Harvesting Standards

hunterdeneugene
Charter Captain

Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 2525
Location: some field, woods or Great Lakes trib somewher

I’m going to play the devil’s advocate here…..I’m not going to put this in other threads. I hunt alot and have a desire to fill my freezer with meat as most people do, but I set myself to certain standards. I hate going to the processor and seeing those little deer laying there, and seeing a button buck really bugs me. I have taught my son how to judge a yearling deer and he has never killed one yet. He is 20 and has harvested 10 deer. I have never harvested a yearling doe and have killed a couple button bucks due to other sloppy hunters not finishing the job as I didn’t want to see them suffer. If you look closely at a deer, you can judge size easily just by the length of the snout and the ears. Also, I have never harvested a bear before, but I think if I was to harvest my first one I would be a little more selective than to kill a bear that would dress out under a hundred pounds. I know it’s legal, that’s not my arguement here but is one so desparate to harvest or to say “I killed a bear” or “I killed a deer” that one would shoot a bear that dressed out under 100 lbs or a yearling deer? Or just in dire need to fill the freezer with the 40 lbs of meat that it will yield?

Let me try and take this from a slightly different perspective. First, let me toss out the biblical underpinnings of this discussion so we have a foundation:

2And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

3Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

— Genesis 9:2-3

It’s at least somewhere to start. Here is where the Judeo-Christians are given license to eat freely of all living things. I have qualms about this. You have qualms about this. We all do. We want it to be different somehow. We want to feel we do not have the burden of eating off the lives of others. However, no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try to sanitize the issue, the ground burger in the store leads to the same basic truth as the deer in the field, which is the same as the salad under the sneeze-shield, next to the croutons and bean sprouts.

Life is sacred, so sacred we need to consume it to survive. We can try to play ethics games and try to deny the truth. One guy only kills bucks greater than 120 inches. Another only kills with a bow. In the end, we are just trying to keep the mashed potatoes away from the meat on the plate or not letting the gravy touch the peas. My son is 10. This year, he bagged his first deer. This year he asked for an adult dinner plate for Thanksgiving. He doesn’t want the kiddy plate with the built-in divisions anymore. He is finally willing to realize that it all ends up in the stomach the same.

This does not mean that we need to kill indiscriminately, but it does mean each time we kill, it has meaning. It has deep meaning, profound meaning. It just so happens I bagged a button buck this year. I did not mean to. There were three deer out in that field. The big one offered the first best shot. I held. She appeared to be the dominant doe, and I figured she had the better chance to survive. I was angling for the second, smaller doe, but I had a moment of indecision. Just then a third doe, larger than #2, came out into the field and I decided to concentrate on her. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I got a good broadside shot and took it. I got down, walked over to the carcass and gave thanks. It was only then I saw she had only one teat. Then it hit me: I’d taken tail-end Charlie.

Rule of Thumb:
Don’t take the front doe, she’s probably the dominant one.
Don’t take the last doe, she’s probably a button.
Take the middle doe.

This doe group had gone from 2-3 to 5 to 7 over the course of the fall. I was expecting more deer. It had not dawned on me that #3 was the last in line. I just figured there were more coming.

On the one hand I was mad at myself. Although I think of myself as just another schlump with a deer rifle–another naked ape in an orange vest– at least a few people read my stuff and respect me. I was bit peeved with my God for putting me in this fix. In fact, we had a good long one-sided conversation out there in the field.
I really had tried to do everything I could to do the right thing. Now here I was with a dead deer and no going back. No answers.

Then I remembered the old German saying I’d shared with Mooseboy when he bagged the spike:

“Sie können Geweihsprosse nicht essen”
(You can’t eat antler.)

Yep, that’s about it. Somehow the gravy got on the peas. Time to throw out a hearty “Wiededanke!” to the woods and go looking for the truck. About an hour later, I was finishing up at the meatpole. Moose, Angus, and KYHillChick had arrived and found me up to my elbows in deer. ‘HillChick started on dinner, Mooseboy left to haul the gut bucket out to the field. I came in the house to wash up.

“What’s that on your face?” asked KYHillChick.

“What?”

“You got blood all over your forehead.” she said. I looked in the mirror and saw it. It looked like I’d been marked just like a kid after his first kill. I thought about the hand of God, and realized I’d been answered.