This week Winding Pathways will feature two blogs that cover the “ins and outs” of harvesting deer, landowner responsibilities and a sample agreement between landowners and deer hunters. This blog includes The Law, Equipment, and Ways to Process a Deer. The next blog on this topic will cover how landowners can manage hunters on their land and a sample agreement form.

Eating Deer

Frustrated homeowners often discover their landscape plants, flowers, and vegetables devoured by hungry urban and suburban deer.

Although we can find them annoying, deer are amazing. Deer are resourceful and adaptable. In many rural areas, their former habitat has been transformed into seas of corn, soybeans, or other crops. The hedgerows, woodlots, and brushy patches that once offered deer shelter have disappeared. So, they moved into town.

Many suburban and even urban areas offer a perfect place for deer to live. Parks and protected natural areas have secure places to live, and vegetable gardens, flower beds, and fruit trees are outstanding deer food. It’s no wonder so many towns are home to robust deer herds.

Although most people love seeing wildlife and enjoy having a few deer around when the garden is raided attitudes change quickly. In response, Winding Pathways and many garden books and blogs offer tips on how to protect trees and plants from hungry deer. Some hardly work, while others, especially secure fencing around gardens, keep deer out. Unfortunately keeping the hungry animals at bay is a never-ending and sometimes expensive task.

Many gardeners are proud to produce local organic vegetables. They might consider the deer that raid their garden a local, organic, free-ranging source of delicious meat.  When done according to state and local laws, converting a deer to family food in no way threatens deer herds. They rapidly reproduce, making deer a perpetual and sustainable food source.

Killing, dressing, and preparing deer meat is an unknown and somewhat mysterious process for suburbanites who have no experience with bows or firearms or converting a live animal to a meal. This blog will give them a basic idea how to do it.

To us shooting a deer is food gathering, much like picking spring nettles or mulberries.  We view deer as an opportunity to harvest local, organic, free-range meat.  

The Law

In the United States wildlife does not belong to a private landowner. It is the property of the people – all the people. Some wildlife protection laws are set by the Federal Government but individual states have the most responsibility for setting and enforcing laws that protect wildlife yet allow people to harvest certain species. Hunting is an important tool in reducing overabundant game species, such as deer.

Anyone wishing to harvest a deer must heed the laws of the state they live in. Generally, this means purchasing a license and hunting certain types of animals only during open seasons. The type of weapon used is also specified by the state.

Traditionally towns and cities have banned hunting and shooting of any sort for safety reasons. However burgeoning deer numbers and resulting vegetation damage and car collisions encouraged town councils to relook at their ordinances. Many have altered ordinances to allow citizens to harvest deer, even in fairly densely populated (by people) areas. State laws always apply and cities normally add their own regulations, mostly to ensure the safety of residents.

Our town of Cedar Rapids is a good example. People are allowed to buy licenses to harvest deer within city limits using bows and arrows if they:

• Attend a training session
• Prove proficiency with archery equipment
• Purchase tags and licenses
• Bring harvested deer to a fire station for officials to check
• Use only permitted weapons during legal seasons
• Inform neighbors of hunting
• And several other specific requirements.

Hunting has reduced, but hardly eliminated, vegetation damage and deer/car collisions. It has put thousands of pounds of nutritious meat on the tables of many families.

So, if anyone wants to harvest a deer they should first check with their city or town to see if it is legal and what specific requirements are in place.  

Generally, anyone living outside city limits and a distance from neighbors only needs to abide by state hunting laws. These tend to be much less restrictive than urban or suburban hunting. Check your state’s Department of Natural Resources for information. Normally deer hunting regulations are posted online.

Two Ways to Harvest a Deer on Your Property

There are essentially two ways to convert a garden devouring deer to steaks, burgers, and chops.  They are:

• Inviting a hunter to shoot a deer on your property. This eliminates the need to own a weapon, shoot an animal, and skin, dress and package it. It’s the easy way for most people but it’s not always simple. See the related Winding Pathways Blog on Tips for managing hunters on your land. Salespeople in local sporting goods stores can help locate a bowhunter. Landowners should request that their hunter provide them with some wrapped and frozen meat.
• Do it yourself. The rest of this blog is general information on how to shoot, process, and eat a deer.

DEER HUNTING EQUIPMENT

There are generally four types of devices legal and effective for killing a deer. A brief description follows:

BOW AND ARROW:   Archery is the favored and often only legal way to kill a deer in cities and towns. Skilled archers are amazingly effective in quickly killing a deer. Unlike firearms bows are quiet. Arrows have a very limited range with 40 yards being about the maximum. It requires hunters to be close to their quarry. Usually, bowhunters place a stand up in a tree. Deer rarely look up when roaming around and often come close to archers perched high. Also, being in a tree requires a downward shot toward the ground. The shooting angle and limited range make archery a safe hunting method in areas of dense human population. It is not easy and skilled archers spend many hours throughout the year practicing to be accurate shots. An upside is that archery is fun. Many people enjoy target shooting, and this can be combined with bow hunting.

SHOTGUNS:   Often states require firearm hunters to use shotguns in areas with dense human populations. Shotguns discharge either a single projectile called a “slug”, or a few large diameter pellets, called “buckshot”. Most states require hunters to use slugs.   These tend to be heavy and relatively low in velocity. When fired from a smoothbore shotgun they are accurate only at a range of 50 yards or so. Newer rifled barreled shotguns using slugs made for them are more accurate and can humanely kill a deer at 125 yards or even longer. Deer slugs tend to not travel a long distance so are commonly mandated near towns.

RIFLES:   High powered rifles are generally only allowed in areas of low human density away from cities. In the hands of a competent person, they are very accurate at a much longer range than shotguns. Rifles come in a wide range of calibers that launch bullets of different weights and velocities. It gets complicated, but generally, rifles aren’t allowed or used in places where the human density is high.

MUZZLELOADING RIFLES:   Before cartridge rifles were invented muzzleloading rifles were the norm. These require loading powder and bullet from the bore or end of the barrel. It is a somewhat slow process and muzzleloaders are single shot since it takes a while to reload. Generally, muzzleloaders shoot large heavy bullets at a slower velocity than cartridge rifles. They can be very accurate at relatively short range.  Winding Pathways is outside city limits and we use a muzzleloader to take a deer on our property each year.

An excellent way to learn how to safely and effectively shoot a firearm is to locate a local shooting range or sporting goods store that sells firearms. Many offer training and excellent information. Our next-door neighbor at Winding Pathways owns a nearby store called Cedar Valley Outfitters. It holds regular firearms training classes and will arrange private lessons to help novices learn how to safely handle and accurately shoot a firearm. Unlike big box stores that sell firearms smaller locally owned gun stores are likely to offer training.  A resource to help locate a store or shooting range is the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

PREPARING TO HUNT A DEER

Think a year ahead. It will likely take that long for a novice to decide to convert a deer to food, research the local and state laws, purchase an appropriate bow or firearm, and learn to shoot it accurately. Finding a mentor may speed the process.

WHAT TO DO ONCE THE DEER IS ON THE GROUND

The easiest way to process a deer is to take it to a locker and pay a professional butcher to covert the carcass into cuts. Most also will grind it or process it into sausage of many types.

Butchering a deer at home is not hard. It takes us about three hours to convert a carcass to cuts of wrapped meat in the freezer.

Hunters normally eviscerate a deer immediately after shooting it. This makes the carcass lighter to transport and helps it cool quicker. The best way to learn how to do this is to tag along with an experienced hunter and learn first-hand. YouTube Videos also show how to do it. It is important to cool meat quickly to prevent spoilage.  At Winding Pathways, we quickly bring a freshly killed deer to our garage where we have a simple block and tackle that lets us hang the deer by its hind legs. This allows us to easily skin and eviscerate it. Once completed we wash the carcass with water and cover it with a clean sheet to keep dirt and insects away from the meat. If the weather is cool – in the mid to high 30s or 40s – we let the meat age for a couple of days before cutting it into pieces ready for the freezer.

BUTCHERING

A veteran meat cutter is the best instructor to show how to cut a deer into steaks, roasts, chops, stew meat.  Because our freezer is small we bone out all the meat. We prepare a few roasts and several steaks but much of the deer is cut up into chunks for stew or put into great-grandma’s old hand cranked grinder and converted to ground meat. We can fit a butchered medium-sized deer into our small freezer and eat it throughout the winter.

Many YouTube videos show how to skin, butcher, and freeze deer meat. Some include cooking tips. One of the better ones is called FIELD DRESSING, SKINNING, BUTCHERING TO FREEZING-LARGE GAME PROCESSING-DEER.

COOKING AND EATING DEER

When properly processed and cooked deer meat is delicious.  It is very lean so tends to be somewhat drier than beef.  Many people make the mistake of overcooking venison.  We cook it to the same degree of doneness as we would a similar piece of beef. Most of our venison is chunks used in winter stew or ground meat used in place of beef hamburger in chili, spaghetti sauce, and many other dishes.