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November means hunting season, and it’s a big deal in our particular corner of the world. We live on 30 acres, but surrounded by around 600 acres of conserved land, both forest and field. All our neighbors hunt, and it seems like everyone and their mother spends time on the venison rich conservation land in these parts.

Four out of the last five years we’ve had a hunter in our yard early in the morning, either dragging a deer, or knocking at the door asking for a hand hauling a deer out of the woods. Two years ago, I literally stepped outside early one morning to feed the chickens to find Mike, a neighbor that lives half a mile down the road, in the thick of things with his catch not thirty feet from my front door.

And a good morning to you too, sir.

Hunters around here don’t generally hunt near houses, even ones back in the woods like ours, as common sense. But our land has the only pond in this 600 acre block, and that counts for something with an injured deer. They’ll head to water, so any deer that makes it more than a few steps on this land is headed toward our dooryard. Even when not shot here, they land here.

We don’t get many visitors back here in the woods most of the year, but hunting season is the exception.

We more or less expect a hunter to drop by this season, either a neighbor we know asking for a hand, or someone we don’t asking for permission to track a deer across our land. (A couple years back, it was a dad and his 12 year old son early one morning, with the pride of having shot his first buck. Absolutely made my day.)

This year, it was a bit different.

My daughter, swimming in the pond with here geese in the summer months.

Right at dusk, the dog was sounding off, barking at something just out of view, and I’m thinking it’s a skunk. Another one, when he’s already been spayed three times in as many months. Or maybe a porcupine this time, just to spice things up.

But no, it was a deer, taking its last steps as our pup announced the alarm. I ran outside just in time to see it breathe its last breaths.

I expected a hunter to be hot on its tail, like always, and called into the woods, wondering if Mike or Ben, the two most likely candidates around here, were working their way toward the house from their stands a half mile away.

I waited, but none came. I phoned the neighbors, asking them if they’d lost something, but none were hunting this evening…that’s a first.

It was getting on dark, so I called the game warden, and he said likely the hunter lost it, and at this point, they’d probably given up the search, assuming the meat would spoil before morning. The warden said he’d be by in a day or two to simply dispose of it.

But wait, if you’re just going to dispose of it, “Can’t we just keep the meat?”

He perked right up! Of course, one less thing for him to do. But do you know how to gut and butcher a deer?

We’re not hunters, we’re farmers. Our neighbors take care of the venison around these parts, and they’re always more than happy to trade a bit here and there for a bottle of blackberry wine or a whole goose from our flock come Christmas time.

I’ve never processed a deer, but I have processed plenty of goats, pigs and all manner of other animals, both two legged and four. It’s not all that different.

There was time, when we didn’t have these skills, back when we were newlyweds. I’d picked up a pair of goat bucks from a local dairy. They’re happy to be rid of them, and sell them for as little as $5 a head in the spring.

We raised them on the yard all summer long, but come autumn, the reality that we didn’t know what we were doing sunk in. I asked a hunting co-worker if he’d give us a hand and show us the ropes, and he was all too happy to share his skills. And it was the week before hunting season, so he was about to get out his supplies anyway.

We harvested the bucks and hung them up in our garage for processing. This was back when we had just half an acre, and reasonably close neighbors, and I’ll never forget one of our neighbors hollering over the fence, “I’d close that garage door if I was you.”

“It’s a goat!” I hollered back.

“Sure it is!” He chortled. It was a week before the start of hunting season, after all.

The back leg of the deer we processed this week. Plenty of meat on this one.

Now here we are, sixteen years later, and we’re hauling a deer up to process, my husband looks to me and chortles in his best backcountry accent, “I’d close that garage door, If I was you.”

We’re a long many years from that day, and a lot of skills later, but I’m still eternally grateful for the gifts that hunter gave us all those years ago. The knowledge to put meat on our table, fist from our farm, and now with this surprise windfall of meat this year as well.

I was talking with a mom friend a few days later, and she said that her son had just got his second deer bow hunting. He’s thirteen, and he handles it all himself, which she’s pleased by, as she has younger children to tend.

But she looks to me, suddenly serious, and says, “Honestly, I’m just happy to have the meat. That’s a hundred pounds of meat in our freezer for the winter that I didn’t have to buy.”

We live in a high cost of living area, and even with the local farms, you can’t get chicken for less than $6 per pound. The cheapest ground beef is $10 to 12 per pound, and even basic stew beef is more than that.

A hundred pounds of meat in the freezer is quite the gift from a teenager under your roof.

Roasted venison bones that went into bone broth this week.

And for us, the fifty or so pounds of meat this deer put into our freezer was one heck of a blessing as well.

My daughter has a passion for cooking, and she’s enamored with one young youtube chef that teaches advanced techniques for beginners. She’s watched his Beef Wellington video more than a dozen times, memorizing all the steps.

When she felt ready, we started shopping for ingredients, but quickly stopped short. A beef tenderloin is at least $225…and that’s at the Costco. Local farms are a might bit steeper.

I promised her we’d find a way to make it happen for Christmas, one way or another, maybe getting the whole family to go in on it as a gift for her. In the meantime, she’s been practicing.

She’s made two exceptional meat loaf wellingtons, carefully mincing mushrooms and tending the duxelles. She’s ready for the real thing, but that sticker shock is still a bit much for this mama.

Looking at the deer in our yard, I saw the wheels in her young mind turning. Deer have tenderloins too, don’t they?

It looks like Christmas came early for my baby girl.

Now I’m rendering tallow on the stove, and boiling venison bone broth with the roasted bones. I wasn’t expecting this deer, so I’m also finishing up three different batches of marmalade at the same time.

(The sales guy laughed when we bought our big 6 burner stove. Who could ever use all six burners he said…)

Three marmalades batches I made this week, testing recipes for Creative Canning: Cranberry Orange, Apple Orange and Green Tomato Marmalade.

My husband walked in from work with all that simmering away, scrunched up his nose, and said, “It smells like a Mongol horde invaded a Yankee Candle factory!”

He wasn’t wrong, and take it from me, game meat, citrus and cinnamon aren’t the best scent combination.

But you gotta do what you gotta do, and I’m not about to let any of this spoil on my watch. Not with the price of meat these days…but even if meat was free. I can’t imagine just “disposing of” such a gift from the forest.

If we didn’t have the skills to put that deer up, we would have learned right quick.

Some things are too precious to waste.

Gifts From The Forest

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