"We're going to have to do something about the deer," I told Mark over lunch.  "They're getting in the garden again."

Fast forward ahead an hour and I hear a gunshot that sounds awfully close.  I run outside --- "Honey, are you okay?!"

"I killed it!" my husband crows.

It turns out he hadn't quite killed it, though he had knocked it off its feet.  Mark had to rush inside and reload before putting the anterless buck out of its misery.  But then he was the king of the farm for the next two days, having saved the garden and killed his first deer.  By local standards, Mark had also beaten my record from two years ago since my first (and only) kill had been a doe.

I can be awfully competitive, though.  Two days later, as I talked to Daddy on the phone, I saw a deer walking right down the garden path as if headed for our front door.  "I've got to go," I told my father.  "There's a deer in the garden."  "Kill it!" he replied.

I crept down the hall and picked up the loaded rifle.  Slipping off the safety, I eased open the front door and steadied the gun against the door frame.  As Mark likes to say, he could see the deer fall to the ground right outside his window --- my shot had severed its spine and the youngster died almost instantly.  Once we dressed them both out, my antlerless buck was just a hair bigger than my long-suffering husband's.  I told him he was just going to have to get another deer to even the score.

Which is all a long way of saying --- this week's lunchtime series is all about venison.  Is it cost effective to hunt your own?  How do you butcher it?  How do you eat it?  Stay tuned for the answers, including a special guest post on chimney top smoking.

(If you're a vegetarian, or just disgusted by pictures of meat on the hoof, I apologize in advance.  You might want to steer clear, at least until we reach the kitchen on Thursday.)

This post is part of our Venison lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Sweet potato fed venison Butchering a deer How much meat do you get from a deer? Smoking venison on a chimney top Roast venison ham

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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