The OFFICIAL 2015 Bambi Whacking Picture Thread

[outrider58]

I cooked up two deer hearts this year and for both I just cleaned them up, trimmed the fat and connective tissue, then cut them into roughly 1-2" squares. Then I tossed them in olive oil along with salt and pepper, and proceeded to pan sear them in a smoking hot skillet to put a nice sear on the outside and leave them medium/medium-rare on the inside. Ate them along with the tenderloins and the flavor was the same, but if you overcook the heart it will get chewy in a hurry.

I'd never cooked deer hearts before and no one I was cooking them for had eaten one, but everyone said they liked it and would eat it again with the exception of the squeamish 14 year-old who saw me preparing them. The 4 year-old (whose mother is a vegan) thought it was great and kept asking for more.

I had mine Sunday night for din-din and it was absolutely delish. At the last minute of cooking I like to drizzle a little balsamic vinegar over it to finish it off. It browns it up nice and gives it a nice little tang. Definitely, if you're willing to try it, treat the outer skin as silver skin and remove it as Mickey the Dragon did.

 

[remrug]

Yes I did. Looks great and is extremely warm! If anyone else shoots a fox and wants a hat made, Fox trapper does great work.

I was hunting in a stand that overlooks a pasture this morning.A couple of does came out and I dropped one in the field.I walked over the hill to get my jeep.It took all of 5 mins to get to the jeep and start driving to get my deer.When I crested the hill there was a fox already chewing on my deer.It didnt even notice me.I could have stopped and shot it but remembered hearing the landowners mother saying how she enjoys watching the foxes around the farm.How that fox found the deer that quick is unbelievable

 

[mark71211]

Yes I did. Looks great and is extremely warm! If anyone else shoots a fox and wants a hat made, Fox trapper does great work.

Got a pic of the hat?

 

[namrelio]

Pretty mild delicate taste. I've had it right out of the deer and into the skillet and it's the best that way but not always possible, to say the least. Like I do mast of my whole meat venison, I soak it in just plain water over night. Do not add salt. It will only make it tough. Add salt and pepper as you cook it.

I've been eating deer heart all my life. I ALWAYS soak it in salt water with ice cubes. Don't know why, just always did. The next one I get, hopefully this year, will not have salt in the water. Can't wait to try it. Thanks for the tip.

 

[outrider58]

I've been eating deer heart all my life. I ALWAYS soak it in salt water with ice cubes. Don't know why, just always did. The next one I get, hopefully this year, will not have salt in the water. Can't wait to try it. Thanks for the tip.

Try a little vinegar in the water next time. It helps tenderize.

 

[gc27]

Got a pic of the hat?

Not a great pic, but the inside is leather and the entire hat is soft to the touch.

 

[aray]

Two ‘fer

As before my day began at o’ dark hundred – 0250 to be exact. Our destination for my third hunting trip ever was the Wye Island Natural Resources Management Area for a lottery hunt. For those of you who read my write-up on my previous hunt, you’ll remember that in my stupor of only about 3 hours of sleep the last time, I accidentally set off the burglar alarm – waking up the whole household. This time I taped a note to the front door before I went to bed (otherwise known as a “short nap”) so that wouldn’t happen again.

I’m glad I didn’t have to drive. My friend and hunting mentor Joern agreed to pick me up and we got to Wye Island at about 0515. We were joined by Andreas, a novice like me and a third member of our hunting party. By 0550 I was at my tree.

I should add here that Joern had scouted the area out for our entire hunting party and preselected the tree for me. That was good news and bad news. The good news was he selected an excellent tree in an excellent spot. The bad news was it was about a mile hike into the site, and upon arriving I was unfamiliar with the surroundings. Coupled with a heavy fog that morning I could see no further than a 20 yard radius from the tree.

I seem to have an innate knack for putting the climber on the wrong side of the tree. As the sun eventually came up and the fog even more slowly burned off, I was dismayed to see that yet once more I was facing in exactly the wrong direction. The climber was facing the Wye River, which was OK, but I could clearly see a well-worn deer trail with scrapings off to my extreme right. Being right-handed there was no way I could take that shot. So once again I was faced with the dilemma: Do I try to rotate the climber around to a better position, now at-height and now with gun and backpack at-altitude, or do I stay put? Also, if I move do I do this during dawn deer rush hour or do I wait? As before, I decided to wait a few hours (rightly or wrongly) then rotate my stand to better cover the more likely ground.

The early morning hours passed without much activity. I had only the squirrels playing to keep my mind off the freezing cold. About an hour after I rotated the climber, I was bored and cold. Even so every 15 minutes or so I’d call out with my deer caller, alternating buck grunts and doe bleats. It was 10 o’clock. About 5 minutes after my last doe bleat, I was looking off to my right. Nothing was going on other than a few squirrels, and I was wondering if this would be like my very first hunt – a day out in the cold with nary a deer in sight.

Half asleep as I scanned back over to the left I was stunned to see – a deer (!) only 30 yards away. Even though I wearing amplified hearing protectors I never heard her coming despite her close proximity. I was amazed.

And, unfortunately, I was a bit startled. My first and to date only other deer had come slowly walking in and I picked him up from a long distance, giving me plenty of time to track him, plan, and prepare my course of action. This time I have to admit I let myself get a bit rushed. Was it a doe or a buck? I only had an antlerless permit and had to be sure. Would the deer bolt? It was really close and looking right at me. Could I get my shotgun into position without being noticed? In addition to that I had just installed a new gun cam. Could I get the lens cover off of that and switch it on with minimal movement, or should I concentrate on the deer and forgo any video? Everything was racing through my mind simultaneously.

Quickly I pulled off the lens cap, switched on the gun camera, and placed the lens cap in my left jacket pocket. The deer lowered her head and began to graze and walk to my left. The gun was pointing straight up and I had to rotate it down onto the target. Almost as soon as I got her in sight she cleared some branches that had been obstructing my view. I’m not sure I did my respiratory pause in my haste this time, but I had a clear sight alignment, flipped off the safety, got front sight focus, and squeezed the trigger.

"Down goes Frasier! Down goes Frasier!" Whoops, wrong narrative…

Traveling at 2,000 feet per second, 90% of mach two, the 12 gauge 300 grain Hornady sabot slug closed the 30 yard distance in only 45 thousands of a second, slammed into the deer broadside, and completely knocked her off her feet. She never got back up again. The shock was devastating. No blood trail, no tracking; she wasn’t going anywhere. Laying flat on her back she kicked her legs in the air for only a few seconds before she lost consciousness and passed out.

Well that was a successful hunt I thought. I flipped the safety back on, turned off the gun cam, replaced the lens cover, rotated the gun, and lowered the butt end down to the floor of the tree climber.

I glanced back over to the doe I had just shot and – another deer! What the heck? It was standing over the one I had just shot, sniffing it. Huh? Didn’t it hear the shotgun blast? Didn’t it see the deer fall over, thrash her legs, and die? Why is there a deer still anywhere in the area, much less standing beside the one just felled?

Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, I quickly began the sequence all over again: take off the lens cap, turn on the camera, stow the cap in my pocket, pull up the gun, and rotate it into position. Where’s the deer now? It’s gone! Oh there it is, it had wandered off behind a nearby tree and was grazing. No way I had a shot where it now stood; I had no choice but to wait until the deer emerged.

Soon enough out it came, walking almost exactly where the previous deer had been before, only perhaps two or three yards closer. Once again I squeezed the trigger, once again the shotgun roared to life, once again the deer was knocked completely off its feet, and once again the devastating shock ensured it would never get back up.

Two deer in a span of no more than four minutes start to finish, and three deer total in only three trips into the field. I was grateful, knowing full well that having multiple opportunities in such a short period of time was beginner’s luck, seasoned of course with superb rifle training from the Appleseed volunteers.

Although the Wye Island lottery reservation was for an all-day hunt, in my mind I was done. Joern’s car that he had graciously driven that day was small, other members in our hunting party might bag deer, and I had to clean a deer for my first time and not just watch Joern.

I stowed the gun, repacked my backpack, began the climb down the tree, then immediately ate the small lunch I had packed. Between the cold and the adrenalin surge of the double deer shots, I was suddenly very hungry.

After getting the rest of my equipment packed up and ready to go, I walked over to where the deer fell, and about that time Joern and Andreas showed up. That’s when I found out that watching videos on YouTube and watching Joern field dress a deer is a lot simpler than actually doing it yourself. In struggling to clear the anal area I never did really get it completely detached, but I did manage to turn that entire area into hamburger. Likewise I didn’t sever the esophagus so much as I destroyed anything in the general area. It looked so easy when someone else was doing it…

Fortunately as I was slicing and dicing my way through the big doe, Joern decided to use my smaller second deer (which turned out to be a button buck) as a demonstration to Andreas on how to field dress a deer correctly, and not like the butcher hacking up the first one (yeah, that would be me.)

That’s when the next problem came up. We were a mile-ish into the woods, I had a heavy loaner steel tree climber, not to mention my backpack and shotgun, and now I had not one but two deer to drag out over that long distance. I tied off the button buck to the climber, strapped on my backpack and grabbed my gun, and struggled to drag the smaller of the two deer several yards down the path before becoming completely exhausted.

That quickly being shown to be infeasible, we decided we had no choice but to make several trips – each one a mile-ish in or out. Fortunately at the parking lot another hunter told us a deer cart was available at the ranger station, so that saved us some of the back-breaking work that otherwise would have awaited us.

A picture is below, as is a short video that I edited together and posted on YouTube. I hope you find them of interest.

My thanks to Joern and Andreas without whom this day would not have been successful.

 

[Overboost44]

What a great story to go along with your trip. Love the camera and footage. Congratulations. Yum, deer jerky. You have some good story telling skills there Aray.

 

[Speed3]

Awesome read and the video tops it off. Congrats!

 

[protegeV]

That is quite the story.

If I ever get around to hunting and get something the story will probably be a short sentence and maybe include a meme or 2.

 

[redneckhunter]

what kind of camera where you using?

 

[engineerbrian]

Thats awesome Ray. Dropping them in their tracks side by side...love it!

 

[hi3cho]

Great story Aray, I will check out the vids when I get home. As a new hunter, it was good to read.

 

[aray]

what kind of camera where you using?

I used the ATN Shot Trak HD Action Gun Camera and attached it to my barrel with the UTG Universal Shotgun Paintball Single-Rail Barrel Mount with 3 Picatinny Slots. Unlike the GoPros it has an integrated 5x magnification - otherwise the subject would be too far away to see anything of value.

Reminder: if you buy something like this from Amazon, don't get it from amazon.com instead get it from smile.amazon.com. You can have them direct up to 1% of the price to a charity of your choice, to include the NRA, SAF, etc. It's completely free and thus does not add anything to the sales price of something you wanted to buy anyway.

 

[protegeV]

Wow. Just watched the video. Very nice

 

[iH8DemLibz]

That's how to do it.

 

[qorban88]

Great example of a good hunting tactic. Deer will often become curious over their downed partner. My father always taught me to wait 30 minutes before going after a deer. To make sure they're dead and you don't push them, and for this reason. Nice work.

 

[HogCommander]

Job well done aray and thanks for the story/video!

 

[protegeV]

Reminder: if you buy something like this from Amazon, don't get it from amazon.com instead get it from smile.amazon.com. You can have them direct up to 1% of the price to a charity of your choice, to include the NRA, SAF, etc. It's completely free and thus does not add anything to the sales price of something you wanted to buy anyway.

Damn, not sure when they changed it, but I JUST NOW noticed that it is now only .5%

 

[outrider58]

It's all there, Ray. The trepidation, worry, fear(of something done wrong). The insecurity of relying on unseen intel. Wondering if maybe, should I have...or am I ok. The angst of waiting on the sun, always wondering... The surprise, the shock. Flying high in the clouds of adrenaline and then wallowing in the bottomless pit of depression. It's a true mind screw, deer hunting. It's as much mental as it is physical. Triumphs and losses. It's more than just ''gathering meat''. To a true deer hunter, at that moment, it is you, in the center of the universe. However the fleetingly moment endures, it is the very core of being a deer hunter. And the reward is the ''mess of success''.