Let There Be Meat

WARNING!  Hunting related photos with dead animals!  Turn back now if you are vegan or squeamish!

 Over the weekend, DH got a deer with his crossbow.  Which is really good, as the amount of red meat in our freezer was dwindling down to worrisome levels.  I've seen the prices of beef in the grocery store lately, and I for sure don't want to try to fit that into the budget!

So, on Saturday when DH came in early from the evening hunt to tell me he'd shot a buck, we got excited.  And a little fearful too, as hitting one with an arrow doesn't always mean you will recover a dead deer.  The crossbow bolts are somewhat more of a sure harvest, but shot placement still matters most of all.  

We ate the dinner I had started cooking while DH was out hunting, giving the deer time to lay down and bleed out (as opposed to chasing a wounded deer).  By the time dinner had been eaten, it was a little more than an hour after after DH had shot the deer, so we went out to track it.  It was totally dark by then, and we were both relieved when we followed the bloodtrail through the woods and found this:

A nice 8-point whitetail deer, all piled up (aka deceased).

He was in among some brush and downed trees, and it took a bit of effort for DH, wearing a harness, to drag him--with me trying to both light the way with a flashlight and keep the buck's antlers from catching on the logs we drug him over, as well as his front legs from wedging themselves around small trees--the 60 or so yards to where DH has left the tractor, having driven that as far off the path in the woods as it could fit.

Forty-five minutes or so later, we had the buck field dressed, brought up to the shop, rinsed out inside, and got him hung on the game scale.

OSHA, don't look.

(yes, I am lifting DH in the tractor bucket rather than getting a ladder)

148 pounds.  Not a huge buck, but will still give us a decent amount of meat (roughly 70+ pounds).  That will keep us in red meat for a while.  

Of course we are hoping to get at least one more deer this year, I'll be joining the hunt on Sunday when firearm deer season begins.