Deer Camp & Cut Night

On this episode of Huntavore, Nick and his buddies have a standing tradition of a one night only deer camp at a cabin in the woods.  The night is as much about getting together as it is actually hunting for deer.  Hitting whitetail season hard in archery, the more social and less stressful feel of firearm season is a reprieve.  Along with a healthy dose of beer and booze, the food spread is always a winner.  This year, the archery killed deer hearts were marinated and seared for tacos.  New adds were bear sausage and backstrap from Mitchell Shirk, and wild boar bacon.  All were huge wins with the crew.  The second event was a needed cut night at Huntavore HQ.  5 does taken by the group, and lots of processing was needed.  Each guy had a set plan for how they wanted their deer done.  Some wanted more roasts and steaks, and others wanted mostly ground material for sticks and sausage.  I kept my deer back for cutting with my son, and more “fancy” cuts.  The experience of cut night is both an amazing night of fun and laughs, but also a bit of slip in quality of cutting.  It's a balancing act, you want to get the most out of the harvest, but you also want to harvest as much of the fun as possible.

Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!

‍

‍

[00:00:00]

Welcome to the Huntivore podcast powered by Sportsman's Empire, where we celebrate the hunting and fishing lifestyle through the utilization and consumption of our wild game. No egos. Fork in hand, beer in the other. No status. A piece of red meat on a hot grill and turn it into a burnt offering. Just catch it, cut it, cook it.

This is episode 137, Deer Camp and Cut Night. On this episode of Huntivore, Nick kicks back with some memories of deer camp and an impromptu cut night. Gathering after an evening hunt at a friend's cabin, enjoying drinks, stories, amazing company, and good food. Nick lays out [00:01:00] the spread and his marinade of choice for heart tacos.

On The Nostalgia continues as he reflects on another night filled with laughs and good times, an impromptu cut night. Working together to process five doughs for the freezer, he lays out the perks of a community effort and also realizes the preferences of how families eat. He also touches on how the quantity of work doesn't always reflect in the quality of work.

A great reflection piece on this episode of Huntable.

Oh, hey folks. Beautiful morning. Here in Michigan, I tell you what, the snow is beginning to fall. The temperatures are nice and frigid. I tell you what, I am excited for winter. I'm excited for the snow to be falling. I'm excited to still get outside and be able to chase [00:02:00] whitetails. To be able to chase small game.

Now with some powder on the ground, the crunch of the leaves. It is something I'm very much looking forward to. We're also in that season before Christmas, where it's still I don't know, it's still in that theme of Thanksgiving of people still getting together of hunting camps, either starting up or finishing up and hunting buddies and hunting partners getting together and just.

Living out the sportsman's dream this past week. Yeah, this past week it was a good time with me and my hunting buddies. We all put the smack down on some deer, or at least we attempted to, and we had opportunities and it was a great time to really fill the freezer. I want to say out of our whole group, I think there was one buck hit [00:03:00] and a lot of does.

In fact, I think, yes, we'll get into the specifics of it, but I believe we were up to five deer over the Thanksgiving weekend that really really sparked off a little bit of our festivities. This this episode's a little bit of a hodgepodge. I'm gonna take you on that week. I'm gonna take you on last week just a play by play of how Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving hunts went for myself.

And then we're gonna move into a little bit of prepping for the Christmas season. Starting to put things on plates. Yeah. And we're going to talk a little bit about a cup party. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the pros that I love about it. And at the same time, some of the opportunities and some growth areas that at least I found with our own crew.

But anyway, yeah, last week was [00:04:00] a wonderful time where early in the week Monday. Through Wednesday was full on Thanksgiving turkey preparations working at the farm. I was actually parking cars or at least directing traffic as people were coming in off the road to get their fresh turkey directly from the source.

Awesome time to get to connect with customers. Some of them, this was their first time. Others of them have been coming for generations and decades. And it's just fun to connect with those people. Specifically again, you forget names, but then you never forget faces as they walk in. We have a family that comes in and they all don these.

Big Thanksgiving party hats. Dad walks in, it's a big Tom Turkey. The wife comes in and it's the dressed bird with the little frillies on the drumsticks. And the daughter ends up wearing another Turkey hat. And then they have their youngest the brother there. He wears a hat as well.

[00:05:00] That has been fun. They've been coming for so long. Even when their oldest was really young and she went through the stages of being too cool for the hats. And so we've got where they tried to do a family picture and she's either really sad or crying because she's got to wear this hat and it. It just got, you look back at those photos, because of course he has them ready to go on his phone as he flips through the progression.

And now she's old enough that she's yeah, we just do this for fun. And the brother's a goofball, so he doesn't care what he's wearing. So that was, that's fun to connect with them. We have another family that comes in the very end of Wednesday. They, that's their like last stop is coming in.

So we connect with them. And yeah, it was just the parents. They're actually on their way to see the kids. The kids have all moved around the country. So now they're off to see them. So it's just fun to make these relationships with individuals and with families through that through that experience of [00:06:00] being at working at the turkey farm Then that brings us into our own Thanksgiving.

My family has chosen to just really take off Thanksgiving. Really lay low, try not to do a big meal, try not to do all the traditional stuff. My brother goes off to his in laws cause that family hasn't gotten together. My in laws, we end up doing something later in the week. So it really opens the door for a Thanksgiving morning hunt.

My, my parents are at that point, yeah, they're sleeping. Yeah. Papa is down and out. He's exhausted. My brother who's president right now and who's running the show. Yeah, he was down and out and they were going to go off to the in laws. And so it. It really opens up that, yeah, even though I was tired and I had been putting in some long hours to be able to get up again at 4 30 with excitement, not the dread of being able to have to get down [00:07:00] to to go to work, but to Get the camo on, get the layers on, and get out to the stand.

What a nice morning that was. I had some flavored coffee. My wife bought some flavored coffee. And yeah, I set that for the pre pre percolate. Or the pre drip timer, so when I woke up, it was already done, filled up the Stanley, and threw that in the pack, hiked out to a spot that was real secluded spot we don't usually touch very often, and I got, climbed up in the saddle, and settled up there, and that morning was really a real calm morning, and for a second, I was like, I don't think I'm gonna see anything this morning, but, Yeah, the squirrels were out.

They were waking up with a little bit of a chill in their spine. So they wanted to go search around in the leaves. I watched the sunrise peek through the trees and I could feel as the Sun began to hit. First My [00:08:00] feet and then works its way up, climbing up the tree. I could feel it can start to warm my body up again and just sitting in the darkness, drinking, drinking hot coffee and just again, reflecting on all things that I am grateful for.

All things that I am just absolutely need to show gratitude towards. One being my wife, just an absolute champion in our family and has really been instrumental and in getting the kids involved with sports and keeping me involved with the kids sports as well. But at the same time, just offering up amazing love and affection and kindness towards our family.

And I just I'm in awe of all that she does. I'm so grateful for where we live and the opportunity that we have to be connected to the land that I was [00:09:00] raised on and have the opportunity to literally walk out my back door and enjoy wilderness and to be able to enjoy, uh, the convenience of being on my hunting grounds.

And even the gratitude and affirmation of being able to go past that and get onto state ground, to be able to have these open pockets of land where anybody and everybody can go and enjoy, whether that's climbing up a tree and seeking whitetail, whether it's chasing after bushy tails.

Whether it's just going for a hike or going for a bike ride to just have those public places where you can get lost, you can get away, and you can get disconnected. So those were a lot of my thoughts as I was going through my head and, again, just how influential my family has been upon on my life and again how much I try to influence and I try to encourage them [00:10:00] as well.

It really was a time of just awesome reflection. And on cue, as you're going through these positive thoughts. I did have two does peak over the top of the ridge. They started down at started down the ridge and at a distance and I connected on the doe once she was behind me at 40 yards.

If she was going to keep coming in, I was going to let her keep coming in. And I put a frontal shot, not a dead on front shot, but more of a quartering. Quartering towards me and shot forward in, into the brisket and as it passed through the brisket, it got into the esophagus. And actually when I got into, to gutting her, I saw that how...

I hit all those main arteries and vessels and tubes that led to the lungs and just ripped those right out. It severed that [00:11:00] and blew up one of the lungs, just absolutely turned it to jello and exited out the other shoulder. So I do have a little bit of a meat loss on that dough. Be it from the neck and the one shoulder, we're going to glean what we can off of it.

But yeah, that's that's that hard transition from going for the archery where you have minimal. meat loss to then using a 12 gauge, 12 gauge rifle barrel with open sights is you're going to get what you can get. But anyway, we will soon be able to glean a lot of meat off that. I was real excited too, because my son has really enjoyed picking up the knife.

and being able to cut along with dad. He's in his training episodes right now, but at the same time I'm giving them the sharp knife. He's got a full on sharp knife. He's learning how to run the steel. He's learning how to keep the blade in going in the right direction and not [00:12:00] coming back towards him, trying to make sure that he keeps his fingers accounted for.

Pushing the blade through the meat, not trying to pull the meat through the blade. Not going with a sawing action, but actually going with a slice action. These are all things that, come intuitive to somebody who's broken down and has cut up a bunch of deer. And so to have, a novice next to you and go through those little techniques makes that experience more enjoyable.

But anyway I was able to put that deer down and of course let the group chat know of all my hunting buddies and they were they were sitting there, congratulations, and not a few minutes later, a friend in that same friend group put their doe down, nice big doe, and so again, congratulations all around.

We had at that point, I believe, three deer. We had the day before, a friend got one. I had one and now the third was dropped by the other friend there. [00:13:00] So the body count is mounting and then becomes the talk of a cup party. We are going to end up with a lot of deer and many hands make light work.

They do lean heavily upon. Some of my teachings and some of my ability to be able to take apart an animal, be able to find where the joints are at, what cuts make good steak, what cuts don't make the greatest steak and trying to adapt that into five different peoples. Pallets. So that we're going to get into a little bit as we get into the carp cut party, but anyway, that was the invitation there that everybody was going to come to hunt of war HQ and we were going to do these deer.

The next day on that would have been Friday. Then the next day after Thanksgiving we had our traditional camp [00:14:00] of, we have our deer camp, our deer night, and that's where we get a chance to go out. And spend one night together. We all live just a few minutes from each other. Or at least most of us do.

A couple of us are across town. But then at that point... We are, our hunting grounds are also in our same areas. We all have wives, we all have jobs, we all have kids. And as much as we want to spend time together, we understand that we need to also spend time with our families. And so there's been a lot of push to bring those families together and into different events.

But you never really get away. Even as I'm sitting in the stand, I feel my phone buzzing. And sometimes like in an afternoon hunt, there's a lot of requests from the household, from. From the wife or even what the kids need. And there's a lot that is going to pull you away [00:15:00] from the deer woods.

There's a lot that pulls you away from those opportunities to really come together as a hunting group. And so we found that having a full on camp just was not going to work. We were constantly getting pulled away because of responsibilities. We we switched gears and we knew our. Archery. Excuse me.

Woo. There it is. Let's take a little sip here.

Clear that out. Summertime we go and we do our archery getaway up in Northern Michigan at at a 3d event. And so that be became our camp. That was our extended weekend that we then enjoy together But we did reserve one night and we head out to friend's hunting cabin his family cabin It's really like a little boy scout lodge Way back.[00:16:00]

It was built shoot 50s and 60s It is a stick frame. It's got tin roof It's got wood side. It's, it just screams nostalgia. There's a fire, there's a a wood stove fireplace right in the middle of this cabin. There's windows, there's a couple doors, and a cement slab. No running water, no amenities, just a cabin out in the woods.

And we enjoy just going out one night. In fact, several guys ended up... Hunting that property before we all got there. But that evening I arrived and had some help from another friend and we set up my camp kitchen. We got the stove ready. Had it all hooked up to propane. And one of our things that we really enjoy is getting the hearts involved.

The guys really like the [00:17:00] heart tacos that I've been able to make up. I take the hearts and you open them up essentially like a book. Slice out. All of the vessels slice out all of the silver skin and tendons and connecting, I'm not even sure what they are, but anyway, they, when they contract they open and close the vessels.

So all that vessel network had to come out took off as much of the outer skin of the heart. Made sure to take off the top ventricles. And then I cross hatched, just slightly. Maybe less than a quarter inch really like an eighth of an inch, just dragging the blade over the top.

Just to open up that meat a little bit, because I put that in a marinade, a chipotle marinade. Super simple. A can of chipotle, an adobo sauce, handful of garlic, some cilantro. Some lime juice, some [00:18:00] lime zest, add in lemon if you want it as well, lemon zest, lemon juice, that's your acid salt, pepper, and then I blitz all that together in the food processor, and then I just squeeze oil in until I get to the level that I'm looking for.

So then I put it all together. In a Ziploc bag, put the heart steaks that are in there and then marinade on it. If you can give it overnight, that's the best way to do it. I gave it just a full day, got it done in the morning on that Friday, and then we cooked those up at that night. I also speaking of gratitude, I also wanted to just make a quick shout out to Mitchell Shirk.

He sent us, or he sent me A bunch of bear in the mail, and that's when I served up the bear sausage, and I served up the bear backstrap. Both of which are going to be [00:19:00] the first time I've ever had a chance to use those. I was very excited. I also... Was very concerned with if they had the parasite trichinosis, or whatever the condition is called trichinosis, but then what is the parasite that is, I, that, that escapes me.

Anyway, I was concerned with that. I wanted to make sure that I could find a way to cook it properly and at the same time be able to deliver an amazing appetizer out there to the guys. So as I was preparing that, I'm thinking, you know what? I got to get this Purin article that I read actually from Hank Shaw.

It's a couple years. You can find it on the Hunter, Angler, Gatherer, Cook website. I believe it's also called honestfood. com. But anyway, you can find Hank's article where he talks about getting things To the right temperature. The FDA and [00:20:00] all the authoritative bodies around are going to tell you to go to one 65 cause they want to make sure that they're following everything that basically.

Keeping us super safe. If it's at this temperature, let's take it up to the next temperature so that we can make sure that everybody is safe. But anyway, reading that, I learned that a lot, that that particular parasite dies at 137. So at 137 degrees, or 135 to 137, that's when that parasite is killed.

How could I get my bear to 137 without overdoing it, without getting it to be without getting it well done, but keeping it As medium rare as I could because I do understand that when you have lean meat the fat is on the outside of the bear when you get on the inside man that bear is very lean we want to make sure that it's still moist.

And so I went over to the sous vide so I actually [00:21:00] dressed the Backstrap, I actually tied him up with some butcher twine to help it hold its shape while it was cooking. I hit it with some dried thyme. I hit it with salt and pepper and garlic. Rolled that in, put that into the Ziploc bag. Couple knobs of butter went in.

Sealed that up, tried to draw out as much air as possible so that it would sink in my sous vide pot. I had my wand set for 137. And I let that go all afternoon. I knew that... It would continue to cook it all the way through and that we would hopefully be able to have 137 all the way through the middle. I portioned out the sausage that he sent as well And I did the exact same thing But didn't, I just added some butter, added a little bit of salt let the seasonings do the rest of it.

Sealed that up again, draw out a bunch of the air, drop that in. So even with the sausages, I stuck those in there for 137 to get [00:22:00] a par cook on everything that was in there. So when we finally took it out to camp, I got my griddle going. I was able to cook those up as the main appetizer. A couple other buddies brought out some other stuff.

Oh, I did my boar bacon as well. I think I did a post on my boar bacon as well. Cured that for quite a while. I believe that was seven days cured in a vacuum sealed bag. That was with a rub. Once I got it out, rinsed it all off, I then tightly rolled that belly and... Tied, or tied it up with that same butcher's twine like a pancetta, or like an Italian bacon where it's all into a spiral.

I was hoping it would hold its shape a little bit better than what it did, but when I cook it, when I sliced it, Oh, it holds that tight spiral, it looks just out of this world, looks just knocked out of the [00:23:00] park. Smell is incredible, taste is just on point, but when I cook them, it it begins to unfurl a little bit and twist.

So at that point, I think I ended up scoring the fat caps on there to help it lay down a little bit flatter. I did, I cut it less than a quarter, but more than an eighth of an inch. I gave it like a thick cut bacon piece to it, and having a dry skillet I think is what it needs. I tried it in the oven as well, it didn't turn out as well as I thought of.

It's gotta be either a dry pan or a dry skillet. Cause once that fat starts to render out, it's then gonna start to help that brown up. I found that it doesn't get nearly as crispy as what we were going for. It doesn't crispen up because I think of the coarseness or the thickness of the bacon that I have it.

But getting a little bit of a sear on either side. It is more chewy than a domestic pork. But man, is it got an [00:24:00] awesome flavor. If you were a chewy bacon lover, wild boar, Again, wild boar that's got a bunch of fat on it is going to be great. Great kind of bacon that you can make. And I know it's out there, too, that it's too thin.

And folks have tried that, and it has not worked out. And I bet it's because of either the age of the pig, the thickness of the belly. But this happened to be just a fat... belly that I had. So I gave it my college try and man, I'm really excited about it. Boys are still excited about they eat that stuff up.

Two of the boys do the other one. He doesn't, he likes crispy bacon. He does not like the chewy. So that kind of was a little off putting for him. But anyway, serve that up out there as well. And so we had a lot of guys, cracking beers and having wild games spread just living the life out there.

We had bear, we had boar, and we had white tail heart. So we felt very happy at that end of the [00:25:00] night.

Shifting gears to later in the week We were all successful, or I shouldn't say all of us, but at least five of us were successful in our [00:26:00] firearms endeavor. We were able to bring down a lot of us does one guy, but got a buck and yeah. Other than four of other others, all of us got does including myself Thanksgiving morning.

I just love Thanksgiving morning. The way that it works out for, at least for me, my family doesn't do a whole lot. And... Doesn't do a whole lot in that morning, and it's just a free escape for me to go out. I've been successful the past two years, and have been able to include the boys in the the track back, or at least tracking the animal hasn't been hard dropped both of them right there where they stood, but at the same time to have the boys come out and get the deer with me, and bring it back to the house and to do that whole deer drag adventure.

thIs year was a solo venture. They did get the news that I had dropped the deer, but the neighbors were also excited to play, so off they went [00:27:00] to go play instead of come get the deer. In that endeavor though the actual neighbor... Friend of mine actually had to come out and help me, my my ATV battery died as I was putting the deer in the back and I couldn't get it started again, so actually he came out as a little rescue venture to give me a jump so that we could get the gator and the deer back to the house, but that's neither here nor there.

That's just hunting. That's just drama along the way. When it comes to events like that, but yeah, here we were sitting now with Five Deer that something was going to have to happen sooner than later. Temps were falling and it was going to be very adequate for long hangs. The issue was, is that we were presented with time now.

So giving those deer an overnight or in the case of my deer 48 [00:28:00] hours, two nights hanging that we were going to have to get in there and get those deer done before we then entered back into the regular schedule of jobs, regular schedule of kids. This was that holiday the end of that holiday weekend, and we were going to have to get something done.

So that Saturday. We chose as a day that we were going to try and cut up as many of those deer as possible. So we issued out our cut party. Our cut party yeah, just is exactly what it is. We set up Huntivore HQ, which is essentially my shop. We, I push everything to the sides and make front and center The cut the cutting table.

I've got a oh, it's like a four by five rectangle steel plated table or steel steel wrap table. And that is the table that we're going to be able to cut on and where the two bays are, where [00:29:00] vehicles could put in. I have up in the trusses, I put a board with an eyelet so that we could hang A hoist and a gambrel, and I can have two deer hanging at one time.

This really became an assembly line. We tried to, uh, make it as efficient as possible by just delegating chores to each person. Or at least, A job or what the next person is going to have to be doing that even as one job was getting completed There was something else replacing it in that way all the way through the process even over to the vac sealing so we had a vac sealing station We had a cutting station and we had a skinning and quartering area and things would just flow on through Had the wood stove going.

It was really fun to get that going. Second time we had that up and running. I just enjoy a [00:30:00] wood fired shop. It just, there's a warmth, and there's a, nostalgia about it. You could just hear that that stove just a humming away. You can hear that fire popping on the inside of there.

And it's just a unique warmth that you get from a situation like that. So put do deer hanging up. We were able to one buddy showed up early. We skinned that deer, quartered it up and put that on the table. And that was before anybody else had arrived. That left one gambrel free, so as the next person drove up with their deer, that deer got brought in and hung up and the process started all over again.

So we went from one gambrel to the next, back and forth. mY son was actually going to be at a friend's house. That evening and he was pretty bumped. He wanted to be a part of the cut party. He wanted to be a part to show at least my buddies [00:31:00] what he has learned in this past year. He's now become really helpful at the cut table.

So He wanted to be able to do that and, he was going to miss out. So I decided that my deer was going to get quartered up and I stuffed that into the deer beer fridge so that we can pull that out and we can actually do that. If this is launching on Thursday, it's probably a good potential.

We're going to be cutting that up Thursday in and into Friday to make sure that he gets his chance to get his knives on that doe. So I did put mine off to the side, so we were then at four deer that we had to get cut up. But being able to have that efficiency of moving through from the gambrels so that we could then pull, I have a couple guys at that point, skinning and quartering.

thAt was their job. Once those quarters got to the table, we had four or five guys and they would then grab a quarter and... [00:32:00] Essentially try to follow a cut list. Depending on whose deer got brought to the table, we try to do our best to keep things organized that there was only one deer on the cut table at a time, or at least one deer's worth of quarters on the cut table at a time.

And whoever's deer that was, we then said, What are you looking for? Do you want steaks? Do you want roasts? Do you want burger? And each one of those guys had a unique way that they wanted their deer done. Not in a way that was like totally outlandish, but with the job that we had, with the community aspect, with the efficiency being a part of what we wanted to do we didn't go very detailed on a lot of our cuts.

It was, if this was a large piece, we're going to turn it into steak or keep it as a roast. If it wasn't a steak or a roast, it was going to either get diced up [00:33:00] into diced or it's going to be chopped or it's going to be then stuck in a bag labeled burger. These late season does my boys. My fellas really like to have stuff for summer sausage, stuff for snack sticks, for brats we've got one friend who has summer sausage nailed his recipe and just his ratios is just da bomb.

I kinda just let that guy own that, let him do that, and so we then, a lot of the bags went with, are gonna go home with him. He's gonna be making up a whole load of summer sausage for all of us. So when we're there, we are then trying to follow that cut list for whoever's there. Of course, backstraps totally get left whole.

And when you get a group of guys that, sometimes get more focused on efficiency than... Than quality, you [00:34:00] start to see like corners get cut just for the sake of being able to say that they were done. Not that's a bad thing. You want to be efficient. You don't want to waste time. And I feel like maybe that's more the spectrum than I am.

I end up wasting more time because I'm nitpicking about what I can glean off a bone or a piece of fat. I'm continuing to scrape off as much as I can. As Jeremiah Doughty, friend of mine says on many occasions, it's just one more meatball that as I go back and take things off scrape off the silver skin, efficient, or taking my time and really cleaning out those ribs, that is gonna end up in a result that to add to my pile.

Unfortunately that night I did happen to see one of the discard bags and it... [00:35:00] It was full of potential, to say the least. I don't fault anybody on that. Because again, we wanted to get the job done, but I think in the efforts of getting the job done, we also left a bunch of that job on the bone, on the CU, on the in, stuck into that bag.

That could have resulted in two a lot more pounds of ground. I think when you get a lot of minds in the same room and you have different ideas on what needs to happen, we can. We can be efficient, but at the same time, we gotta be thorough, and I think maybe that would probably be our downfall of this year, is we weren't nearly as thorough as what we should be,

but at the same time that's like that, it's the group that's moving, you're seeing that everything's slide through, and[00:36:00] some things are going to go off on the wayside. When you get to be at the table by yourself, and you are cutting up your deer, you haven't offered it to the group to be done super fast, super quick.

Then you have the opportunity to slow things down, to glean things off, and to take that extra time. As those deer that went through ours, they got done, they got cut up. And majority of the harvest has been gleaned from. If we had more time, if we had taken maybe a slower approach, could we have gotten more?

Absolutely. So the reason I say all this, not as a way to dig at any of my buddies, not as a way to say that our cut night was. Not as helpful as what it should be. No, it was super [00:37:00] incredible. We got five deer and we got them processed. And we got them in the freezer. And that makes the rest of our, that makes the next step easier because now we can take those bags to our other buddy who's going to process those.

Or when we do a grind party or a grind night, we now have those bags ready to thaw and be able to get into that process. But as you do your own, be specific on what you want from your deer if you put it on a group table. If you have volunteer knives that are around your table, set some ground rules.

Set some parameters that you have some expectations. Not that you want to be overly... Wasteful of the time, but at the same time we want to be thorough in what we're cleaning off I made sure that I did my process so that when I [00:38:00] got a boned piece of meat that I would do my darndest to get every morsel I can off of that bone.

And then as I take off large pieces of silver skin, flip that over and fillet off what came off with the blade. And that is, again, that mentality of one more meatball, of getting the most out of this harvest that we possibly can. Each of those guys walked out super happy. About the job that they did with their abilities and their talents and their practice with knives.

Each of those guys was very help, happy in the amount of harvest they were then bringing home to then do something with. And ultimately it was a success. But as you prepare your own, as these late season doe hunts begin to happen, and maybe it's going to be a group effort to get these deer cut up, find a way to be efficient, [00:39:00] but then at the same time, don't forget to let thoroughness come through on the backside.

So to wrap this Little episode up. I was, I guess I had like a, just a couple areas I really wanted to touch on and there wasn't really a full direction, like our cup party. But what I did experience over this last week, I think sums up why. A lot of us continue to hunt, and why a lot of us not only seek out, uh, friends who hunt, or at least we have a group that gets together, that we share in the experience, that we have a chance to really bond over.

The taking of an animal and then the harvest of the meat that we're going to be able to then Provide for our families. It's something that brings us all together in the season of [00:40:00] Thanksgiving and the precursors here To the Christmas season is just an awesome opportunity where we can Come together.

We're shifting from where hunting was a solo endeavor, being the idea of the quiet and the stillness of bow hunting early in the season. And as that transgresses through that, We introduce the firearm hunt, we introduce that more animals are going to be dropped on the ground, and then there becomes the processing side of it, where now we need to take those kills and then turn those into the meat that we want, and The more hands that you can get on that, the lighter the work becomes.

And so to celebrate that season, by no means is the hunting season over, or at least the whitetail season here in Michigan is over. We've still have plenty of opportunity here coming during the Christmas season, as we get to the tail end here[00:41:00] of 2023, but I just want to make sure. That as you go on from here that you when you are gathered with your group Let them know how you appreciate them.

Let them know that this is something special. Take pictures, post those on the, post those on the wall in your house or have them a Quick access at least as your backdrop on your computer or on your phone and the ability to go back One of my, one of the guys in the group has said that on multiple occasions that he wants more pictures Of all of us together because he's like it doesn't take a whole lot and he came from a military aspect Where when he was stationed he went over there with guys and came home without those guys and He really holds on to the pictures and the experiences that he had over there with those [00:42:00] individuals that didn't make it home.

And at any point, one of us could be wiped off the face of the earth so quick. And so to be able to take those memories and to have those close, and to let those folks know that Yeah, sappy, but I appreciate all of you. That is... That is something that I think is powerful, and people need to hear that, and you need to be able to tell people that.

That, I think, comes along with the Harvest aspect, is that you guys have gleaned, or you gals have gleaned these relationships. Let them blossom, let them be told that, hey, this is important to me. So yeah there's your last tangent that I went on is yeah, that season of Thanksgiving and being able to then show gratitude for those that are around you.

So yeah, in conclusion, as I wrap this up with a bow. It was a great Thanksgiving week, and I don't think I'm a unique one in having other amazing [00:43:00] hunting experiences or hunting camp experiences or hunting partner experiences in this time of season. Relish those, hold on to those, and enjoy those moments.

Share those pictures, share those stories. And if you're going to be at the cut table with a bunch of people you, that you have selected as your hunting partners, Enjoy that, but just make sure at that table that everybody's knife is sharp.

‍