Deer Hunting

[uath]

I killed a nice buck last weekend. I really do hate to hurt the little things, but I love to eat them.

Serves me right. It turned a beautiful Saturday evening into three hours of messy, back-breaking work. I like to butcher my own. It saves money (free) and I cut off all the bad parts, then package them into meal-sized bags for the freezer. There's lots of waste, but that goes to my dogs.

I absolutely love venison. It's the cleanest, best-tasting meat in the world. My favorite is to grill chunks of it wrapped in a half-slice of bacon. Yumm!

Here in Georgia, we hunt from trees. I just put up a new ladder stand this last Halloween. It's on the edge of a small swamp. Cool place.

[benedictjjones]

i've been eating a lot of venison recently (alas i didn't stalk and kill it in Southwark Park) and really do prefer it to beef at the minute. we had venison meatballs yesterday and venison stew on monday.

out of interest have you ever hunted deer with or bow?

[uath]

I have hunted with a bow and have killed a deer with one. I'll never do it again.

I had a powerful compound bow, still do. I was up in my stand about 18 years ago. Two young bucks walked up. I shot one of them. It was a good shot. The arrow went all the way through. Neither deer moved. The one I had shot walked off a short way. The other continued to stand under me. Finally, it walked away.

Everyone had always said, "Wait at least 30 min. before you come down. You've got to wait till the deer bleeds to death. I didn't listen and came down anyway. I hadn't taken three steps before the wounded deer jumped off and ran away into a swamp.

I knew it died, but I couldn't find it. Swamps are hard places to track. There are no footprints, and the blood trail is super easy to miss, especially with a flashlight. I didn't find it untill two days later. The buzzards led me to it. The deer was wasted.

That's the problem with bows. The deer doesn't die from massive shock, like with a 30-06. It has to bleed to death. Down here, with heavy vegatation and frequent swamps, there's a good chance wounded deer will run off to die a useless, needless death.

It sounds like a faid advantage for the deer, but that's decieving. I hear bow-hunters talking about "sticking" deer all the time and having them run off. That's not for me.

A heavy rifle, with a scope, allows you to place your shot for an instant kill. It's horrible, but here in the swampland, it's reccomended to shoot the deer through a shoulder on the way to the heart and lungs. If you break its shoulder, it can't run away.

That deer was the only animal I've ever shot and not recovered. It really bothered me. I take comfort in the fact that it died quickly, but I'm not going to hunt with a bow anymore.