Saturday, January 2, 2010

personal food supply, option B

It's 7:00 am, and my husband is out hunting deer. He didn't go far. He didn't load up the truck on Friday and drive out to a deer blind on some remote land. Nope, he rolled out of bed about an hour ago, and walked to the back of our property. He's taken quite an interest in hunting lately, but since we both come from families who don't, and friends who mostly don't, he had no idea how to even go about it. Turns out that all we had to do was pay a visit to our neighbor. A hunter himself, he quickly informed us that we have deer passing along the creek on our property regularly. Since we haven't had much cause yet to visit the far reaches of our place, we had no idea.

Back in my younger and more naive days, I was staunchly anti-hunting. I've never been against eating meat, but modern hunting is quite sophisticated, and it seemed unfair to me to essentially trick animals into coming close enough that you can shoot them from your blind. "They don't really have a fighting chance" I'd argue. Needless to say, I've learned more about hunting since then, and A LOT more about meat eating. Once I decided to raise livestock, I could no longer ignore the similarity between what I was doing and what hunters do. If anything, my animals are even less likely to escape their fate than the deer in these woods. In any case, either method is far better than buying feedlot meat.

I do hope we're able to do some measure of hunting on our land. Adding venison, rabbit, fish and wild duck to our freezer would add variety, increase economy and be quite a boon to our little homestead. It's somewhat comforting to know that no matter what happens, there is food right outside our door - it feels like money in the bank. And the fact that we can take advantage of it right here, without leasing land or setting up camp someplace far away...well that's just gravy.

5 comments:

  1. Oh are you going to have fun. Some of my fondest memories are of helping my dad butcher a deer. I can still smell the scent of venison blood like it was yesterday. Actually it was only a week ago when some came in the hardware store and said they where going to get some processed.

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  2. Just wanted to let you know that I stumbled onto your blog today and I like what I'm seeing here. I added you onto my blog list at my blog.

    Good luck with the hunting. My husband used to hunt a lot but hasn't hunted since we met. He is taking it up again soon -- for the same reasons you wrote about. We just bought a home with 3 acres and we also have deer (and turkeys and rabbits) that roam around.

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  3. Hi Shari - thanks for visiting!

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  4. Tara do ya'll have wild turkey? I don't know if you're area does, but I know they do to the West of you, so maybe they make their way over to you once in a while. We do not have any on our land in East Texas, but OH how I wish we did.....

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  5. Mmm venison! Remember Bubba the Bambi Killer is the original Organic Locavore :)

    HNY

    Rusty

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