TxStarr

Exactly! If y'all are gonna mess up my grandmother's recipe with 1% or 2% milk, y'all might as well use water instead of that stuff and, while you're at it, stab me in the heart and get it over with!! I mean, hello! Deep frying here! It ain't healthy to begin with so why no go whole hog and use the real stuff?!?!?!?! I don't think many translate well from Southern to Yankee . . . but I could be wrong!

It is the milk you drink with breakfast. It is sweet as opposed to sour milk. I think you northeners refer to sour milk as butter milk . . . although to me that is the milk that is left over after you make butter and is not sour at all!!

As for preparing the meat, put your seasoning on the meat then tenderize it (I use a meat tenderizer, my grandmother used a glass coke bottle, to each their own!). Mix an egg with some milk (I use sweet milk b/c usually don't have sour milk in the house but can use either) and whisk. Put your flour in a bowl (I usually put a little more seasoning in the flour). Dip meat in milk/egg, dredge in flour, back in milk/egg then back in flour. Ease into pan. The oil has to be hot enough to look like it is boiling flour when you drop a pinch in it. Once you get the meat in the oil, let the one side get a light brown, turn over then turn the heat down (on a gas stove I turn it down to just over the burner). Cover and let simmer for 30 minutes or more. The meat will melt in your mouth! That is how my grandmother cooked chicken and deer steak and cubed steak. Add some biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet tea and top it off with a pecan pie.

I have noticed that most people don't process their own meat and I cannot understand it . . . you KNOW what you are eating when you do it yourself!! My husband's first job was at a processing plant and some of the things that got employees fired from there would curl your hair!! But my dad and his family always processed their own meat—even before we had fancy grinders and meat saws!! We leave ours in coolers with ice and water for a minimum of 3 days. Sometimes for as long as a week and a half. It helps soak the blood out and lets us do it when we have the time. We dream of a walk in cooler!!

OR, his wife found him cheating and sold all his prized possessions dirt cheap! :boxing: That's what the women in my family do. :hammer2: Just saying . . .

It is just bow season here and I haven't had a shot. It's been hot and the deer aren't moving. But the mosquitos are out in full force! I swear they are on steroids this year!!! Want me to post pics of those? I am racking up on killing them suckers!

Gasp! Why waste good frying meat like that?!?!!? You can clean the hind quarters and do the same thing (just as tender) and save the backstrap for chicken frying. Just saying.

Jezebel Sauce 1 cup peach preserves 1 cup orange marmalade 1 (6 oz) jar mustard 1 (5 oz) jar horseradish 1/4 teaspoon pepper (I used white b/c I did not want black flakes) Mix all together and serve over cream cheese with crackers. I did not use that much horseradish in the batch I was going to eat but made a batch for Christmas party and everyone loved it!!

Doing it a little at at time would be such a freaking pain so we freeze trimmings from hogs and deer until we want to process it. Then we partially thaw it, cut it into chunks, and grind it—it cuts and grinds easier. We mix deer with pork for sausage and use deer (with some beef fat) for ground meat. We have an old commercial grinder so we almost always do 50 pounds of meat or more at a time (takes about 2-3 hours from cutting the meat into chunks and finishing cleaning the grinder). So far we have not had any problems with any of it.

SATURDAY! SATURDAY! SATURDAY! :toot: Can you tell I am shaking like a miniature yapper already?!?!?! And Will has to work! (Evil laugh here!) :bat: My nephew is bummed b/c we are not letting him bow hunt this year but he's 12 and has not had a lot of practice with a bow (we refuse to let him take one home b/c his little brother and sister are spawns of Satan and destroy everything of his they can get their hands on and have been known to stab people with sharp objects . . .). But he's excited about youth season. Good luck to all y'all!

It takes too many squirrels for that. Now we used to take deer brains and scramble them with eggs and onion. Pretty good. Plus it stopped people from dropping by just to eat!!

My grandmother loved squirrel! The old ones she used for dumplings. Just boil them and take the meat off the bones. You want to make sure you strain the water you boiled them in to get all the bones out. Then cook the dumplings in the juice, add the meat back in in the last ten minutes or so. The young ones she chicken fried. Soak in water in a bowl in the fridge for a few days (until all the blood soaked out), soak in sour milk for a few hours or overnight, salt and pepper, dredge in milk/egg and flour and fry slow in a cast iron skillet. Sometimes she would make milk gravy with the drippings and put the squirrel back in the gravy. Oh my goodness that was awesome! We would skin the head out and she would chicken fry it whole so we could eat the brains and tongue. Sure was good!

You can go to this site and send a message to your representative. I haven't found where a vote has taken place—yet. http://www.ussportsmen.org/

Wyatt

It's not just animal rights we would have to worry about. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein): First Amendment In his book Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech Sunstein says there is a need to reformulate First Amendment law. He thinks that the current formulation, based on Justice Holmes' conception of free speech as a marketplace “disserves the aspirations of those who wrote America’s founding document.” The purpose of this reformulation would be to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.” He is concerned by the present “situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another,” and thinks that in “light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.” He proposes a “New Deal for speech [that] would draw on Justice Brandeis' insistence on the role of free speech in promoting political deliberation and citizenship.” Animal rights Sunstein has also written often in favor of animal rights. “Every reasonable person believes in animal rights,” he says. He also says that human “willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings,” and that we might "conclude that certain practices cannot be defended and should not be allowed to continue, if, in practice, mere regulation will inevitably be insufficient—and if, in practice, mere regulation will ensure that the level of animal suffering will remain very high." Specifically he thinks that, “we ought to ban hunting.” He also thinks that “we could even grant animals a right to bring suit” and that it is possible that “that before long, Congress will grant standing to animals to protect their own rights and interests.” This all stems from his claim that "animals, species as such, and perhaps even natural objects warrant respect for their own sake, and quite apart from their interactions with human beings." Taxation Sunstein has argued that “we should celebrate tax day.” He appears to claim that the very concepts of property and society are based on government and taxes: In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?... Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [it is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. Sunstein goes on to say: If government could not intervene effectively, none of the individual rights to which Americans have become accustomed could be reliably protected. [...] This is why the overused distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights makes little sense. Rights to private property, freedom of speech, immunity from police abuse, contractual liberty, free exercise of religion--just as much as rights to Social Security, Medicare and food stamps--are taxpayer-funded and government-managed social services designed to improve collective and individual well-being.

I LOVE your pic! How awesome! The pics from my summer are not as, um, interesting. Gardening and canning and freezing. The pot the peas are in? Saw two tours cooking down greens, three with peas, three hot water baths for sweet pickles, and three hot water baths with bread and butter jalapenoes. So my summer was work while yours looks like it was a hoot!

I take a pack with a few books (I love to read), some snacks (apple already cut, granola bars, etc.), bottle of water (I take 2 so I can add Crystal Light flavor to one), extra jacket (light one just in case it gets cool while I am out there or, if it was cold to begin with, warms up and heavy jacket is too much), find a word book. But, when I go in the morning, I sit until 2 or so. I don't hunt with someone, though. I hunt by myself in a blind or box stand so I have the room and cover to move around. The one ladder stand I do hunt in is a double and has stuff around the sides so all you can see is my shoulders up. My biggest issue is being bored. I have books everywhere and even read while watching TV. If I have several books, snacks, and water and I can stand up and stretch, I can sit all day. No books? I will stay maybe an hour, if that. So, keep her warm/cool, entertained, and hydrated. And if she wants to leave, go. You can come back later if you want to keep hunting. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Oh my! Thank you! I was starting to feel a little intimidated by this thread!!

I have a CVA. Will has an TC but he takes my CVA for his backup when he is hunting on Colorado. His buddies that he hunts in CO with have upgraded to TCs but hunted with CVAs for years. I have never shot his ML but I will swear by my CVA. Not that I have killed anything with it (I am still working on getting a good one with my bow before I jump off into ML hunting seriously) but it is a hoot to shoot!!!

Ah, sad to say, you won't be getting pork chops off a wild hog. You can BBQ the ribs and they are tasty but not a lot of size to them. Are y'all going to be using dogs or stand hunting or spot/stalk hunting? Either way is a blast! Good luck!

We eat wild hog all the time and have had no problems. With all boars, castrate them immediately after killing them. I cannot stress this enough—especially if you have run him with dogs. After you have him cleaned and quartered, let him soak in ice water for a few days. We cover the hog with ice in a cooler and let the ice melt. Then we drain the water, add more ice and water. For larger boars we have even kept them on ice from one weekend to the other. I also soak it in water when thawing it out. The meat will turn a gray color when all the blood is out of it. So far we have not had one that smelled while cooking or tasted bad. The biggest one to date was about 500 lbs. and we ate back strap, ribs, shoulders, and roast off of him—absolutely delicious! As for mixing hog meat with venison, we do it all the time. We take the trimmings out of the freezer and let them thaw in the fridge for a day or two (this is where having two freezers and two refrigerators comes in mighty handy!). Then cut the trimmings into chunks, weigh it, add the spice, grind on chili plate. Cook a few patties and taste. Adjust seasoning if needed then fine grind and stuff in bags and freeze. Sorry your experience was not that great.

TINK!!! You're everywhere!!! How's it going?

All of the pictures are clickable. My dad, Bo, Hoss, Brandy, Bubba, and Air. Sadly all of the dogs have since passed on. This is my favorite picture of my dad from before he got cancer. My dad "helping" with my first deer My dad helping with my second hog, what would I do without him? Will and my dad at the big game awards in 2007. Deer scored 159 and some change. Will and our nephew Taylor with his first deer

I am not fond of UPS. They have left boxes on the porch (instead of on the table that sits on the porch where the dogs can't get it), boxes balanced on the porch rail (where they get rained on), in the mailbox (it is a new thing now that they deliver to the post office and the mail carrier actually delivers the package to your house—the whole reason we had it sent UPS b/c our mail carrier is not dependable!), and on the ground by the drive way (a box of muzzleloader supplies that the dogs then strewed all over the yard). I am happy to see they are not just picking on me!

I used mine off and on all during the season -- especially the three days after Christmas in S. TX last year b/c it was HOT and the bugs were BAD! Temps. are in the 90s and higher right now and were last year when archery season started and the mosquitos were out in full force! We have even invested in the lamp and take it when we go fishing. I LOVE ThermaCell and won't leave home to go hunting or fishing without one! As for spooking the game, hubby and I both have had deer all around us and they have not spooked.