Picked my spot for my first hunting experience

blgoode

blgoode

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Oct 3, 2003
Messages
7,140
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The place where the above dark image is is the yellowish square dear the blue square *deer stand location. The lighter blue is the creek not on our property but a source for the deer none the less. . My uncles land is in red, and my grandmothers is in blue. There are more trails not marked in green but I did notice it seems the trails hug the brush and foliage that is present in the fall. For cover of course and the old rusty wire fence sort of created a natural direction of travel as there are tons of scat all over in the green areas. I have had many deer signs are images taken from every portion of the land where I have narrowed down there traffic areas. Basically I stopped with the green traffic trails as they criss cross all over. I just mainly tried to get the main ones figured out when there was a brief snow in Feb. and now I am seeing if any movement has changed. By the scat I basically just have to pick a spot and see what happens.

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This shows the creek area I circled in light blue.

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You can see that there is more open area on the road just outside of my grandmothers property closer to the actual creek.

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not a bad thing as they should be using the more brushy area near my stand that looks like this somewhat.

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Last December and January I got tons of movement up and down the cut out gas line. I am hoping I can just catch a few going to get a drink :)

This guy would be nice....
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but I'll settle for the meat :)

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Very nice..glad to see your putting in some time before the season. A lot of the guys I hunt with don't...yet are surprised year after year when they dont see any deer (yet alone kill one).

Keep up the work...it will pay off :thumbup:
 
Is that a satellite or aerial photo with topo lines superimposed on it?.....And if so, where did you get it? I want to have something similar for my property.

Thanks
 
I got it off a GIS website. Look up your county state and gis in google.
 
Cool! I've been meaning to give hunting a try. What kind of knife are you planning on?
 
Nice to see someone doing their homework !! They do change their habits according to food available. Are there nut trees in those woods ? They taste better stuffed with acorns too ! Make sure you immediately dress out the deer , butcher it and get it into the freezer.
 
Going to use top blue knife in this picture.

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Plan on using my .30-30 as no shot over 40 yards I don't think.

Will have the top right black handled knife as my back up knife. Gotta have 2!!! :)

Gut where she or he lay and drag up to truck. Deer processor is conveniently about 15 min drive. Maybe 10 min up the road.

I may get a gambrel and skin and quarter it myself but I keep saying.... I have to take it to butcher anyways. Have not decided as doing it all has a certain I did it my way feel.
 
We stopped gutting deer a long time ago, we skin em, cut out the back strap, both front shoulders, the neck meat and the two hind quaters and toss the rest for the cats and yotes. All your missing is the tenderloins, now that is a great little cut of meat but the effort isn't worth it espeacially if your skinning several at a time. Also to the inexperienced, tired, careless, etc, the risk of busting the gut sack, intestines, bladder, etc and seriously damaging the meat is not worth the risk. The risk reward equation there is just too out of whack.

After you have it skinned out don't rush the meat to the butchers if you can hang it (if you gut it) and if not find a place where you can openly store the meat at about 40 degrees for a week or until it starts to turn a dark rich purple kinda like red wine and then butcher it.

If that is not an option put it in a ice chest and pack it with ice, drain the ice chest every 8 to 12 hours and continue to pack with ice and repeat draining until the water runs clear out of the chest and the meat is white. If you wan't to really speed this up and have the meat really taste great try adding some vinegar and baking soda to the ice.

Doing either option correctly will eliminate the need to marinate the meat as you can cook it straight up as ground meat for burgers, spaghetti, tacos, meat loaf, etc, steaks, butterfly chops, however, whatever and it will taste like store bought beef. Some people like the game taste but many do not especially the women and kids.

Good luck, I hope you knock a few down.
 
Thanks for the tip Mike. Do you have a source for walking through taking teh meat from the neck and front shoulders?

can I have meat open in spare fridge?
 
Good luck to you! Looks like you're doing your homework and that helps a ton. I hope you make plenty of meat this season.
 
Second question first, yes we have aged meat in a spare fridge just get the setting right we find about 38 or 40 degrees far. works best, have hung deer in walk in coolers for 5 to 7 days. 7 days is pushing it but that meat would cut with a fork, it was like butter and tasted like the best beef you ever had.

Skinning is done with a gambrel hanging the deer from its hind legs just behind the knee. I'll skin it and then take out the back straps first, next I'll hit the front shoulders working down from where I made or close to where I made the final cut to remove the back strap as I started up at the hindquarters and worked my way towards the shoulders when taking out the back strap. The shoulders are easy you don't even have to saw through anything just cut along the chest cavity down towards the front of the chest and then towards the bottom of the chest and it is pretty much going to fall off. After that saw off the leg at the front knee and its good. Sometimes I'll keep a whole front shoulder on the bone and will just stuff it with all kinds of garlic, onions, peppers, through in a pat or 2 or 3 of real butter season it liberally with your favorite and wrap the thing in foil and throw the whole thing on the pit. Im getting hungry just thinking about it and how good it smells.

Anyway back to the topic at hand, after the shoulders are gone I just do the best I can with the neck meat starting at the front of the chest cavity and working down to a point just below the head.

I hope that helps, neck meat is usually good for sausage, we have the sausage made at a buddy of mines meat market. We do half deer 50% and half chicken 50% then we have it stuff with cheese, seasoning and vegatables (the trinity onions, bell peppers and celery) then it is smoked. So all you have to do is put in the pit for about 5 minutes until the cheese starts to run out of the casing. Holy smokes, that is good. Good years when between my Dad I we kill 8 to 10 I'll have 3 or 4 whole deer done in that combination of sausage and we have a couple of game freezers at my office and clients come by like were giving out 20 dollar bills looking for that sausage.

We used to go half and half deer and pork always afraid of the chicken because deer is already so lean afraid it would be dry, but the smoking is what cooks it I'm just heating on the grill so it is UNREAL.
 
mike c has done his homework. i also prefer to skin & not gut, however this usually means having some help to get the animal up in the air, when i hunted idaho we had no choice except to gut & bone in place putting meat in plastic bags in our packs. this was a primitive area with no vehicles allowed, hung meat in deer bags in shade. it's really non-messy if you can skin & then cut meat off body. pay attention to local regulations some friends of mine left too much meat on an elk neck & were arrested. dennis. good luck
 
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