00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number six Tay the show. We're exploring the original and most important reason for hunting food and joining us is acclaimed food author and blogger Hank Shaw. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sick of Gear. Today, as I mentioned a few moments ago, we're discussing the original why behind hunting, and that's food, and our guest, Hank Shaw, is one of the absolute best people to talk to about food and cooking wild game. Now, if you're not familiar with Hank in his books or blog Hunter Gardner, Angler Cook, you're in for a real treat today as we're going to grill Hank on all things related to butchering, processing, and cooking free range, organic wild white tail venison. And I think we're all going to walk away from this conversation with some great new ideas and a mighty big appetite. But before we get into this conversation, and before my stomach starts a grumbling Mr. Co host d and Johnson. What's going on? Fact? I once held the record in Mount Pleasant, Iowa for most trips to the buffet line at a pizza hut. Can you prove that? No? But I have Well I can't physically prove it, but I have some friends who had backed me up on it. How many trips? Was it? Thirteen? And that was I went to That was in between two to day football practices and then I went in practice football and pute. I'm not surprised by that. Yeah, So each one of these trips, is it like one slice per trip? Are you loading up the pla trip mark Mark? Mark Market Mark? I loaded the trip up good good I had. That was back when I had Bitch Tits man like you still don't? Thanks? Thanks? Oh man, that's awesome. So what you're telling me is that you're excited about this episode? Is that? I mean, in no particular order, and depending on what time of year it is, I would say that eating is probably my second or third favorite thing to do. Yeah, we're not gonna explore that list any further, but based on what what what this? This this spring shed hunting? We hit a buffet and you did pretty good? Work on it. Although I've think I held my own with you you did, you know those were back in my days where I was carefree, didn't care about what I looked like or you know, health issues. Now you know I got a you know, trimming back for this trip or going on in um in under thirty days roughly around thirty days. And uh, you know, cholesterol plays an important role in in life longevity. I guess you'd say, so I'm cutting back on the trips. Maybe maybe only seven or eight these days. That sounds like a nice moderate number of buffet plays to handle. I think that's susceptable. I Uh, I thought I was gonna do the same thing, trim up before a trip. You know, I came out here this summer live in the Rocky Mountains for two months, hiking all the time, backpacking, I thought, I told my wife, like, I bet trying to be in the best shape of my life after that summer. Well, I got out of the shower yesterday I was kind of looking at myself in the mare. I'm like, man, I think I gained weight while I was here. Like I've been, there's like too many good restaurants in like just too many temptations here. I you know, back home, I live in the middle of nowhere, but here we're in a little you know, mountain town. There's lots of good food, and I'm always finding some excuse of stuff in my face with barbecue or bison burger. So I don't know. We'll see how it goes. But the most important thing that we need to talk about real quick is you haven't had a chance to, you know, throw any back at me. Yeah, I know this is kind of unfair, Like it's just like you're giving me right hook, right hook, right hook, and I haven't be able to respond at all when it comes to what you're about to mention. I know, right right. So you know, I'm just putting a little asterix out there saying I haven't you know, you haven't had the time yet to go and check your trail cameras. But the trail cameras that I was having issues with two weeks ago, I think I remember us talking about it. They worked fine this last week and one, two, three before mature shooter box showed up on trail cameras five maybe uh this week or this Sunday when I went to go check my cameras, and uh that made me happy. Yeah, I bet they're some nice looking deer too. Yeah. One of them is Mark Canyon. He's back. He's back, and he's a bad son. Agun, Yeah, he's he's Uh. I don't know if he's gonna be near as big as last year, except for it looks like he grew up an entire like a fifth point on his right side, So he's a fot. He's a main frame nine with some junk instead of an eight last night. He's a main frame eight last year. What's your guest? Is he gonna hang around the property this fall or is he in disappear again? He'll hang around, but where I don't know. I mean last year he was on the in the in the i'd say the east central part of the property. The year before he was a on the west side of the property. And and then you know as those come in and out there, you know, chasing them down to different sides of the property. But um, yeah, I don't know. It's hard telling. Now, how close is this spot that you're getting pictures of Mark Kenyan? How close is that camera to your famous neighbor's property where we know that they found his sheds oh, I would say a mile, just under a mile, and that interesting a mile he moved, he's over there, a mile farther away from where he's now when he drops the sheds in the ware. Well, when you dropped in this past year least, Yeah, that's a mile by mile by the road, but as a deer walk, I'd say three quarters of a mile. So yeah, I guess it's not so surprising. Nope, nope, but yeah, I'm I'm I'm pretty pumped. And uh, you know, every day I'm looking at on the maps looking for places to you know, put hanging tree stands, using my historical knowledge of the properties to I don't know, I'm starting to get geeked, man, and I am starting to get geeked. Well, dude, I got a kid, you know, and that's like reality check number one. So as I'm sitting here, you know, I try to sneak down to my computer or look through my tro camera pictures, or sneak out to the garage and you know, tinker with my bow or shoot my bow. I get this constant reminder that, you know, dear, at this time of year, comes comes second. Well I understand that. Now here's a example how geek, I am. Okay, I subscribed to North American Whitetail magazine right but I'm in the grocery store yesterday and I see the new issue of North American White Tail on the news stands, but I haven't got it in the mail yet. Even though I know it's coming to the mail, I know it's going to be there. I don't want to wait a couple more days U till it hits it. So I bought another copy from the news stand, just like a radar right away. Are you having all your mail forwarded out to where you're living? We have been, yeah, but it's delayed and it's just paying the button. So so we'll see if I get in the mail an hour or later or one. But I got my copy now. Yeah. I've been dreaming about it, like aside from the peanut butter and jelly sandwich dream I've had, you know, I've had other dreams are recently just like you know, like me creeping through some corners some tall grass and you know, seeing a deer in the distance, or uh the dream I had like three three days ago, I think, is I'm in my tree stand, I see a truck pull up into the middle of this field that I'm hunting that I can see from my tree stand, and a guy gets out. He's trying to be quiet, but he just drove his truck right near a stand and I started yelling at him. This sounds more than a nightmare. Yeah it was. It was a nightmare, but there was no homicide at the end of it, so it's all good. That is good. One of my one of my dreams is about to become reality really quickly. Okay, in uh one week, well one week from yesterday, I will be in Iowa, returning from my western summer. I'll be in Iowa knocking on doors and scouting velvet bucks in the fields for two nights. So didn't you already hunt? I will. You've found an Iowa before a couple of years ago. Yeah, yeah, okay, so I've been out there, but I'm excited to get back out there now and funnily see some big velvet bucks this summer and hopefully find somewhere to hunt. I'm knocking on doors for two days and begging and praying that someone will let me hunt this fall, So hoping that works out over there on the eastern part of the state, and uh, maybe you and me will get to catch up two. Yeah, I'd love it if one of us tags out and then the other person can come and film the other person. Shoot there, Buck, That'd be legit. That'd be too legit to quit. I agree with that. Let's knock on wood and hope, hope that happens. Um. But now that we of very successfully made both of us want dear season getting even sooner, we do have to get our guests on the phone because Hank Shaw is expecting us to give him a call, and he's going to tell us everything that you and me and everyone else needs to know about effectively butchering and processing and cooking our deer this year. So what do you think should we should we make this happen and give Hank call? My mouth is already watering. All right, let's get Hank on the line. All right? With us on the line now, is Hank Shaw welcome to show? Hank? Thanks for having me. Yeah, we are thrilled to have you on the line. And just before you got on, me and Dan we're talking about the fact that this conversation is likely going to make us very hungry. So if you hear some grumbling here on the other side of the microphone. Just know that that's probably your fault. Well, if here's some chewing on this side of the phone because I'm eating some homemade venicine snack sticks, oh man, now I'm really jealous. Yeah, I don't have enough for everybody. So it goes, so it goes. So a few minutes ago, I told our listeners just a little bit about you and the fact that you've got a really great blog in several books. But for those that aren't familiar with what you're doing, now, can you fill us in on on who you are and what you're doing this related to cooking wild game? Well, it's it's it's kind of an interesting story. I mean, I used to be a restaurant cook for you know, when I was in college, and shortly thereafter, and then I quit one thankless job for another. I became a political reporter of all things for eighteen years. And during that period, the things that kept me saying I mean, if you think about it, my job used to be having people lied to me all day long, which is no fun. And but what kept me saying was the wild world. So it's fishing and foraging and ultimately hunting. And so even before I started hunting myself, which I didn't start as a kid, I as an adult. Um, even before I picked up a gun, people would give me game, and game I found was really interesting to cook and challenging in a lot of ways, because, uh, there's not a lot of wiggle room between great and you killed it in wild game. And and and I decided that this is gonna be something I was gonna try and master. And over the years, I've just gotten better and better, and I still learned things every day, but I've been doing it pretty solid now for fifteen years. Uh. And what I mean solid, I mean I haven't bought meat or fish for the house in almost a decade, and I mean we exclusively eat what we catch. And um, it's funny because I talked to some audiences, you know, notably urban audiences, and they think I'm some kind of a freak mountain man. And then I'll go to places like Idaho or Montana or New Hampshire and I'm like, oh, yeah, we do too. And so it's it's been a really interesting jury me too master this topic, get really good at it. And then to talk to other people who have been doing it for years as well, and and it's it's almost like the board from Star Trek, you know. I mean, we all get smarter by being the kind of a hive mind, and it's it's super cool and super fun and I'm looking forward to keep doing it for as long as I can. That's awesome. Well, We're glad you're doing what you're doing because you know, my wife and myself have benefited greatly from what you've been putting out there in regards to recipes. Several of your recipes have become some of our personal favorites. So and we, like you, have not purchased any meat other than we have bought some chicken, but we've bought no red meat in six, seven, eight years now, So having good, well cooked, um prepared venison is pretty important to us. So thankful that there's guys out there who are better at this than me, who can teach us what to do, which is what we're all hoping you can do for all of us today too. I hope I can help. Yeah, so quickly though, before we move on to the real, the real interesting stuff here. You do have a couple of books out and a blog that I do think that all of our listeners should know about and check out after this. Can you tell us a little bit about that, so that for people that are interested after discussion, they know where to find all of your wild game cooking expertise. You bet. So. I have to cookbooks out. The first one is called Hunt, Gathered, Cook and that was my first book, and that's something of a it's kind of a primer for the whole wild world. It's it's separating into three parts, and the first is foraging, the second is fishing, and the last is hunting, and uh in book form, that's where I have my venison recipes right now, uh and then. But that is kind of a if you're a hunter who wants to get into foraging, or you're an angler wants to get into hunting, It's it's a really good kind of intro book. The second book I have is called Duck, Duck, Goose, and that came out in and that, as you might guess, is everything you could possibly want to know about cooking ducks and geese. U both both wild which is mostly what I do, and also store bought, and both books have done really well. I've been very, very very happy with it. And so. But day to day and weekend week out, I run a website called Hunter, Angler, Gardner Cook and it's basically the home of all of my tips, some essays and hunting ethics and millions of recipes. I mean, I think, without exaggeration, I think I'm pushing a thousand recipes on the site and uh and it's ranging everything from white tails to the wild turkey, to grouse too, fish, wild game, morrel, mushrooms, you know, you name it and if you can't buy it in the store, that's kind of my niche. And that's what I spend literally every day working on. Are are how to get the most out of your wild game, wild fish, and then wild plants and mushrooms and things. That's awesome. Well, like I mentioned, definitely recommend anyone listening check those out. I'm gonna put many of these recipes to good use, and it has uh negatively impacted my physical form, I must say. Well, you see that's why, I guess because you guys are whitetail hunters. I mean, out here in the West, we have to hike like nine miles just to get to the spot we're gonna glass and me and Dan are trying to fix that. We're we're going on an Idaho meal deer hunt this year together to work off a couple of these venice and meals. So there you go. It should be good. So so speaking of it then of getting out there and hunting. You know, our listeners are really serious deer hunters all across the country, and you know we're out there trying to find Some of us are trying to fill the freezers and that's it. Some people are out there trying to target a specific deer. Some people just want to get a mature deer, some people want to get a bunch of doughes, whatever it is. We're all out there trying to kill a deer to fill a freezer and feed our families. Now today, what I really want to do, Hanker, is kind of work through the whole process. So I want to pick your brain about what happens right after we shoot a deer and it's on the ground and we have to start getting it out, And then I want to talk about what we do once we get in the kitchen, if we're going to process in ourselves, and then finally talk about actually preparing it for the table. So from the very beginning. Let's say I have shout a deer, it's on the ground, I'm walking up to it. What are the key things I need to keep in mind when I'm in the field and beginning that process to ensure optimal quality from my meat. Right at the get go. How cold is it. Let's say it's let's say it's November. It's pretty cool. All right, I'm freezing. See you're you're in great shape. You see, I start hunting in the end of this month, and uh, and so where I'm hunting for black tails, it's oftenrees out, so you have a whole different set of problems. But if you're November and it's nice and cold, you have a little bit of leeway. Um, if it's a dough or a small deer, you can actually you could do in your close to where you can get it cold. You can actually just chuck it in the truck and drive back. But if you actually have to haul it somewhere or you're far away from your vehicle, you want to gut it right there in the field. Because you know, once an animal starts dying, once an animal is dead, you know, the decomposition process starts and temperature really affects it. So let's just say it's typical November, white tail country. You got your deer as you would normal. Now here's the first thing you do as a cook. Remember I came at this, you know, whole process as a cook and not as a as a as a hunter. So as soon as you cut that animal open, what spills out You'll notice a very lazy kind of membrane that surrounds everything in the gut cavity and it looks a little bit like a white spider web. That's call fat. And what it is is it's literally a clear membrane that has a skein of fat. And what it does is it kind of holds all the inner organs together. Save it as best you can, like have a zip wlock back. Actually need two or three zip block bags just to keep in your pack. Save as much as that call fat as you can, because it is the greatest thing in the world to cover burgers or meatballs. What it does is it prevents things from getting dried out. And it's really easy to keep if you know to look for it right when you make that cut. So so just to make sure we get this whole piece correct, we we cut it off of the organs or whatever it might be still attached to, put in the zip black bag, get it home, and we can just freeze it in that zip black bag or do we don't need to do anything else to it. When you get home. What you want to do is you kind of lay it out and it'll be uh because it's dear it's dear fat, and deer fat uh sets up pretty hard. Um, you're gonna it should be still pliable if it's not. Sit it in some warm but not hot water to make it pliable. And then what you want to do is you want to basically, if you get a lot of it, you know you're gonna get some or or or or all, depending on how good you are where the animals shot. But at least you should have a bit the size of say, you know, I don't know, three or four ft square and basically make sure it's appliable, put it into maybe two portions. And then what I do is I throw it in a vacuum seal bag and just a vacuum seal it for later. Okay, well, once we get to the cooking set of things, I want to make sure we come back to that and get a little more information from you on how you're actually implementing that in your burgers or meat meatballs too. But taking step back to you know, all right, we're opening up the deer. You mentioned save the call fat. Now continue on wherever you're going, please, the deer is open. Right. So if you said, all right, I got my call fat, that's in my first nip block. And then you know, you pull out the deer and the deer gots as normal. You kind of have a decision to make. Um. I happen to like deer liver, and I happen to like dear kidneys, and I happen to like dear heart. Um. And if I'm close to the house, UM, I'll actually keep a little bit of the lungs. And I'll tell you why in a second. Um. One thing you remember about working a deer. You know, when you're working a deer, it's not very different from working a lamb, or working or a small beef. Uh. And so if you think about all of the different ways that cultures use every part of these animals, it gives you insight into what you can do with your deer. So first thing, take the liver out and put that into pluck bag. Take the heart out, but that is a block bag. Keep the bags open. Well, you're doing this so they can cool off, by the way, you don't want them to steam inside that bag. And I pull the kidneys out because I happen to like kidneys a lot, and they're going to be attached to the back, to the to the tenderloins to pull them out. Um, if you really wanted to get sporty, and I must admit I've only done this once just to say that I didn't. Um, if you're really they wanted to do it, you could pull the stomach out, empty the stomach and use it as a haggas. Yeah. I I don't necessarily you could. I'm not saying that you should, but you could. What's as it's a Scottish dish of m It's essentially imagine an oatmeal. I mean imagine a meat loaf that instead of bread crumbs or bread in it has oatmeal and it's actually quite good if it's made properly, and it's you have to sort of think of it as a meat loaf and not as weird stuff stuffed in a sheep stomach and then boiled well, I'm gonna I'm gonna have my co host Dan test this one out first before I do. All right, Dan, Hey man, I watch a lot of like um, Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmer on the cooking channels, and that like a lot of my questions today are gonna be geared towards you know, like opposite of just you know, like here's the shoulder, here's the backstrap. You know, what can we do? And I know we'll we'll get to that later. But so would you recommend to for hunters to start, you know, maybe trying some of these odd cuts or organ meats. Yes? What? I My first number one? The heart. If you're not already saving the heart, you really need to because all it is is muscle. It's not threatening in any way. It's just muscle meat. And I all kinds of recipes for heart, both on the website and that will be in in my next book. Um, but the heart is just it's it's non threatening. It's just me. That's number one. Number two and for me would be the tongue. I love dear tongues and because again it's just meat. If you've ever had I mean, the tongue sandwiches are a big deal in a lot of different you know, like in Cleveland and and Pittsburgh. And I mean it's just you know, you're not sitting there eating a tongue, right, it's sliced thin, but but you know it's bray and and then slice thin and it's just meat. It's all it is. It's really really good. So those are the two easiest wobbly bits to get your mind around. Is there anything we need to know about removing the tongue or is it quite a simple as great and go in there, yanket and cut it as far back as we can. Yeah, you pretty much just have to man handle it. I mean, there's no super you know, great trick. Um. I tend to go in underneath the lower jaw. So if you try to, you know, by the time you're gonna get to it, the animals and rigor so you know it, really you'd be surprising how hard it is to probably open a dead deer's jaws. Um. So what I do is I'll come in underneath the lower jaw and slice you know, thin in there and then pull it. It's it's it's kind of morbid, but I don't know if you remember the old drug Wars, It's a Columbia necktie, is what it is. Well, there you go. That's that is literally the easiest way to get a tongue out. It's it's a little gre lee. But hey, you know, I mean we're butchering the animal anyway, you might as well use it. Yeah, it does the job. Okay, so we're saving some of our organ meat. Ever, a lot of people save livers. I like liver two um. I like liver mostly not as liver and onions. I like it mixed in sausage. I like it is patte. I like it as a ravioli filling. I like it, like it as a moose. Um. It's that it's that texture that sometimes gets me. But by all means, save it. Um. And then when you go one step further into the gastronaut realm uh, save the kidneys. The kidneys are um. In my opinion, they're my favorite weird bit. But it's a it's an acquired taste. Um. They're best soaked. You literally have to soak to piss out of them, and slice the lengthwise and then grill them on a grill them on a hot grill until still pink in side and then starting with a lot of lemon and black pepper. They're actually really really good. Ah And but there's only two on every animal, so it's kind of a cook's treat. I admittedly slightly. I'm ashamed to say slightly, but I have not saved my organ meat in the past, not even the heart. I've just been a little intimidated by it, I guess. And my you know, my dad never did, and so just wasn't something I ever grew up eating. But I think I finally need to I need to try it. I need to use some of that additional potential meat. They call it the fifth quarter because if you think about all of the stuff that you're pulling off, it's a whole another quarter of the animal. Yeah. Well, I guess I'm gonna have to give a couple of recipes ago when it comes to the heart and test the waters of them. Oh yeah, grilled heart, grilled dear heart with peppers and onions. There's nobody if you if you like venison, you're gonna like this recipe. I mean there's nobody who is not like this recipe. When I've made it, it's it's sliced up so it's not like a Again, a lot of it is shocked value. Like if I stuck a like a cooked heart on your plate, it's like Raiders a Lost Dark Part two. I mean, nobody wants to get right. But if it's cut into slices, it's fine. Yeah, I could see that. I can see that being a lot more palatable if it wasn't a huge hunk of beating heart on my plate. So I wanted to make a state. Have you gone further than that? You know? Like again, comparing to these TV shows that I've watched, have you done anything with like blood sausage or intestines? I've never I've never done the intestines because it's kind of a shitty job. Uh, But I've made blood sausage out of wild boar. I've never done it out of a out of a deer before. If you if if you wanted to do it, this is what you'd have to do. You would have to somehow get the blood that's you know how, like the lung cavity all completely filled up with blood by the time you get to the animal, So you would have to somehow pour that into a container of some sort and then mix it with vinegar or a little salt to keep it from coagulating. Um, I suppose you could. It seems like a big pain to do it though. Um. I mean, you know it's isn't doable, yes, but mechanically in the field it seems very difficult. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work. Yeah. So you know, if we're in the field, you know, there's the decision about what dear to take. Sometimes you know there's people that are targeting specifically older deer, or some people might be targeting, you know, whatever is available. But if I'm trying to shoot a deer just purely because I want something that's going to taste the best, is there any truth to the fact that older deer, specifically older bucks might be tougher or more gaming. Is the younger deer that the tastiest or the tenderest? Is that? Is there any truth to that? Absolutely? There is? Um. So there's condition, and there's age. Um A younger animals always going to be tastier than an older animal, no matter what the sex is. So very old matron Lee Elk, for example, is going to be much closer to your typical bowl than if you shot a young cow at elk and the same thing with a dough. So I know a bunch of guys who spent all winter long looking for Mr big rack, right, But and they eat them. But what they really have done leading up to that is they shot two or three or four or five little does and they enjoy eating that the whole year. And so yes, they eat the big old buck, but their real prize are these you know, adults, but fairly young does or young bucks, because it's just a question of how long this animal has had to you know, work for a living and how much fat is put on. Now that said, I shot bucks in you know Wyoming that we're living on an alfalfa field, that we're in prime condition. I mean, they had a huge layer of fout on them. There's nothing that you could say wrong about them. But if you're in the post rut and it's a big old rack, you know, it's not necessarily gonna be game here, but it's going to be leaner and tougher. And that's real. It's I had a few deer that were so old and so wizzened that the backstrafts were even kind of tough, which is fairly unusual. All right now, before we move on to the next question for Hank, we need to pause briefly for a word from our partners at sick of Gear. Now. A few weeks ago we heard from sick of product category leader Dennis Zuck about bass layers, and today I want to continue that conversation by asking Dennis just what exactly does it layering in general mean and why is this so important? Yeah, and and in white tailors especially, I think there's some confusion on this. And you know, we talked a little bit on some other podcasts about bass layers, and we talked, you know, about the other parts of maybe a system, but layering for white tailor. I mean, we all know, we don't hunt thirty five and Sonny all the time, you know. And and we we may walk a mile or two, we're more walk a hundred yards. We don't know. So there's lots of things changing, and climates are constantly shifting. Um, we're we're sometimes sweating and sometimes we're not. There's tons of things going on. You know, in a world where you maybe always had your four in one parka and you just kind of dealt with all the things that happened in the middle um. You know, in a good layering sequence, we call this process stacking and shedding. And you know, and as a white tailor, we've all done it right. We've walked in on that cold, cold morning and you know, maybe not wore our jackets so we didn't sweat, but we put it on. We got in the stand and and as the day went on, we kind of kept kind of removing those pieces. So we started shedding and maybe got layer in the day and we started stacking again. But you know, this idea of being able to have these different layers so that we can adapt to the thermal needs that we're sitting in and still be able to hunt, still have the ham patch, still have that pockets, still have those accessories available to us, whatever it may be. But layering is something that builds you a lot of versatility. You know, you might look at the cost of all these pieces and say, well that's all hot, But did you know when you start reconfiguring them, the unique configurations you can come up with. You know, whether you drop this jacket, add that mid layer, take this mid layer, and you know, maybe drop it and add the jacket. The number of configurations are just all over the place. And I really can make sure that you always are ready for every hunt you might go on, especially if you travel, you don't know what you're gonna see. So there you have it. If you're interested in learning more, visit Sick of Gear dot com And now back to the show. Yikes. Yeah, so so, speaking of tough meat, one of the ideas that you hear a lot about that I suppose we should lead to more tender meat is aging your dear. And this is the topic I've heard a lot about, and I've I've read a lot about certain circumstances where it's good, sometimes it's not. But I'd like to hear your take on hanging a deer? How long should you do that? Is that okay? Does it really result in positive results? And is this something that our average joe hunter can actually pull off in their grow dr yard or whatever. Well it's a lot of a lot of a lot of questions there, and I'll um so the short answers, yes, it's worth it. Um in an ideal world, you know. Back to this deer on the ground in November, it's cold and I and the meat locker friend of mine is open, So I'm gonna got this deer, keep him in the skin, and drive him right to the meat locker and hang them. If you can do that, that's gonna make the best venice meal I've ever had, because you've gotten that animal cold. It's already cold out, and you put him in a cold environment, quick, quick, quick, and that way you can age him with the skin on. And by doing that you get tender meat without having that that big rind that you get when you hang a deer that's been out of the skin, and there's a lot of meat loss when you have that rind. And but that's an ideal circumstance. There's a lot of guys I know who do that that are you know, they have that fortune to know a guy who will be able to do it. But for the rest of us, uh, it's probably more important to get it cold, get it out of the skin, and absolutely hang it a minimum of twenty four hours. If you don't, you get what's called shortening. And if you butcher and deer or any animal that's still in rigor mortis, it will always be tough. So you know, sometimes you're you have to break down to your Let's say you're in the wilderness and you've got a big old deer and you've got a quarter it and get it out of the field. Well you can do that because the animal hasn't gone into rigor mortis yet. So it's like if you've ever eaten like trout or any kind of fish that you just pull out. If you catch a fish and then eat the fish, it's amazing. But if you catch a fish and eat the fish when it's stiff and rigor, it's weirdly tough. Land animals are the same problem. So the very least you have to let the animal get through rigor mortis before you break it down into the parts that you're going to freeze. If you don't, they'll always be way more tough than it would have been otherwise. I was gonna say, so, what are you do in a situation if you know, we say we did take that deer in the early season and the temperatures are getting up in the seventies of the eighties or something like that, and I'm worried about that meat, you know, potentially having issues. You know, what do I do in that situation? If you do what I do here in California, I mean, if I there's a good chance that I'm going to shoot a blacktail buck at the end of this month and it's gonna be a hundred degrees out. So you shoot the animal, you get it out of this you got it. You get it out of the skin, and you quarter it, and you get it into a cooler and I'll put ice down and then a burlap sack over the ice, and then put the meat on top of that and keep it cold for twenty four hours. Okay, Okay, that's that's good to know. It's a good tip. So yeah, I mean, it's the it's what we do in hot weather. And it's like animal hunters for sure, because you know how many people say, oh, I don't know if it's terrible, it's because they shoot these four animals and like you know, they had to August and they don't realize, oh, well, it's ninety degrees out and I haven't gotten them out of the skin yet. Um, getting that meat cool is is your number one most important task after making a good shot. Yeah. I always took this for granted, being a white tail hunter. Primarily growing up, I was usually killing my deer in October or November December, when I was usually pretty cool um, and I could, you know, quickly put it in my truck. You can neither take it to a processor or do it ourselves. But this past year I killed a bull elk in Idaho in early September, and the temperatures were in the eighties, and I really, in that situation, got a whole new understanding of the importance of trying to get an animal skinned and in somewhere cool and trying to book it back to a cooler as fast as you possibly can, trying to hike out through the miles five six miles back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. That was quite an eye opener when it came to that topic for me. Oh yeah, I mean, and especially with elk and moose and really really big deer, you can get what's called bone sour and uh. It usually happens with very large deer or or moose or elk or bison. And what happens is that the meat is so hot that it rots from the bones out. And you see this like your your elk. Had you been lazy about it, you could have lost that whole thing. And you know it's because the high temperatures can just make it rot from within yeah, I was very afraid of that. It it motivated me to keep pushing through our like seventeen hour day of hiking back and forth. It was brutal. Um. So, before we move on to butchering, Dan, did you have any questions when it comes to handling things in the field any more questions? Frank, Yeah, I do. And this is about when when someone is gutting a deer. Let's say that it's a gut shot, or you shoot the deer through the bladder or where there's you know, you know, gunk that is exposed to the meat somehow, talk about that never happens. It never happens. It never happens. So is that meat ruined then? If is it? If it's exposed to let's say, feces are urine, No, it's not. Um. Deer are relatively clean animals. It's not ideal, but um. At that point, waters your friend typically here, Oh you gotta keep it dry, and waters your enemy when you go a deer. This is the exception that proves the rule. If you've got a blown bladder or a blown you know, stomach or whatever, get everything out and then clean it as absolutely best you can. I mean, you don't want to use soap, but you want to use clean water and lots and lots and lots of you know, cloth towels or paper towels to then dry it so once you clean it out, you're good to go. Um, it's this has happened to me. I've only had Mercifully, I'm knocking on wood right now. I've only had one. You know how they say in the TV shows it's a little back. Yeah, that's what they said to I had one liver shot that we ended up getting them. Um, and it was you know it was. It was not ideal, but we managed to save almost all of the meat. Um. Obviously, if it's been if you know there's you're dealing with parts that have been blown up. Those you gotta cut around. But in terms of enter just getting on the meat, if you're if you're quick about it and you get and you can clean it. Now, if you didn't recover that deer that night, I don't know, it might be dicey. But if you will, if you can drop the deer and walk up on it you know soon after, then you you can save almost all of it. But if it's one of those overnight deal, not ideal. Now, the whole deer is not ruined, but everything touching that insides might be. Now that brings me to another quick question in regards to the length of time it takes to find your animal. Let's say, is there is there something that you're going to be doing different as opposed to, Hey, I shot this deer. I found it. You know, I watched it drop, as opposed to I followed a blood trail. I don't want to push it. I find it twenty four hours later. It's tough. I mean, you know it's because hides hold heat. I mean, I don't know if you saw Empire strikes back, but that whole Tonton thing is real. I love Star Wars references. I'm so glad we got that into the show. You can come on again. Even a reasonably clean kill. Um, if it's sitting in the in its own entrance overnight, unless it's real, real cold out, it's dicey um. One of the things that is important to remember, though, is your nose is is a very good tool. Um. You might maybe you lose the back of the tenderloins, um, but the extremities are almost always going to be good. And the backstrap is almost always going to be good because they're shielded from what is essentially a now a a crock pot of bacteria in the interns that have been able that have been sitting there for twenty or four hours. So are you going to be able to get as much out of that deer as you could if you did everything clean? No? But all is not lost. Yeah, definitely not the ideal situation, but like you said, it's it's still something you can deal with. So I don't know if we've already mentioned it, but if not, what would you say is the biggest mistake the hunters make during this phase, the in the field phase? This is just going from my own experience, Um, not only in the field, but actually watching all the outdoor TV that I watched. Is not gutting the animal in the field. I I see people throwing an animal in the truck and then driving around with it way too much, especially with antelope and especially with really nice box. I don't understand why they got the damn thing in the field and then show off the rack. But I mean it's still gonna be you know, the rack is still gonna be there. But I guess the it's the it's the hangover from buck fever, is that they just throw the thing into the a TV or whatever, and like, hey, look at my buck, and it's a great buck. But dude, the thing is cooking inside, so you know it sounds like duh, right, you've got the thing as soon as it's down. But you'd be surprised how many people I see don't immediately start thinking about the eating quality of a deer when it's down. I mean, the second that deer is on the ground, it's because it's it's the it's what you're feeding yourself in your family, and the racks not going anywhere. Take care of the meat first, and then take your pretty picture. And you know by the way, you know you're gonna you're gonna wash him off anyway and make him stick his tongue back in and do all that other stuff so it doesn't look horrible for your picture anyway. Why not take care of the meat first and then do your beauty shot. I've been guilty of that in the past myself, a lot of people. It's such an important reminder because, like you said, Hank, it's the that's the most important part of what we're doing here. Is having that meat to feed our families, and you need to give that priority. So I know sometimes it's tempting to like, you know, like you mentioned, get the get the nice picture right away or Google and oggle over, but you got to open it up and cool it out. So the next part, then, is one that I think some people are intimidated by, or at least I was for for a period of time, because I grew up in a family where before hours into the hunting. You know, when I was a little kid, my family always butchered their own deer. And then when I sort of came of age and started going after deer camp for whatever reason, my grandpa and father and uncles and stuff. We're getting a little older and now when we're killing deer, they just take it to a processor. So I missed out on a lot of butchering myself. So when I started hunting on my own, that was something that first really intimidated me, you know, trying to break down this deer and process it completely myself. And I think there's probably a lot of other people out there too, maybe if they weren't raised with that education. So from your perspective, Hank is butchering and processing your own, dear, is that something that anybody can do without being too scared about? Absolutely? I mean here and it's let me tell you. Let me start with by telling you a story. So the first restaurant I ever worked at was an Ethiopian restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin. I know, random, right, And I was a dishwasher, and but I wanted to make some money, so I would come in early to do get some more hours. And like the first week I was there, the owner bring is in this dead skinned lamb and tells me to cut it up. And you know, I'm you know, twenty one two years old. I didn't grow up as a hunter. Like, what the how am I supposed to do now? Right? So, through many sessions of being screamed at in various languages, uh, I figured out how to break down this animal. And then you know, I broke down a goat, and then I broke down a pig, and then another pig, and then you know, I've broken down hundreds of birds. And one thing that's really fascinating that everybody needs to remember, all of us are built the same. Every bird, every mammal is essentially built the same. So if you can take one apart, you can take them all apart. It's just a question of size. So, for example, the back legs of everything are a ball and socket joint. The front lag eggs of everything, with the exception of squirrels and people, go figure um, are not actually attached to the rest of the body. We have a collar bone, and weirdly, squirrels have a collar bone too. I'm not entirely sure why it's like that, but that's the way it is. But like deer, pigs, rabbits, none of their front legs are actually attached to the rest of the body. There's no bone to bone attachment in the front the backstraps. For all the backstraps, the neck is always the neck. The tenderloin is always a tenderloin. The shanks are always the shanks. Now, it could be so small you're not gonna bother up with it, like in a rabbit, but it's the structure is always the same. So if you want to practice by a bunch of rabbits, or by lambs or by goats, and it is virtually identical to butchering a deer, except the deer is bigger, and then a moose is bigger than that, and elk is bigger than that, you know. So so once you get the general structure in taking an animal apart becomes second nature. It definitely is one of those things that you just have to try it right, whether it's a deer or elk or lamb or whatever it seemed like, just like you said, try one and then you really get the gist of everything else from there. Now that being the case, let's say our hypothetical hunter is now he has his deer. It's hanging up, but he's never broke a deer down before himself. He's got it skinned. What tools does he need from your perspective? What tools does he need from this point? And then can you walk us through as best as we can, just, you know, with words through breaking that deer down? Absolutely, So, first of all, if he's hanging, let's just say he's hanging a couple of days, just for the sake of argument, because if he's been hanging a week or two, you're gonna have to take a very very sharp small knife and cut that rind off because at outer rind you don't want to eat um. So let's just say he's been hanging out on a two or three days, he's through rigor breaking them down. First thing I do is take the back legs off because they're heavy, and you know there it's much easier to manipulate the rest of the animal. So I'm gonna get an apron. It sounds silly, but please wear one. Otherwise you're gonna go through shirts and jeans like nobody's business. I can't tell you how many jeans have gone through like, oh, they're completely soaked with blood. I guess I'm buying a new pair. Yeah, I've done that a few times. Yeah, you know, so an apron is important. Um, you want what I I mean. I can break an animal down with a pen knife, but uh, at the house, I will use one of two things. Mostly I use a really old carbon steel, stiff bladed bony knife, and that is a tool I pretty much use almost exclusively. I also have a flexible bladed bony knife that I will use to remove silver skin. It's a much thinner blade. Thickness of the blade is important with with a number of things, and taking silver skin off is one of them. If you've ever tried to take it off with a thick bladed knife, you find that you end up taking a lot of muscle with a very thin knife like a filet knife. A fish filet knife is perfect for this. Um, you don't lose any muscle. So they stiff bony knife, flexible bony knife, or a file at knife, a hack saw or a saws all. So um for one of two reasons. One, I happen to like venison ribs, so I'll hack off the ribs with either hacks are or saws all. And two, uh, the cleanest way to take the whole shanks off is with a saw. You can work your pen knife in and around the joints, but then the end that shank has this one weird bony thing on the end of it that looks weird and the pan um. So mostly it's aesthetics, but it's much easier and prettier looking to deal with a deer shank by sawing it off than it is by just going with the joints. So those are the only two places I need a saw, is the ribs and the shanks. You know, you don't even need to saw for the head. And although it helps um. I incidentally, I'm not actually sponsored by Havalon or anything, but I happen to like their knives. Um, so I like them a lot for skinning. Um, I don't use them for anything else. But they're very nice. But they're kind of scary, Like I feel like they're so sharp. It's like every time I use it, I'm like millimeters away from cutting my finger off. I feel like. But I still use them because they're amazing. But that's kind of a good thing. You should be scared of a really ship. And beyond that, I don't really need any other hardware. Um, you can. I mean, obviously you need a sharpener because you're gonna have to sharpen your knife at least once during this US. All right, now, we need to take one more brief break for a word from our partners at Hunt ra Maps and today. Ben Harshin, whose story we heard last week, has got an exciting announcement to share with all of us here at the Wired to Hunt podcast. So, Ben, I hear the Hunt is going to be announcing some exciting updates and new products this week. Can you give us a scoop? Yeah? Yeah, so, um, a bunch of new things coming out. We're really excited for it. Uh. We've been working to fine tune what we're offering here. So here we are. We've updated our our map template styling for cleaner, more stylished look that is a little more brand consistent is what we offer. Um. All maps now come standard with an acreage grid. It's really sin but think the ability to do a precise trail camera, local trail camera survey or future food pot you want to cut into the timber. Um. Another new future we're really excited about is the topographic contours where able to overlay right on top of the map. Again, these lines will be really thin so that it doesn't take away from the the actual image. UM, but they're gonna be really precise and uh, you'll be able to determine all of the different terrain features and funnels that are important to you as a as a hunter. Um. We also have the ability to overlay any hunting or habitat features on the map. So say you want a catalog where all of you your blinds or stand locations are now, or you want to overlay where a couple of the different trails are to access your property, we can do that, food plot locations, timber work you may have done. Really the story that that matters to you we can overlay on that map. We've got a new fifteen by twenty two size um which is really meant to accommodate the properties that are anywhere from forty to acres. Uh. And then, last but not least, we're really excited to launch Magna maps, which is essentially a magnetic map comes with a dozen little earth magnets you can mark your standing camera locations with and those will be available here really sitting in all of it's gonna be on huntera dot com. So we've got new maps that show the actual topographic lines with the terrain. We're gonna have the ability to overlay food plots and timber improvement locations. We've got a new type of map that can be mounted to the wall. And then I've got magnets that can mark my cameras or stands or different things like that. That sounds incredible, But when's the map going to come out that shows me where the big bucket is? Man? That's gonna be Uh, it's gonna be your The map will make for you for Ohio and uh and uh the map you used to kill plant. I think that's gonna be the one. I really hope that we can produce that map. You let me know when that will be at my doorstep and I will be ready. You got it. Awesome, So there you go. And if you're interested in trying a map of your own from HUNTERA, We've got a special deal from you from the Guy's Hunter. They're offering all Wired Hime podcast listeners ten percent off, So use promo code wired w I R E D to get ten percent off at huntera dot com. And now back to the show. So quick question for Dan. Actually, Dan, have you actually butchered your own deer before? That's all we do? It is okay for some reason, I don't know if you did or not. So yeah, we don't use the processor. We have all the all the the knives and saws and lay a big actually it's a door on top of two saw horses. Put some plastic over top of it, cut it up and uh, that's how we do it. I use my kitchen counter. So it's like good fellows in my house. My girlfriend's a hunter, so she's tolerant. That's good. That's a good thing to have. I I haven't got to do the actual breaking down I've in the house. I'm forced to do that in the barn, and then once I get everything deboned, and then I'm allowed to bring in house. But it's a couple of phases for me. But let's say, now we've got those tools, can you walk us through now those those first steps in the process. So let me preface this by saying, like Dan, I want you to listen, because I'm guarantee you that you butcher a deer different only than I do. And the point of that is, butchering is a very personal process. Every culture does it differently. Often families do it differently. The way you butcher is the way you cook, and that's a fundamental fact. So I know how I like to cook deer and and any other animal for that matter. So I cut the parts that I caught are based off of that. And it's important to remember, like, so, dear chops, this is a good example. So I cut backstraps off. I tend to not cut chops. I cut what they would call it a beef, a boneless ribby, but it's a backstrap, and I cut them in long lengths, so a typical white tail. I'll get four, you know, I'll cut each side and half after removing the chain. Um I don't know if you've noticed this, but a backstrap is not just one muscle, but a true backsteps steak is one muscle. And what you end up doing is you end up removing that long, skinny muscle off the backstrap. Um. You can just pull it off, actually, and it makes some of the best stew meat or the best grind you have on the deer. But if you keep it on the steak, that connective tissue will separate as you cook and not soften enough, and you end up with this chewy part And nobody wants a chewy partner backstrap. But that's a personal call. Some people leave it on, and some people want chops because they want the bone in. So you need a saft for that. And in order to do that, a you're going to sacrifice your your dear ribs because you have to come down a bit off the ribs to get a nice proper chop. The second of all, you're gonna need to saw right through the center of the of the spot. Now, one of the problems with that is, especially in many states in whitetail country, you have chronic wasting disease, and in c w D areas, you know I've done a lot of research on it, and I'll happily keep leg bones in a c w D area, but I will not keep the spine or the head in those areas, because if if that priyon is gonna jump species, it's gonna come from the spinals polum. Interesting interesting note on that too, And this is still not a peer reviewed study, but study just came out that showed um. I believe I could be wrong on the details here, but the study showed I believe that it had jumped to mice that had been fed c w D positive meter or something of that kind. So there's a new article just came out last week saying that there's now the possibility that it might be able to jump to humans based on this research that you know, it doesn't sound it's been fully vetted yet, but just a possibility. So something to think about. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something to worry about, you know. So, but you know, if you like chops, that's what you gotta do. And that's that is much more technical process than what most of us who butcher home new, which is to take the whole backstrap off and cook it as either lanes or medallion's um. Another thing that a lot of people don't do is they don't use the shank. They'll either feed the shank to the dog or they'll grind it for burger, which I think is a horrible mistake for two reasons. One, the shank is maybe it's not my favorite part of the deer, but it's up there because there is nothing better than braised venison shanks, because all of that horrific connective tissue that destroys your meat grinder when you're trying to turn it into burger softens really slow, and it makes the meat silky tasting and tastes like it's been based in fat even though it hasn't, And so when it eventually falls apart, it's it's just a miraculous piece of meat. There's nothing else like it on the deer. And basically, if you if you forget everything else about this entire podcast, don't grind your shanks. So, so that being said, then for someone who's trying to fare out how to do this with the shanks, how do you properly remove the meat from the shanks or how do you do that? Keep him on the bone. You saw him off at the joints and then you just cook and you braise that whole thing. And if it's a really giant deer, um, you cut it into very thick, like three inch wide discs like asabuco. Uh. Normally I only do that with with elker or moose. But a really giant white tail like a pound buck, yeah, you're probably gonna have to put that one into assabuco. But a typical dough or typical you know, work at horn or three by two or whatever. Um, now you can tell them from the west. U. Uh, those are gonna, those are gonna You're gonna braise them whole Interesting for the people out there who may not know what asabuko is like myself or brazing technique, what what are those two? So asabucco is a very classic Italian dish. It's done with a veal shank or a pork shank, and so the shanks on these bigger animals are so long you couldn't fim in a pot. So what they do is they have taken this long shank and they've sliced it cross wise, so you get essentially a bone in the middle, and then all of the shank muscles around it, and it's a it's a cylindrical piece of meat and they braise that and it's a it's you can get two or three off of an elk shank, for example, and it's it's a way to enjoy that meat, you know, without having a you know, an eighteen inch shank looking for the right pot to fit it in. UM. So it's it's it's sort of borne out of necessity. Brazing. UM is you know, you can separate stewing from raising, and that the piece of meat in the in a braise is not submerged. So you've got, um, a pot, say a Dutch oven, and you've got onions and vegetables and some sort of liquid and whatever, and you stick your meat in there. Usually you've browned it first, um, and then it will you know, you nest it in these vegetables and liquid, and then you cover the cover the pot and then you let it cook really slow, either in the oven or on the stovetop, until the meat wants to fall off the bone and you serve it as a piece of meat. So so a braize is going to be short ribs or you know, beef cheeks or a shank or a shoulder roast where you're served a big piece of meat that you then cut from. Whereas a stew, you're gonna separate the meat into bite sized pieces. And I'm assuming most everyone knows this, but just in case, the shank is that you know, that's the part of the leg below the quarter above where you cut off the bottom foot section exactly. UM. So for for times psach, I want to I want to fast forward a little bit in the process. Let's say we've removed the back extracts, we remove the tender loins, We've pulled off the front and back quarters. Um. This is one piece that I've struggled with is once I've got my quarters, specifically my my hind quarter, I feel like I always do an awful job of them breaking down that quarter into steaks or roasts appropriately. I've I always feel like I butcher it quote unquote not the way I want to butcher it. Do you have a recommended I've heard there's you know, follow follow the muscle um pieces. But can you walk us through that a little bit? I can. Well, let me, let's let's do the front shoulder real quick. If the froshhoulders, big stu meatter grind. If it's really big, like on an elk, that's a whole different story for another day. But for a typical white tail, Um, if it's a small animal, I will actually save them whole embrace, whole shoulders. It's really a great winter meal for four, but bigger ones like you imagine your pot when you're breaking the animal down, Like if you're if your deer is small enough, we're like, hey, that shoulder will fit my pot, my roasting pan. Keep it whole. Um. If it's too big, then break it down. So anyway, with the back legs, Um, so you've got a leg, you've taken the shank off, and so you now basically have our face with a giant leg of lamp is basically what it looks like. What you want to do is you you want to put your set your knife down and use your fingers to run along the seams and all the connective tissue and separate everything with your fingers as best you can. And you might need to pick up your knife to to break a little bit of silver skin here and there. But if you start with just your fingers just trying to just work in that back leg to work. I work those different muscles apart from each other. You will go a long way to doing it correctly. Um. One thing that American butchers tend to do and in my opinion, wrong, is they will just use a saw and just cut meat into basic shapes. If you break a hind leg down into its constituent parts, what you end up with our whole cuts of meat that are free of sinew, and they cook better. You can slice them easy. You can serve them rare if you want so. I mean the problem with like a regular typical leg roast is if it's got a bunch of muscles in it and you cook it rare, all of that connective tissue has not broken down, so it's gonna break your teeth, or at the very least, it's going to be very cheap dental floss, you know. But this process separates them all, so then you you know where the grain of that roast is. You end up getting three big roast off behind leg. You get what I call a football roast because it looks like a football. It's the rump. You get a nice big what looks like a tri tip, you know, a big thick, triangular cut roast. And then you get a kind of a roast that's shaped like a trapezoid. Uh, you know, weird for for you know, four sided angular thing that has a great grain to it, and those are your four big roasts. Then you'll get what I call the hidden tenderloin, which on a beef would be the eye round. Uh. It's it's attached to the side of one of these roasts, and it's a cylinder. That's the trickiest piece to cut off because that one won't come off with your fingers. You have to use that that thin flame knife for that thin bladed knife to just work the work the silver skin that separates it. Now, what are you looking for? You're looking for what essentially looks like cobwebs, you know, that connective tissue that connects those different roasts together on the leg are all put together by a cobwebby membrane, and your fingers will be able to separate it. So if I've got this leg, first thing I do shanks off it's off the body. What I'm gonna do is gonna take the inside of the leg so you'll be able to remember what's the outside with the inside. So you take the inside of the leg and you'll see a seam, a line of sinew roughly paralleling the ball socket to where the knee is. Take your knife and then cut down so the point of your knife is tapping the femur. Go and run that seam. Go tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap all the way down. So you basically laid open that leg. Now you're gonna have to use the very point of your knife to essentially free the bone from the rest of the leg. You're not bothering with the individuals yet, you're freeing the bone from the leg. If you want, if you want to see a video of this, look up videos on how to debone a leg of lamb. It's exactly the same process, and that gets you started. And once you have that bone out, then you use your fingers and you can separate virtually everything with with no knives. Interesting. I definitely need to watch a video to make sure I do a cleaner job of doing this, because I tend to just hack and pull and I'm not sure if that's ideal. And that's fine, I mean, eventually, eventually you you will memorize the geography of a hind leg and by the way, they they're all the same pigs, the same elks, the same deers, the same So let's say we've we've pulled out these separate pieces, and we want to make some of them and some of it cut into steaks. Do you recommend I've heard some people just keep these whole pieces, freeze them, and then when they want to make a steak they actually cut off either a thought out piece and cut the individual steaks they want off, or other people will cut them mistakes now and then individually freeze them. Do you have a preference on that. I tend to not do that. I tend to cook whole roasts and then slice it like a London broil or roast beef. But if I were to make steaks, I would probably Well, I mean, here's the thing. I mean, it's how many people are you serving? If you're serving one or two, yeah, you're gonna have to portion them beforehand, if you're planning, if like, if you look at a roast like hey, that'll serve for freeze the whole roast and then cut it. Yeah. But I mean it's just it's just how how many people are you serving? Dan? What do you do. Do you like to cut your stakes up first or do you freeze the whole thing? Yeah? We do. We do a lot of um individuals, meaning we will we will cut the steak or the portion based off what kind of meal we want, label the packages as such, and then you know, if we want to roast, we pull a roast out of the freezer. If we want steaks, we pull the stakes out of the freezer. Yeah. Now, you know one thing I haven't tried. You know, I've done a butcher number of deer now, but I haven't done is try to actually process some of my venison into sausages or broths. How difficult is that, Hank? And is that something that the average guy can pull off with a few basic tools? No, Um, you need in order to do it. Your processors are always going to be better than you at it until you decide that you want to be good at it. Um. And if you decide that you want to be good at it, you need to get a meek grinder and a sausage stuffer and you have to say, hey, I want to be a good sausage maker and put some mental energy into it. Um. I can't tell you how many horrendous venicin sausages I've had by people who haven't really paid attention to the process. It's not rocket science at all, but it's something that people spend their lives perfecting, and you need to respect that. So um at the very least by the grinder attachment to your kitchen aid if if you've got one better is to buy an actual meat grinder, because then you can make your own venison burger. Um. I mean I make all that stuff, I make brons, I make salami, I mean, I dry cure everything. But it's one of those things where can really have some unpleasant results unless you pay attention and and do things correctly. Speaking of grinding, um, lots of folks like to grind their own venison hamburger, and one of the popular things to do a lot of times with burger, especially if you bring into a processor, they'll add some additional fat from another animal, pork fat, beef fat, something like that. Do you recommend doing that when you're processing deer at home? And if so, you know what kind of fat, what amount. The only reason to not put pork fat into your burger is if you're a Muslim. Well there you go you know. I mean, people put beef fat in sometimes. But the problem with beef fat is it tastes like beef, so you're venison burger no longer tastes like venison burger. It tastes like burger. Pork fats neutral and it has a really great melting point. And a case in point I just got. I was just given a big block of ground elk from a friend and I had it was in butcher paper, and I had no idea what was in side. So I thought it out and oh, oh oh, it's roughly ground and there's no fat in it, and there's a ton of s in you in it. So it was it was virtually unusable. Fortunately I could make jerky out of it, so which is what I did. And you could use it as the base for spaghetti, sauce or for chili. But I guarantee you if you want to make a real burger, um, you need fat in the grind, and you need it fat of at least makes a better burger. And for sausage you're looking about or three. So the every butcher I know who cares about his sausages put sport fat on him. Yeah, some people we do. Sometimes we grind up bacon right in there. Is that something you remend? In fact, I love I love venison burgers that are ground with bacon ends when you do it right away. So let's say I'm having a party and I'm gonna make venison burgers. I will grab a bunch of meat out and I'll figure out what the weight it is, and I'll grind it with bacon ends and then make those burgers. You know that day it's a surpassingly awesome burger because you've got some of the flavor in there, you've got some of the smoke in there. The reason you don't grind your venison with bacon ends and then freeze it, it's only it's only because I'm kind of a burger Nazi, Okay. So the problem with doing that is this, the salt in the bacon will start to denature in the venisine. And the difference between a burger and sausages is precisely that every all of the best burger places in the world, and it could be down the street at a diner, the meats the meat, the salt goes on top of the meat, and you cook the meat. The salt is not in the burger. The salt is on the burger, and that's what makes a burger a burger, and it gives you that texture that you're all looking for. When you have the salt in the in the burger grind, it starts to denature the proteins and it starts to form what's called maya sin, which is to meet what what gluten is to bread. It binds it together, which is why, like we can bite into a sausage, and a good sausage isn't crumbling. A good burger is just barely held together. And that fundamental difference is why I add salt late in the process. And it's I mean, this is high cooking. This is like restaurant stuff. And I know if you grind your venison with vacon ends and you make burgers out of it, they'll be fine. I've done it. They're just better if you do it right away. It's good to know. And that's why we're talking to you, because we're looking for these these next level pieces of information that can really take our venison cooking to the next level. And I think that is a perfect transition then to the cooking aspect, which is you know, the most fun part of this whole process. I personally think I really enjoy the cooking aspect. But Dan, I want to give you the first cooking question for Hank. Here, what's on your mind? Well, the very first thing that comes to mind is, I'll be honest with you. I am not good at, let's say, knowing whether it's whether it's a steak like a beef steak or um or a deer steak or or anything, especially for venison. I tend to overcook my food, as you know, like like like beef. You know, it's like you can't just throw it on the grill. What is I guess, what is a recommendation. Let's say you're cooking steaks. What is the what is is there a time? Is there a thickness that you should you should cut your steaks? Get talk to me? Help me, help help Dan. There we go number two, number two. Yeah, this is this is the best episode yet. All right, So here's the thing. I cook backstraps, so which means I will cook light of those are the only steaks I cook because everything else I cook as a roast. So let's just deal with backstrap and you can extrapolate from that. So I typically will cook a length of backstrap about a foot to eighteen inches long. And the first thing that I do is like, hey, I want to cook backstraps, so it's thought right, So I pull it out of the refrigerator and salt the heck out of it. I make it rain on the backstrap and let it sit there at room temperature a solid thirty minutes and even an hour is fine. Why because otherwise you're gonna get what's called black and blue. You know, you cook the outside, but the center will be you know, icy cold. There are exceptions to this, and I'll get to that in a minute. But if you're dealing with a good steak or a backstrap, right, and what I mean by a good steak is at least an inch inch and a half two inches thick, I mean it kind of you've gone to all this trouble to hunt your deer and and put really quality meat on your own table. Why would you cook thin steaks? Do you buy thin steaks? I hope not, because it's a rib by that's less than an inch inch and a half of what thick is not worth buying. And so I mean you want a steak that like makes you an American, right, So you want some thickness to it, and but that requires the meat to come to room temperature. So you salt it and that makes that What that does is that starts to get that seasoning. It starts to get things going. What you do is the you you throw it on the grill and you and you cook it in the usual way. And what that means it's just you know, you're nice, you're getting a nice char on it. Well, let's just say it's on the grill. Slap it on the grill and don't mess with it for depending on how your your fire is, at least three or four or five minutes. Just don't touch it. Let the fire do its job. Same thing with a frying pan. If you've got a sizzling in a pan, let the pan do its job. Have you ever had a steak that you're cooking and you're trying to flip it and it's stuck to the bottom. Yeah, you didn't, you were messing with it. When it's ready, it will come clean. Mhm. Well, if it's not ready, it'll stick. That happens with fish, happens with meat. It's a it's a true reason in cooking and so many flip it only once. Here's the secret. I used to work steak station in a steakhouse. Right, So we seared the crap out of one side of everybody's steak so it will look beautiful. The other side was raw, So if you wanted a rare steak, the other side only got cooked for like a minute. If you wanted a medium, got cooked for maybe three or four minutes. If you want a medium, well four or five minutes. If you wanted well, we would give you one of the steaks that somebody sent back earlier. Um yeah, I mean who, I mean really, who wants to eat a steak well done? This is horrible? I mean it's someone angel dies if you do that. This is not the point of a steak. And so once you get it to where it looks good, how do you know if it's correctly cooked in the center. So this is this is radio. So I'm going to ask you to hold out your hand. Now I want you to, with your other hand, touch the base of your thumb, that big pad at the base of your thumb. It should be soft and gucci, right it is. Okay, that's what raw meat feels like. Now, touch your thumb to your forefinger. Just touch them. Now touch that same spot. It's a little firmer, isn't it it is? That's rare go. One finger in. See it's firmer still but still got it's still got give. That's a solid medium. One more fur finger in is medium well. And then if you touch your pinky, just do this, just for the sake of argument, touch your pinky to your thumb and now touch that pad. See how as hard as a rock. That's how dan steak taste. That is. I think I think you posted this on your website at some point, Is that right, Hank, Yeah, that's it's it's called the finger test for doneness. Yes, and I read that, and I've used this since that point, and I've showed people and it makes me seem like the smartest, most culinarily you know, premier person around. I'm doing this hand thing and people are very impressed. So thank you for giving me a little party trick. It's a Jedi. It's a Jedi trick. Yes, it is. So continue anything else when you know on that front. So that's I mean, so all right, So it's cooked perfectly. Now you have a choice. Normally I will let the meat rest for however many minutes it cooked, minimum of five maximum. I mean a big giant roast can take twenty minutes to rest, but typical steak five to ten minutes rest. Now, normally that's what I do, because what's going on in the interior of the steak is heat has caused all of the molecules inside that meat to just start jumping around. They're imagine like a basketball game and fast forward, and that's what they're all doing. So if you were to cut that steak and half at that moment, everybody's going to run out and run all over your cutting board, which is normally no bueno. So when you rest the meat, you slow down the action of that basketball game until finally things are in slow motion, and then when you cut the meat, you don't get a lot of moisture loss and it stays in the meat. On that topic really fast, Hank, I've always been told this, I've always read this. It always pains me, though, to let the meat sit there, and I'm always worried. You know, it cools so quickly. Do you do you keep it covered or covered limit and foil or something or am I just was to let it rest on the counter and let that natural cooling happen. I let it rest. Um. The only reason to uh, to code it or to cover it, and they call it tinting it in foil is if you let's say you took out a length of back strap. Let's you cooked it. You thought you had it where it was, and you cut a slice off and like, oh no, it's undercooked. Tend it with foil. That will hold that how you heat in and you'll you'll step up one level, so if it was too rare, it'll go up to medium rare. You'll be able to serve it. But in general, you keep it, you know, you just let it go. You let it go. And and if you're really that worried, which nobody notices anyway, because it's still gonna be warmer than room temperature um. But if you're really worried, have a nice sauce. It's piping hot, and that will that will you know, they'll they'll even if it's a cold steak and you serve a piping hot sauce over it, no one will notice. So you can cut it and serve it right away, but only if you want all those juices to come out to be the sauce for whatever it is that you're serving it with. That's the only reason you don't rest a steak. So Danny feel like you're prepared now for the next events and steak, well, I'm gonna give it a try. Let me give you one tip though, if you've got a lot of guys will do like butterfly steaks, or the processor will send them back with some thin namby pamby half inch caught thick steak thing, and you're like, well, what am I supposed to do now? Right when the meat is thin like that? And this this holds very true with flank steak. I caught all the flank steak off my dear um. Flank steak or a very thin regular steak needs to be cooked cold because by the time you get a really nice seer on it, the interial will be overcooked. So it's possible, Dan, that your steaks are too thin and you're cooking it right, except the interior is getting too warm by the time you get that nice crust. If that's the case, go from refrigerator to flame right away. But I only do that if the meat is a half an inch thick or thinner. Interesting, So how about the next most popular meal in America the hamburger? Can you walk us through the perfect grilled events and hamburg absolutely? Um. I have a huge discourse on burgers on the website called It's Just Why Venison Burger Recipe, So if you google venison burger you'll find it and it goes through all of this detail. But I'll run it through quickly right now. Like I said before, that the salt goes on the outside of the burger. Um. If you are cooking in a on a frying pan, a coarse ground burger is tends to be better. If you are cooking on a grill, a fine grind venison is better because it holds together better and forms a more cohesive crust. And the thing about a good burger is that a good burger holds together barely. It's like a crab cake, you know, like a crab cake should just barely hold together, shouldn't be gummy. And so you know, when you make your burger patties, you know you're not needing bread, You're just kind of bringing them together. And and that crusts is one of the key things that keeps your burger together so to get it on the on the bun. And so if you overwork it, then it's gonna get tough, it's gonna get more sausage like. It'll still be okay, but it won't be perfect. The next thing you do when you make your your patties is, you know you make your regular patty, use your fingers to indent the whole center of the patty, so the center of the patty should not be as thick as the edges of the patty when you put it on the grill. Now, why do you do that. The reason you do that is because the second it hits the grill, the meat will contract. And if it contracts and you don't have that indent, what you get is kind of an egg shaped burger. We've all had them. It's mom's Braunosurus burger from when you and so you get this egg shaped burger and it's just weird and you can't get your mouth around it, and the interior is not cooked and blah blah blah. Make that indentation and you will have nice level burgers. Finally, there's no science that shows that flipping it only once matters, So you can flip it as many times as you want. I just find in terms of getting it off the grill cleanly, I use a fish spatula, which is a hyper thin spatulor with something of a blade on the front of it. Um, you can buy them on Amazon. You can buy them in like william Snowmar or any kind of decent restaurant supply store, but Amazon is probably your best bet. And what that does is that's super thin, and you can you can get underneath your burger to make sure that it's not sticking, and then you can flip it that way. Um. Finally, don't don't dick with it too much. I mean, you know, it should be meat and fat and salt and then that's it. And then when it comes off the grill, then you can do whatever you want to it. Then you can put pepper on it or cagn seasoning on any number of toppings that you want. But burgers that have stuff in the grind, they're okay, but they're not that perfect American burger that that all of us are seeking. That is only meat and fat and fire. That sounds like the recipe for a good night right there. Well, and then you need beer. Yeah, that's true. Speaking of beer, Dan, you got another cooking question for for Hank. Here, I'm gonna give you the next one, all right, So like believe it or not, Mark, you may think I'm some dirt bag from Iowa, but Wisconsin, you're just a bullhead eater. You got the nail on the head right there, Hank. But okay, So me and my wife we really like wine. Is there a particular style of wine or kind of type of wine that that you would recommend with venison? Yes? Um. Now let me preface this by saying, drink what you want. Um there are you know? If you want Chardonnay with your venison, you like it, drink it? No, you know, no, no normal person will make fun of you. But if you're if you're to do you know what I think are the best pairings. It does depend on how you're cooking your venison. But let's just go back to the steak or the burger. Um burger. It's kind of casual. And I like a zinfandel um as infidel, probably from the Sierra Nevada Foothills or Napa or Sonoma. The load eyes ins tend to be a little heavy and syrupy, and I don't think they go out with food, but a nice infandel is a good sort of outdoor red wine date night or special occasion. There's a French wine that's called chateauneuf du pap um, and it's the word chateau and then an e U f d apostrophe p a p e. It's basically the pope's wine is what it translates to. More or less. It is a knockout with venison in any game for that matter. And like wine, like beb moh wines and more like any decent place that has wine will have one um a coat drone blend. Another French wine is a really good choice. A Spanish rioja is a really good choice, and those I've seen in supermarkets all over the country. If you're looking for California varieties, it's really kind of up to you. I mean there's not a lot of you know, I've had some cabs that were really good with venison steak. But then again, I have had some peanut noires that were really good, and and those are sort of your your two ends of the red spectrum. And if it's me, I kind of like the Spanish wines and the Italian wines and the French wines. But that's because I grew up in the East Coast, and even though I live in California, the trader is to say, um, I'm kind of going with it. I'm kind of going with those French ones. And they're just their wines to be drunk with food, and a lot of the California wines are wines to be drunk by themselves. It's say, next time you're in the doghouse, Dan, you now know what to do. Oh yeah, total wine shop in order chate to pop and bring it home. And it's it's money. Everybody loves that wine as long as it cook the steak the right way, Dan, Right, I could blow the whole night that you don't want her non on cardboard. So so what about this hank. If there were two or sorry, three preparations of venison that every single deer hunter should have like nailed down, perfected, like these are three like just staples, what would you say those three staples of preparations should be, Well, we've talked to this, cooking steaks, cooking burgers. The third would be h to master a stew um stum me could be any part of the animal from the neck to the shoulder, to trim to whatever. And it's not just throwing everything in the pot. Any Any good stew is built like a house. There are foundations and there are you know, filler ease that you put on on the end. And the structure of a stew is now it varies, but this will get you started. Brown your meat in some sort of fat, you know, large butter olive oil you choose. Don't crowd the pan when you're doing it. A lot of guys will throw in all the meat that they're going to use right at the pigett go well there's there's too much moisture in the pan. Then you're gonna steam the meat and not brown it. So you have to take your time and put in maybe a dozen pieces of meat at a time and brown them well, I mean, like get a good crust on them, and then set him aside, and then just keep running through and doing it until your meat is nice and brown. Then you throw in your onions maybe you know, carrots, celery, garlic, whatever, and then what you do is you throw that in the pan, which will have all this brown stuff on the bottom of it, which you want. The French call it fond which is, you know, basically French for really good stuff on the bottom of a pan, like it is, it's it's loosely translated. But but what happens is the moisture from all those vegetables loosens up all of that crusty stuff on the bottom of the pan and adds flavor. So once the vegetables are nice and soft, you can brown them too if you want, but you have to soften them at least. Throw the meat back in, throw some bourbon, or throw some wine in, or throw some beer in, and let that boil for a little bit to get the alcohol off, and then you throw in water or stock, and then you let that simmer until the meat is tender. Now there's a there's a trick to venison stews. I guarantee you guys have both have had a venison stew where the meat looked really nice, but it was kind of dry and chalky on the inside. True, all right, Yeah, So there's two ways to defeat that. One is Cajun. One is Mexican. So the Cajun way, if you've ever been in to Cajun country, it had a sauce pecan, a sauce. Peacan is essentially any animal chopped in a little bit of pieces and then cooked in a gumbo like kind of a kind of a stew that is brilliant. If you cut the meat small enough and I'm talking like the size of your thumbnail. First of all, you don't have to brown it. And when it gets tender, the surface to mass, the surface to mass ratio of the meat to the rest of the stew is small enough so that you do not get that set sensation of dryness. So you follow so like when you have a big chunk of venison stew, the outside of that venison stew is gonna taste great because it's infused with all the stew. The center's not, so that's where you get that check hawkiness and that sort of tacky mouth feel when you if you cut it small, it's it's totally coated with a with the stew and it's wonderful. So that's one trick. The other trick is what Cajuns do, or what Mexicans do with barbicoa or with carnitas. You cut big chunks, you know, like chunks the size of your hand, and then stew that until it wants to fall apart, and then you take two forks and shred the heck out of it. And then then you shred the meat and throw that back in the stew, and then every fiber of the meats coated with your stew, and it's super tender and moist and everybody will love it. That's the second thing you should remember, other than don't grind your shanks, cut it small, or shred it, and your you will make no matter what recipe you use for your venisone stew, it will improve a hundred times. And that's something I've never I've never heard that before, so this isn't great. I have one real quick question. I know we're coming up on time here pretty soon, but side dishes. Is there any how about your favorite side dishes for hamburgers and your favorite side dishes for steaks. Well, for burgers, you don't want to go to fancy, So in the high summer, I do a tomato salad. I pulled tomatoes off my garden, mix them with sweet red onions, a clove of garlic, whatever herb happens to be growing in the garden. Maybe some mozzarella cheese is little mozzarella cheese balls, you know what I mean. You can get them the supermarket and then um some olive oil and that's it. Call it a day. Um. Potato salad is really good, you know. I mean it's people like to hate on potato salad is being kind of ghetto. But a really good potato salad, I mean, make your own, make it yourself, make a really good one, and people like, damn, that's a good potato salad, you know. And I mean it's it's a burger. You don't want to go all picking in the air with it. Um. So with steaks, you can go pinking in the air if you want. And you've gotta have some kind of a starch, I think. And usually I will do in the winter, like if it's season, I'll do a wild rice peel off. So I'll cook some wild rice and I'll cook some regular rice and mix them. You gotta cook them separate because they cook different, uh. And then whatever you want in the pilaf, you know, onions, cranberries, little bits of per simmon um, you know, something sweet, something crunchy, usually like a black walnuts. I'll throw in a peel off. I'll throw dried cranberries and a peel off and then something something you know, like a parsley or whatever. And that's a really classy, easy side dish to do. Green salad always good with the steak, especially because steaks tend to be kind of rich. Um. But usually the side dishes are something that is very very seasonal, you know, roasted beats, maybe roasted root vegetables. There's another good idea, uh in the springtime morrele mushrooms and wild onions. You can't can't do for that, but it's it'll change month to month, year to year. All that sounds amazing. And you know, like Dan said, we we have used up a lot of your time here, so I want to be respectful of that and let you go here. But I've got one more question. Um, I really, I literally probably could spend like three more hours talking to Hank because I'm just fascinated by this stuff. That well, let's go back on in October. That's where that kickstarters coming on for this next book. Yeah, I would. I would love to do that because I think there's a lot more we haven't got to cover that I love to We just kind of cover a couple of these basics. Um, two more questions. Actually one is about something you just mentioned, but the first one really quickly. We've talked about the basics that that we that we need to know. But if there was one dish that's out of people's comfort zone, adventurous unique that people might be a little intimidated by or scared of, or something like that, what's the one adventurous dish that you would recommend our listeners to finally try. Okay, you you laid the gauntlet down, I'll pick it up. Barbacoa with a doze head. WHOA, yeah, see are you eating the brains too? Right? So? But are you eating the brains too? I usually leave them out because they're hard to get out. But it's all the meat that's on top of the head and the tongue. And if you've if you've ever had real Mexican barberica, it is slow cooked meat off of a cow's head or a calf's head and then shredded and the like. You're sitting there eating the head, right, so the cook pulls all the meat off and it's shredded, and then you eat it in tacos or burritos. Uh, it's ridiculous and it's like, okay, so if you want to taste it, go to Chipotle and order the barbicoa. Now they don't use a head of a calf for it, but that's the same. It tastes exactly the same. Yeah it is. And do you have a recipe for deer head? No, I need to, It's gonna be in the book. Um. And you obviously you've got to do it in a place that you don't have c W D um. And you either have to saw the antlers off or you do it with a doe. And if you wanted an exciting you know, that'll be a conversation piece. That's an understatement. That's awesome. So, speaking of this new book you've hinted at a couple of times, can you share anything with us about what's next for you? I can, and I'm really I'm actually super stoked about this. Um. I'm kind of moving away from the big New York city publishers because what I've discovered is, um, there's a lot of misinformation in some big city publisher groups that don't understand us. You know, people who eat venison and UM. So I'm actually gonna do this through a Kickstarter campaign and I'm asking all of you to help make this book happen. It is a book completely dedicated to just venison, two elk, white tails, two moves to black tails, take caribou, everything venison like and and it's it's gonna have ad recipes in it, and it's gonna be a phenomenal book. If you've seen my last book, which is Duck, Duck Goose, it's gonna be like that, except dedicated to deer hunters and elk hunters and anybody who's chasing four footed, antlered things. And we're gonna do the Kickstarter campaign in October, and I'll let you know when that happens. And basically it's like a fun drive, Like if you're interested in the book, you pledge thirty bocks and you've got a copy of the book, and you help make this happen all the way up to like there'll be some rich people who will donate like five thousand dollars and I'll fly to their house and cook them in ten of their buddies a gourmet meal from you know, seven course meal. So there's everything from like that kind of stuff down to hey, I just want the book, and it's I think it's gonna be a really nice way to connect of the community to make something great happen. I think that's pretty cool. And if if somehow I win the lottery between now and then, I will pledge the five thousand dollars come cook for me, all right, because that sounds amazing. But I think that I think that's awesome that you're doing the Kickstarter, and um, I'm excited about the book. I'm definitely gonna be pitching in for it because I want to copy of those of one of those as soon as I can, because I, like I said before, I think you are a culinary genius, flat out. My wife and I have just enjoyed the heck out of everything you put out there. So for people that want to see some of your recipes you currently have out there online, where can they go? You go to Hunter Angler Gardner Cook, which is honest dash food dot net. But all you need to do is google my name Hank Shaw and you will find it. That's the easiest. It's only eight letters, very easy. Perfect. So we will make sure to have all those links on the blog post for this podcast episode two. So if you're listening, and if you can't figure out how to google Hankshall, you'll have that option too. So this has been awesome. Hank like get Like I said, called Mennico. Would love to have you on again to talk about more of these things because there's so much to learn about cooking venison well in so many exciting new ways to try it out that they continue to get me excited, and I know a lot of our listeners too, So thank you for sharing your experience and your insight when it comes to all this. I appreciate it. Thanks again for having me on. You're very welcome. Good luck this season and with a new book. Thanks a lot you too this season. Thanks a lot. All right, Well, I don't know about you, but I am ready for a venison steak dinner read about now. This has been awesome and I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. And uh maybe we'll be able to get Hanked back on the line sometimes down the down the road, because I think there's a lot more we can talk about. So well, that set, it's time to close up shop, wrap this podcast up. It's been a great one. And of course before we do close things up, I do want to thank our partners who helped make this podcast possible. We appreciate you guys listening to the ads, listening to us talk about the partners on occasion, because they do allow us to create this podcast and make it free for you guys, so big, thank you too, Sick of Gear, Trophy, Ridge Bear Archery, Redneck Blinds, Hunter a maps Ozonics, Carbon Express, Lacrosse Boots in the White Tail Institute of North America. Most importantly, though, thank you guys all for joining us today. I hope you learn something. I hope this guy's excited to cook some venison soon, and of course I hope you'll stay wired to hunt

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