellow wrap with "fire orange" vanes. Should be able to see them
I'm in a tree. Been a while. Anniversary yesterday, buck was here. If he does it again hes in deep shiz.
Agree we need some points! I get to get out first week of November then the last week of November then Christmas week Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Amen to that ! I’m headed to Missouri on Friday to put some meat on the ground next week. We have cut beans and standing beans. Should be the best of both worlds.I’m shooting the first big nanny that comes out !
I had plans to go but its looking like a complete wash out for me. Rain Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Might make a possible day trip on Sunday, we'll have to see.
