Sausage time is here again

 You might remember that in last year's hunting round up I talked about sausage day. Sausage day 2021 was last Saturday.

We started with about 180 pounds of venison

Then added about 30 pounds of pork fat. You have to add fat to the venison or the meat will dry out and taste terrible. We used fat back so the first half hour is spent taking the skin off the fat. Everything gets ground once separately, then the fat and venison get mixed together, spices added and mixed and then ground again. We use a medium grind which leaves the sausage with a little more chew to it.

We have a little bowl that scoops just about one pound at a time which we pack into 1 quart ziplock bags. Thats what I spend most of my time doing. I don't know why that has become my job but apparently I'm pretty good at it.

This year's take was supposed to be split 8 ways but one guy didn't want his share, he had too much meat in the freezer already. Split 7 ways we ended up with 32 pounds apiece with a few pounds left over to give to some landowners who had helped us out during the season. Giving back to the landowners is an important part of hunting.

Considering I didn't take any deer at all in 2020 it was nice to come home with sausage. That's one of the nice things about hunting with a group...

Hunting 2020 - the finale

Okay I know I've teased this one enough but one of the real reasons for these posts being slow is that Google Photos is just KILLING me. It uploads what it feels like uploading when it feels like uploading it. I've got a ton of pictures in my hunting album that it just will not upload. Then it gives zero error messages, just "Nope, I don't want to upload that." I made a negative review yesterday and Google basically said "It's not us it's you." which, combined with a bunch of other negative recent reviews makes me think they know they have a problem but don't want to admit it. *Sigh* the Google Photos to Blogger workflow was so good...

Anyway after I came back from deer camp I had a couple weeks where I was working nights, class started at 7pm and went until 2am. This left me with a bunch of time during the day so I thought I might go see if I could find some pheasants. I went out once early in the season and while I found other hunters I didn't see any birds. This time I tried a different spot and the foolish things were waiting in the road for me when I drove up.

That's my grandfather's Remington Model 31 shotgun in 16 gauge. I've always had a soft spot for 16 gauge, its a little unusual. The 31 is commonly regarded as the smoothest pump shotgun ever made. I really like that its light and easy to carry, although that first bird was really easy I still spent a bunch of time stomping around looking for birds.

When I was a kid my uncle Reg (really my great uncle) told me that sometimes deer would step out of the woods and look at a truck driving by, so if you were following a truck you should leave a big gap so you could catch that deer. The second day I went out I didn't see any birds in the field but as I was leaving I paused and let some bow hunters out in front of me. As they drove out this pheasant stepped into the road behind them. By the time I got out it had retreated into the ditch but I'm not too proud to shoot a ditch bird. ;)

Having gotten a couple birds with the 31 I thought I might try my 11ga side by side muzzleloader. You might remember this from some previous posts. Its a fine old gun although its long so its not a great bush gun. It was fine lugging it around in the field though which is really what it was intended for.

I actually shot two birds with this gun, the only time I managed to get two in one day. I'm working on a story that I'm going to try to get published in "Muzzleblasts" which is the periodical of the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association. If that happens I will, of course, let you know.

So anyway I ended the season with 5 pheasants which we can add to 5 ducks and 5 partridge and zero deer. Yes, there, I've said it, I got skunked. It was a tough year, we had some snow early in the season and then nothing toward the end. It got really cold, then warm. The deer didn't move the way I expected them to and pressure from other hunters took them out of the honey hole I shot my late season deer in last year. So it goes, better luck next year.

Deer hunting: lessons learned

So yesterday I talked about my 2019 success shooting ducks. Duck hunting for me is a pretty new thing going back maybe 3 years, as I mentioned I've been hunting for around 30 years now and the vast majority of my time in the woods will have been deer hunting. In those 30 years I had zero success. I'd seen a couple deer but never even pulled up on one. I did have the potential for a shot once but the deer was running directly away from me which is a lousy shot option.

So opening day 2019, snowing like crazy. This is first of December and very unusual for us. There was probably 4" on the ground when we first went out. I was hunting with a group of guys who drive deer and, as I had a doe permit and had never shot a deer before they were kind enough to give me a bunch of choice spots. So it was that after lunch I was stationed at the output to "The Dungeon". A dense section of woods alongside a highway. Buddy Ben called on the radio to say he was on a hot track and coming right for me. I stationed myself halfway up a hill, there were tracks in the valley and tracks on top. I figured from where I was I could adequately cover both.

I was wrong.

Three deer came blasting along the ridge. I pulled up on them but I was only maybe 10 yards away, I couldn't find them, even in the 4x scope on my Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun. Finally as the third deer came by I figured I'd better try. I got a good idea where she was and pulled the gun up again. This time all I could see in the scope was brown, I yanked the trigger.

By the time I put the gun down there was no deer. "Oh rats." I clambered up the hill just to be sure.

Well son of a gun...

The shot went in her behind which is normally a terrible shot but I'd gotten lucky and it had bounced forward making this a humane kill, it lasted maybe a minute after the shot. I'd gotten doubly lucky, if she'd taken another step she'd have gone off a cliff onto the highway...

We recovered the remains of the slug a few days later. Not much left considering it started out as an ounce of lead.

The last Saturday of the season I hunted with the same group of guys and Buddy Ben once again sent me deer. This is muzzleloader season, you might remember my Thompson Center Renegade. 

This time I was better prepared, pulled the gun up at maybe 20 yards and fired and the deer ran off. I'd cursed myself earlier in the day by saying I had hit 100% of the deer I had ever shot at. A few seconds later Zack fired too but his was a squib, we joke that the bullet just fell out of the barrel. Those were lucky deer that day.

Fast forward to the day before the last day of the season. 

I hunted this one plot pretty heavy, we still had snow and I could tell nobody else was going in there although they had hunted it real hard during shotgun season. Previously I'd had little luck but recently I had learned where the deer were traveling and headed toward that spot. I cut a fresh track and started following. The deer were moving between sections with oak trees, eating the acorns. I found myself in a little glade and looked up to realize there were deer everywhere. There were probably 7 or 8 deer in a 40 yard patch. I was hunting for antlers when they realized I was there and scattered. For the next 2 hours I chased 3 of them. The led me on a merry run but finally, with the sun setting I had to break it off.

That night I pulled the ball out of the rifle and found that snow had packed in on top and melted but interestingly hadn't gotten to the powder.

I attribute this to a good tight, lubricated patch making a good seal in the barrel. Buddy Ben puts a piece of tape over the barrel of his gun to prevent wet powder. I think the plastic wrapped bullets the inline guys use don't seal as well as a patched roundball.

Which brings us to the last day of the season. I'm back in that same area and cut another fresh track. Theres new snow so I know this track is from today. I follow it for awhile until I run across what I can only describe as a deer super highway. We're close to where I had seen the deer the day before and I'm presented with a conundrum.

Do I follow the track I've been following or change over to the super highway? As I stand there pondering two deer run up the hill and stand within 30 yards of me, probably closer to 20. I pull up the old Renegade and with Saturday's failure in my head I aim low, the rifle is sighted at 50 yards, the ball is still rising this close.

The roundball goes in through the ribs on the left side of her body, through both lungs, out the right side and kept on going. I don't want to hear that a .54 with 50 grains of powder is underloaded, if they had been lined up better I'd have gotten two deer that day and been in legal trouble...

So anyway with my success I got a lot of other learning, Buddy Ben helped me dress out the first deer, the second one I did myself. I got to help cut up 5 or 6 deer and then recently we had the annual "Sausage Party".

The party is what it sounds like, get together, grind up meat and make sausage. We had something like 150# of grinds to which we added around 40# of pork fat.

I was unprepared for the volume of sausage we made. Theres hot, Italian, breakfast, garlic and garlic parmesan. I brought home 27#, there were 2 extra packages of hot and I snagged one of them. Angie made meatballs with a package of the Italian and called it the best sausage she's ever had. I'm glad about that, I was worried we'd be stuck with a whole bunch she wouldn't eat.

In view of today's challenges I'm sure glad to know we've got a freezer full of sausage...