Canon Fodder – Sports Blog

By Craig Dumas

I have written the piece on the hunting meals and how they were prepared and consumed but what was omitted – and how I forgot this I’ll never know – was the most important meal of the entire trip ¾ the coveted heart and liver. (Not human mind you, the deer’s.) I don’t really know if this tradition is just in our camp and we are demented and grotesque, or if other hunters partake in this highly praised meal of the gods. I’m a big fan of the heart and liver of the turkey and even the gizzard so it’s only fitting that I share with you another camp favorite when the lunch bell rings. Heart and liver is just another one of the things keeps me coming back year after year.

As previously mentioned, it all starts with a call for the newbie to get dressed, for there’s a carcass to be dragged! (After all, he’s gotta earn his keep too) I really hated to get him out of his warm cozy bed but there was work to be done. Meanwhile, the hallowed meal lies in a pile of innards in the field waiting for the protection of a Ziploc bag. Until it’s safely hidden away, the prizes are begging to be lost or stolen forever by a hawk of some sort.

(No, hawks don’t typically eviscerate deer in the wild and make off with their heart and liver, but you never can be too careful with this stuff. If an armored car can warrant armed guards, heart and liver deserves its own armed and paranoid escorts.)

We all end up standing over the carcass, discussing the hunt and the shot, and trying to finish off the fifth of schnapps saved for this exact occasion. Then one of us admits to getting a chill and we proceed to hook up the deer and drag it to the truck or camp if it’s close enough. Inevitably, we almost forget the most important thing. For some unknown reason, with all the commotion going on, we pass this almost every year. But nevertheless, Denny, the senior of camp, asks if we have the heart and liver thus causing one of us to go bag it and bring it back.

As a rule, part of our get-up (uniform or outfit, if you will) must contain a large Ziploc containing a pair of surgical gloves (not for reasons or fear of disease, but just plain old not wanting to get too bloodied up), some zip ties, paper towel, and your tag or license. All these things are necessary in order to complete the job efficiently. If all goes right, you can eviscerate a deer in less than twenty minutes ¾ unless you’re like Uncle Dave and gag from the smell along the way. Now I personally don’t mind the odor. It’s quite an earthy ripe stench, but have you ever caught scent of any animal’s innards that smell of roses? I think not. As I said, if done properly and quickly, you don’t catch too much of the stink. David, who has gutted many more deer than yours truly, is a sight to be seen while performing this job. We can’t help but bust a gut (no pun intended) watching him perform.

Visualize a hapless fifty-year-old kneeling in a wet field. He’s wearing an outfit that is all but falling down his midsection due to his girlish waist and lack of a backside (and just for the record, I did purchase for him a set of suspenders just for the occasion, but he’ll have nothing to do with ‘em.), plus the weight of a pistol weighing his bibs down even more. (I also must add in all seriousness – and even though he jokes about it – I’m convinced that someday he’s going to bend over carrying all his gear and shoot one of us while trying to pull his pants up.) Years ago he stuffed Kleenex up his nose but has graduated to a set of swimmers nose plugs to alleviate the pungent odor. He, to this day, gags uncontrollably while we laugh in a like fashion. So gagging and spitting regurgitated beer, bent over a deer trying to pull up his pants with his elbows, and trying to finish up cleaning up his trophy is quite the look reminiscent of something from the old reels of the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy.

Some tangent, huh? Well, it needed to be said. Back to the heart.

Once in the kitchen, this precious hunk of meat, that’s no bigger than a man’s fist, must be prepared in the proper fashion. Due to the amount of blood still in the ventricles, it needs to be rinsed, re-rinsed, and rinsed some more. This is all done with the care and tenderness of a gentle hand knowing how to drain it and work out all the clots. If you can’t stomach sticking your fingers in an organ then you don’t deserve a taste. This requires just the right temperature of water to help in dissolving the clots, and having extensive knowledge of how a heart works to get all the areas clear.

The liver not so much needs rinsing as it does needing to be soaked in warm water to get most of the blood out. This organ, since it holds blood and filters blood, needs extended soaking time to get that overly wild taste out. To say deer liver tastes “gamey” is to put it mildly.

All the while, sliced and diced onion is steaming in a buttered fry pan over on the neighboring burner awaiting the meat. Once the meat is added, the cook needs to pay close attention to ensure the most is made of this tasty morsel. Depending on how many hearts we have (most of the time it’s one or two) will depend on how thin the pieces are to be. Our resident expert chef, Denny, is all but blind in one eye and has double vision in the other. (He still wears the old glass contacts from the eighties and refuses to adhere to the new and improved gas and breathable types of today. Old school is putting it mildly.) But when it comes time to divvy up exact amounts of heart for all of us, he has the trained eye of a laser-guided knife and there is always plenty of liver to go around due to his skilled hand.

And then the feast begins. Four grown men huddled over a few – always too few – scraps of delicious meat.

That, in a nutshell, is how we obtain it, how it’s prepared, and how it’s eaten. The coveted heart and liver of a longtime sought after trophy, the northern Michigan white tail deer. No matter the sex of the animal, it always tastes superb and melts on the palette. The succulent tender meat and soft, luscious steamed onion can’t be beaten for a dish best served in camp. There’s no finer fare served in any palace and for those few precious moments in deer camp, we are truly kings.