Category: hunting

The deer corn popped out of the truck-mounted feeder looking like small fireworks as the headlamp reflected on the moving corn, creating the illusion of tiny tracer fire piercing the pre-dawn darkness over the empty field. By light, the field would host deer, javelina and maybe a hog.

The truck turned back onto the sendero and mud smacked in the wheel wells. The persistent drizzle caused the endless arrays of prickly pear to glisten. The only creatures moving out of the brush at this moment were little rabbits. That would change.

The truck moved on, shunting from one sendero to another, pausing at a gate, crossing a power line right of way and pressing down another road. Upon arrival, the truck was parked out of sight from the crossing. Up in the blind, the hunter and guide got situated to wait. Go ahead and chamber a round now.

First, three does. A few javelina. The big cream-colored, black polka-dotted wild boar returned from the day before. A 10-point buck showed up. Young bucks followed.

The people waited for a candidate for a guide’s choice. This category is a notch down from a management buck, which is a tier down from a trophy buck. In Texas, landowners, such as ranches, can apply to participate in a state-run wildlife management program. These hunts are handled differently than regular hunts in which hunters use the tags on their hunting licenses to document what they harvest. The management hunts are documented separately under the managed lands deer program.

At this particular South Texas ranch, which has cattle as well as oil and gas, the deer hunts are split into categories and priced accordingly (see guide’s choice, management and trophy above). Ultimately, the objective is to maintain a healthy population of deer with a range of ages and the right proportion among gender. At this ranch, they do not want to harvest bucks under the age of five-and-a-half to give the population a chance to flourish. The first time I hunted this place, the guide’s choice I took turned out to be an eight-and-a-half-year-old buck. The wildlife biologist noted that beyond that, it’s hard to tell because the teeth get too worn down to gauge anymore. He added that it was me, the hunter, or the coyotes that was going to get him and better me than the coyotes.

The day before harvesting this particular buck, we spotted him while scouting a third hunt location. He took off into the brush, but the guide got a good look at him and deemed he qualified as a guide’s choice. This morning, after a couple of hours of hunting, this particular buck came into the field. He took note of a 10-point we’d seen the afternoon before and moved in to attempt to nudge it away. As he walked out, I prepared to shoot.

For a moment, I might have had the shot and got ready, but he leapt into the pen surrounding a feeder, leaving a hog-wire fence between me and himself. (A bullet could hit the wire and miss the deer). He noshed for a good long while and popped back out. I prepared to shoot and then the big white hog disturbed him. Back into the brush he slipped.

We waited with the hope he’d come back out. Eventually, he did, apparently to address the 10-point buck again. He walked out and toward me in the blind, head on. He moved swiftly and certainly. He turned as he progressed after the other buck. He was closing in and I was going to lose my angle. I had to adjust on the fly. Bear in mind, that when we practice at the range, the target is stationary. Hunting is not like that.

The moment came. I had a clean shot in my scope. I took the shot and, mortally injured, he turned for a moment into the road and then into the brush, his antlers visible and after a few seconds, he was down. We waited 20 minutes to go in to get him. I paused with him, said thanks for the chance, the success and the meat.

At check in, he was scored at 126 B&C (Boone and Crockett scale). It was determined, again, by examining how worn down his teeth were, that he was about six-and-a-half years old. The guide removed lymph nodes and packed them in a plastic bag to ship to Texas Parks and Wildlife for them to check for Chronic Wasting Disease. CWD has been detected on a limited basis, fortunately, in other parts of the state, but it’s important to collect data.

These deer live wild on a beautiful ranch with low fences and look very healthy. We are very much looking forward to eating the venison. The ground meat can be used in a variety of recipes – basically anything you’d use ground beef with and can enjoy without all the fat from beef. Venison is lean and delicious. Personally, I love making meatballs with venison (with extra egg whites to bind them).

The backstrap is amazing grilled with a rub of olive oil, salt and pepper. Or, you can cook it in an iron skillet with butter and herbs. There’s nothing quite like toasting your partner with a glass of Pinot Noir and biting into venison you hunted. You know where it came from and, therefore, why it tastes so, so good. If you have the opportunity to hunt, take it.

The Sage Leopard, thesageleopard@gmail.com

When I first heard of people hunting hogs by helicopter, I grimaced. It seems rather unseemly, right? After all, it’s not very sporting.

The problem with hogs are they are not simply game, like deer or duck. Wild hogs are an invasive species that damage the environment and well, hog the resources that actual game eat. Living in Texas, we have seen first-hand the extensive damage hogs beat into the landscape, along roads, in fields and on other land.

Sadly, we are now seeing their handiwork on land owned by my boyfriend’s Dad in North Georgia. These are deep, mountainous woods. Hardwoods stretching high to the sky, gripping steep glens and protecting creeks. The trees are full of squirrels and birds and shed carpets of acorns, which we tend to think are intended for deer, not the ravenous hogs.

At Thanksgiving, we returned to these woods to deer hunt. Our first outing, we quietly entered a clearing with a high perch and heard movement. We stood still and surprisingly, two hogs walked toward us, oblivious. Byron raised his rifle. As he was between me and the hogs, I kept my muzzle skyward.

The two hogs were in a tall grass and amazingly did not see us, even at about 15 yards. At that point, Byron had a shot and dispatched one. The other took off down the mountain. We went to the large sow on the ground.

What can one sow mean to an area? A friend with a family ranch in Texas has noted that the gestation period is three months, three weeks and three days. That’s one way of thinking about it, though I have read a wild sow typically has one to two litters a year. Now, in a given area, there will be more than one sow and the population can really take off.

The first time I saw a herd in action was at Peach Point, a wildlife preserve near Freeport, Texas. The wildlife managers were hosting a public hog hunt and due to high demand, held a lottery for the hunters. Once selected, we were assigned blinds. Each parcel was small enough that they did not want people walking around with rifles shooting into the wild.

We sat in our blind within an electric transmission right of way and watched hogs from a distance of more than 300 yards. In short, we didn’t have a shot. We did get in some wonderful bird watching, in particular. a male Cardinal and two females who seemed to be vying for his attention.

Then, on the way back from lunch while driving in the truck, we saw a huge herd running across an expanse of Gulf Prairie. There were scores of them, including many piglets running alongside big mama sows and scary looking boars. My jaw was swinging in the wind. Without a legal shot under the management practices at hand for that hunt, we were left to gaze in wonderment and horror.

Flash forward back to North Georgia. Our deer hunt was now a hog hunt, for all intents and purposes. The next afternoon, I sat in a dell between a mountainside and a creek, waiting. This was directly below the clearing at the mountaintop where we saw the first two.

The woods are full of beauty.

Suddenly, I heard something that sounded like a swift, heavy rain. The sky was gray, not wet. There was no wind, although it sounded like wind. It was the sound of multitudes of hog hooves schussing through the dry leaves covering the ground.

The train of hogs was coming my way. I had been sitting in wait for a deer. Now, I stood and drew my rifle upon a shooting stick. I aimed for a space the hogs would pass en route to the creek. There was some grass between me and the space. Suddenly, my line of vision through the scope was engulfed with hogs. They rushed past in a grouping.

Rather than blast away, I vainly attempted to focus on one hog to get a clean shot. But it was gone and then another. And another.

I tried to retrain my rifle, to no avail. In short, I whiffed. I resolved I had the wrong gun for the job. Granted, blaming your equipment is the lamest excuse in the book. If I had the chance to do it again, I might not go for that perfect shot.

But, why do hunters go for the optimal shot? For starters, it is humane to cleanly take the animal. Also, if you are planning to eat the meat, you want a clean shot. Of equal importance, is safety. You don’t want to get into the habit of wantonly shooting. You want to aim and take out that particular hog, deer, bird, whichever.

I was simply overwhelmed. I had stayed true to the moral that you must be 100% certain you have a clean kill shot before pulling the trigger. I had that with my first buck. I most certainly did not have that as a dozen large, medium and small hogs raced through tall grass.

Could I have succeeded in hitting one or two? Yes, but they would not have likely dropped liked stones. The ethic being do not kill if the animal would extensively linger or run off with an injury. Have I taken another buck and a doe on other occasions where they ran? Yes, but they only moved briefly and then dropped. One buck took a lung shot and an apparent adrenaline rush. A doe bolted about 20 feet and went down.

When it came to these hogs, I was stunned by their speed. It also reminded me of duck hunting when you wait and wait and suddenly a couple dozen scream overhead. I had trouble focusing on one to take in the moment as milliseconds elapse and then the moment was gone.

I admit I was jealous of Byron’s hog in the clearing. When they came upon us, they were lumbering. One was so big, for a moment, we thought it was a bear. Once they got close, they were obviously hog. I had hoped to stalk the one that ran, but he disappeared into the thick woods. That next day, I missed my chance.

So what to do? We are planning to return in April. If I see another train of hogs, I will plan to shoot one at a time.

Fishermen might tell whoppers, but hunters always tell the truth.

Last weekend my boyfriend and I went on javelina hunt on the Chap. That’s short for Chaparral Wildlife Management Area, south of Cotulla, Texas. We had driven our covered wagon there and brought our personal chef Cookie.

We set up camp with other hunters and I impressed all the guys by starting a fire by using my eyeglasses as a magnifying glass to capture the sun’s rays. Everyone started swapping tips on hunting and cooking with game. As evening settled in, one guy pulled out his phone to show us an app with electronic coyote calls.

He placed it on a piece of firewood and let ‘er rip. Sure enough, a pack of coyotes circled the fire. The big daddy coyote swooped in, snatched the phone in its mouth and confidently trotted off.

The man howled and whipped out a handgun. He shot at the coyote and the beast dropped the phone. We were impressed it wasn’t damaged except for teeth marks in the case. That was enough excitement for one night and we drifted off to sleep. I had the strangest dreams in which the trees seemed to have voices.

The scratching of an armadillo on the tent awoke me and I geared up. I reached the deer blind before dawn and climbed the ladder to await javelina. Soon enough, I heard hoof steps.

A young buck with little antlers was eating the corn I had left out the afternoon before for the javelinas. Then, I could have sworn I heard a whisper in a male voice: “Be careful.” I looked down the sendero in the opposite direction and saw a majestic old buck with a huge rack of antlers. Was it his voice that spoke? I shook my head and saw him slip into the brush, like a ghost.

That afternoon, I switched blinds. This one was a so-called tower blind, essentially comprised of two plastic molded chairs perched up on a small platform with little ladders. The seating arrangement was nestled between thick brush and abutting this area’s sendero. It wasn’t long, surprisingly enough, before a javelina emerged up the path. I took aim, but couldn’t get off a shot. I could have sworn I heard that voice again while I draw a bead on the javelina. “Be careful.”

The javelina moved forward out of view. It spooked me and I radioed my boyfriend to join me. I told him I spotted what we were looking for and went back to a crossroads of senderos to wait for his truck. We walked back and I showed him the pond where I suspected the javelina were watering.

We walked up to the tower blind and got situated. Eventually, three javelina showed up, weaving in and out of the brush and sendero like someone laying a latticework pie crust. Two emerged and started coming our way. It was laborious to watch them slowly making their way along the corn trail. Again, I could have sworn I heard something strange in the wind. Then, a fluttering and rustling as a green jay settled in a branch of a mesquite tree behind me.

The javelinas don’t have great vision and they didn’t notice us up off the ground in the chairs. Soon enough, they were walking right toward us. Then right in front of us under our boots. I could not believe it. We barely breathed. Then, they moved along passed us. Byron slowly drew his rifle up to his left shoulder and I drew in a breath.

He took aim and I saw his left finger slide onto the trigger. Suddenly, a voice screamed out. I couldn’t believe it. I recognized that voice as the same with the be careful warning. It was the green jay screaming, “Look out! Look out! Look out!”

I wrote this after a real javelina hunt for a Tall Tales Contest in my Toastmasters International club. I hope you enjoyed it!

The Sage Leopard

On a duck hunt, a cold, driving rain can make me wonder if I’m truly a hunter. My commitment is strong enough to get me out in the dark to set up and wait, but can be called into introspective question when my hands become so frigid that they are rendered useless.

It’s sort of like doubting your commitment to Christianity when you feel you cannot forgive Osama bin Laden. You have to keep trying. And, similar to a person of faith seeking to become what they pray, a hunter must stay. Or, in my case, bail when your fingers won’t shoot.

Duck habitat before the rains

My boyfriend must be warmer-blooded person because he stayed out in the rain by himself for another half hour, at least. By the time he returned to the truck, he looked shocked by the cold. While we were wearing appropriate clothing, including neoprene waders and Frogg Toggs, there’s nothing like a 47-degree soaking to dampen your enthusiasm. Honestly, if I’d been in a blind, I think I might have enjoyed it. (More on that later.)

Instead, after more than a couple of hours, I ended up sitting in the truck watching an Alton Brown video of his visit to the Garden & Gun office kitchen. How did this happen? The road to hell was paved with good intentions. Yesterday afternoon, we scoped out or location and found what appeared to be the perfect spot to set up a blind. We used garden stakes and camo tarp and wrap. We took of some brush and set it up in front. When we got back to our hotel, the rain began.

Setting up the blind the day before the hunt

In the morning, we were excited despite the rain. We got back to our spot and hoofed through muck down the dirt levee until we reached the blind. We nestled under our blind. A wind kicked up and the ducks started flying in. So exciting! So very exciting until the wind kicked up the tarp, a.k.a., poncho above our heads. The poncho began wildly and loudly flapping, and spooking the ducks. Now, we desperately yanked down our blind and split up to stand in the reeds.

I could not see. I moved back and sat on the ground behind the reeds. The rain was pelting my face. I tried to find the happy medium between shielding my face and being able to see. Maintaining any semblance of peripheral vision was a challenge. If I looked up, the rain poured over my glasses.

This is when idiomatic expressions and their etymologies come to mind. Something blew our cover? Yes, our actual blind blew its own cover. Sitting duck? The one that came closest to me had landed and sat on the water a moment — until it realized it had joined a decoys party.

When we gave up, I held the gate open for Byron to pull through with the truck and two other trucks were coming through. One tailgate was full of ducks. I felt stupid. We gathered to compare notes and the successful party harvested a total of 11. I told another hunter about our fatal error with the flapping blind. He commented that they weren’t really flying today, which was a polite way of consoling a loser. The man with the tailgate full of birds remarked, “you’re a hell of a woman to be out here.”

View from my seat on the edge of the pond in the rain.

I don’t normally play the woman card, but I gotta wonder if I man would be too macho to write a blog admitting he got to cold too keep hunting. It may not be a gender thing, but I am a creature who loves comfort. I’m the type who likes to get into jammies around 8 p.m., wrap up in a fleece blanket and curl up on the couch with the dogs. They love being outdoors too and know when it’s time to come in to cuddle.

As for our next hunt, tomorrow morning, we are going to get out even earlier before they start flying and hope it is raining a little less.

The Sage Leopard

When you think of hunting and the great outdoors, do you think of ginger curry with venison meatballs? How do these things spring from my brain?

I have had the benefit of living in Houston, Texas the last 10 years and Houston is home to a lot of Asian cuisine as well as hunters. I’ve always liked Thai curry and the sort of Indian-inspired curry you might find served with chips in an Irish pub.

Curry meatballs served with cilantro

I never really went out of my way to get curry until I had the privilege of spending a month in Singapore. I quickly became obsessed with all the different Indian and Thai curries I could get my hands on. Some nights I would decide to eat light at dinner time, head to the hotel with a yogurt, sit quietly in the room and hear the voice of a green curry down the street calling out my name.

The curry was in a food stall stacked along an alley with a nice smattering of cuisines. The worst was the time I opted to order a Tiger beer from the bar a step from the curry stall only to remember that alcohol is almost prohibitively expensive in Singapore. Once the curry addiction was set, I found myself ordering it all the time at lunch back in Houston.

Then, a British expat friend came to visit and she made an Indian curry. Next, my boyfriend’s father remarked that eating a curry once a week is healthy. I started experimenting. The beauty is you can make it up as you go along and not go wrong. Still, I was truly inspired by a Bon Appetit recipe I bookmarked. The picture is mesmerizing due to the rich, deep orange color of the curry.

Using the immersion blender on the curry sauce

Now, here is the key distinction: I used ground venison to make my meatballs. Venison from deer I harvested last January. I have come to love venison because it tastes good, is satisfying without being filling, Because it is lean, you need to add more egg to bind the meat into balls.

The second departure from the recipe I recommend is using a food processor and most definitely not a blender to puree some of the initial ingredients, such as the scallions. (UPDATE: I just made this a second time and used an immersion blender in the cooking pot. See elaboration below.*) First thing first, review the ingredients and decide what you will use and need. The magazine recipe called for 2 pounds of ground beef. I wasn’t about to commit 2 lbs. of venison to an untested recipe and opted to try it with 1 lb. Thus, I needed to cut this recipe in half.

Meatballs:

• Olive oil
• 3 scallions
• 1 jalapeno
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 inch ginger root, peeled (I used the full amount)
• 1 tablespoon (just used juice of 1 lemon)
• ½ tablespoon garam masala
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 lb. of ground venison
• 2 eggs (I always use 2 eggs per pound of ground venison)
• 1 ½ tablespoon plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Curry sauce:

• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 2 onions (I used one red, one sweet)
• 5 garlic cloves
• another 1 inch chunk of peeled ginger
• 3 dried chiles de arbol (oops, I used 3 instead of 1 ½)
• 2 tsp. curry powder
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 2 tsp. ground turmeric
• 1 ½ tablespoons ground coriander
• ½ teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1 14.5-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 1 bay leaf
• ½ tablespoon Kosher salt

Adding curry spices to onion and garlic

Recognize that if you halve the recipe, that always throws off things. In other words, when you adapt a recipe, you make it your own. I used the full amount of tomatoes instead of half because what am I going to do with half a small can of tomatoes. Also, I had to add water to the first step because the ingredients did not blend. Then, I had to strain that mixture to get out the extra liquid. Toward the end, after I used the outboard motor to blend the sauce (an immersion blender), I found the taste too spicy hot and added a can of lite coconut milk. The result was an outstanding tasting curry with more volume than needed for the meatballs. The excess sauce was stored separately and eaten with toasted French bread for lunch.

*UPDATE: I just made this again, this time the full recipe with 2 lbs. of ground venison and a 28-oz. can of diced tomatoes. To better bind the meat, I used half a sleeve of crushed Ritz crackers. I also swapped out scallions for sweet onion and skipped the dried peppers. I also used Meyer lemon juice (we have a tree).

Try it!

Cheers,

The Sage Leopard

Venison steaks (top plate) accompanied by drunken mushrooms, baked potatoes, grilled veggies and tomatoes.

We don’t need a label on our meat to tell us it’s organic. We know it is because we shopped at nature’s grocery. We took this meat in the field. Deer hunting isn’t easy, but it is rewarding, especially when it results in a freezer full of organic, lean meat. Venison is delicious, not “gamey,” if properly prepared. The first time I tasted it many years ago, the particular dish did taste gamey to me. But, it is really all a matter of preparation that begins in the field. A clean shot ensures the deer is humanely dispatched and there is no adrenaline rush that would impact the meat flavor. A clean shot is when the hunter is 100% certain the shot will be immediately effective. A responsible hunter doesn’t take the shot if he or she is not absolutely sure it is a clean shot. This is why it is called hunting, not taking. Hunting is not easy and requires a lot of preparation and patience. Some people take offense about hunting and yet buy meat at the supermarket. If you are going to eat meat, why not bring a healthy alternative into the mix.

Sliced tomatoes seasoned with salt, drizzled with olive oil and dressed with green onion.

It’s gotten to the point that I really don’t care for beef because my palate acclimated to the taste of venison. I think now this is what meat is supposed to taste like and love that is hasn’t had antibiotics or steroids or whatever else might be in other meats. The preparation of our venison is a simple process. After field dressing, the meat is placed in ice chests packed full of ice. Over the next couple of days, the ice water is drained and ice replenished until the ice water is virtually clear. This ensures most blood is drained and that is why our meat does not taste gamey. What we ate tonight were venison steak medallions and they were out of this world. My boyfriend seasoned them with a spice rub and butter before grilling them. Venison must be kept moist when grilling and butter or sesame oil both work great at sealing in the moisture. For the rest of the meal, I sliced tomatoes, including the first one from our patio tomato plant, sautéed mushrooms, and baked potatoes. I also deglazed the mushrooms with red wine. For the potatoes, I added onion dip seasoning to sour cream. Finally, I added some leftover grilled veggies. The meal was complete with the company of my boyfriend, who taught me to hunt.

Cheers,
The Sage Leopard