Canon Fodder – Sports Blog

By Jeffrey Petts

Day Two

The morning of Opening Day was cold and wet. Not freezing but damp. These are my least favorite conditions but they mattered little because I was heading back to bed.

A rap on the door jarred me awake sometime later. “Get up,” Craig ordered, “you’ve got work to do.”

“You got one?”

“No. Dave did. And you get to drag it in.”

There’s an informal policy in the camp of sharing meat when a deer is harvested. Considering I’m possibly the worst hunter in the state, I rely solely on this courtesy in order to get even the castoff meat. Because my role this year would comprise only that of camp cook, I volunteered to pull any carcasses in from the woods to “earn my keep”. A mere three hours into the season and there was a deer to haul. I couldn’t have been more excited.

Nature is a mother and couldn’t decide if it would rain or snow. The combination created was the worst of both worlds as wet mixed with cold. On top of that, I was wearing sneakers rather than boots. (Why would I need boots? I wasn’t hunting.) Clad in jeans and a sweatshirt (topped off by a DNR-mandated blaze orange knit hat), I marched the quarter-mile from the road to the kill site. Dave said the deer was possibly a year-and-a-half old. The longest of the trio of antlers was merely a three-inch spike. The innards sat in a pile close by. The tongue hung from its mouth. (I’ve never had deer tongue but it’s meat and I don’t like to see an ounce wasted. The temptation to poke it back in was quickly dismissed. I didn’t want the guys to mistakenly think I was worried for the welfare of a dead deer when all I really cared about was sparing a bit more of the booty from a long drag through the woods.) Dave hooked up an improvised yoke he had made and I was off. Fifteen minutes later we were hauling 100 pounds of stiffening deer into the back of Dave’s pickup. Blood and gore dripped from the vacant cavity. All I saw was lovely venison steaks.

(At this point, you may have noticed that Dave got a buck rather than a doe as indicated in the title of today’s post. Well, I used a bit of artistic license in this instance. Factually, it was a male deer that was brought down but calling the article ‘Deer Camp: Part Buck’ wouldn’t make as much sense… not that ‘Part Doe’ really did but at least you probably recognized where I was going with the pun. So there you are. I’m glad we got that cleared up. Now back to the story.)

“Don’t forget the heart and liver.”

Dave held up the bloody Ziploc of butchered gold. “I’ve got it.” He paused and said with a measure of disbelief, “You really get into this,” referring to the prized possessions in the plastic bag.

“They’re my favorite.”

And they are.

Back in a previous life – my pre-Canon Fodder days – I had a job working in a gentlemen’s entertainment establishment. Money flowed like water and overindulgence was the norm for patrons and staff alike. One particular guilty pleasure enjoyed by the management team was ordering the occasional massive platter of sushi. At more than $100 a tray, the tiny slabs of raw fish were pricey. As the low man on food chain, I was excluded from the party when the sushi arrived. Countless were the times my bosses would huddle around a platter shoveling one exotic delight after another into their gobs. (Though they had good taste, these folks were hardly refined.) On one particular occasion, I asked if I could try a piece. The head manager asked (between chews) one subordinate after another if they would spare a portion of their share. All refused. “Nobody wants to give up any of their own. Too bad.”

I learned a lot from that experience. Though I had previously never had the urge to try sushi, being denied made me want it more than anything. When I finally did get to have it, I understood why my bosses had horded the tasty little treats; they’re absolutely delicious. Since that day, I’ve done my best to introduce non-sushi eaters to the delicacy. The smart ones accept my offer because I’ll only do so once. Those making a sour face as they decline are left to watch me greedily inhale my catch. “Too bad. You’re loss,” I tell them.

My point? If someone offers you something new, it’s probably a good idea to give it a try because there might not be a second offer. And that’s probably how it would have gone had I not accepted my campmates’ offer for deer hearts and livers after a pair of early season kills in my first camp. The duo doesn’t sound very appetizing and I’ve never seen them used on the Food Network, but I wasn’t about to be left out so I took a seat at the table and put my faith in the boys.

Regardless of who drops the deer, it’s Denny that prepares heart and liver. He’s the Anthony Bourdain of venison. The ingredients are simple: onions, butter, salt and pepper. But don’t mistake simplicity with being plain. Liver tastes earthy. I’m not a fan of beef liver. Venison liver, on the other hand, has a gaminess about it I can not only tolerate, but appreciate, in annual doses. (Like when we’re celebrating in deer camp.)

Then there’s the heart. Oh the glorious heart. If you are ever granted the opportunity to share in a bit of deer heart, thank your benefactor and enjoy every morsel. Deer hearts are few and far between. A well-executed shot while hunting could pulverize the beating four-chambered prize. And they’re small. Oh, so small and precious. And when sautéed in a bit of butter, they are the most tender meat I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting. It melts in your mouth like the best bit of steak you’ve ever had. To put a condiment like steak sauce or ketchup on it would be to sully the treat.

Needless to say, I take the acquisition of heart and liver very seriously. It was the only reason I would even consider volunteering to drag more than 100 pounds of carcass through wooded undergrowth in the rain and sleet. It wasn’t for the sake of camaraderie. It was greed fueling me for that dreaded quarter-mile. I’ll probably never kill a deer of my own, but I’ll haul its corpse for a bit o’ the heart and liver.

It wasn’t even noon on opening day and the camp had already collected its first prize. Deer camp 2007 was on track to be a memorable one.

Like what you’re reading so far? Keep checking in on Canon Fodder for another installment or two about deer camp along with other bits from our growing staff of writers. And remember to pass CF on to friends, family and coworkers. We’ve come along way in 2007 and ’08 looks even more promising.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Canon Fodder, Hunting, Jeffrey Petts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.