#DEERTOUR 2012 Teaser

If you remember awhile back #DEERTOUR made a trip to Foggy Mountain this past season. With hunting, nothing went as plan and it did not turn out as I wanted but it was still a great experience! Now for a preview of the entire #DEERTOUR 2012

Pulled Venison BBQ

Pulled Venison Sandwich with Pickled Ramps

For anyone that knows me or knows anything about the blog,  you know that I love to cook and I love to eat that much more.

For me and my buddies, food plays an important role when talking about deer camp or those all day fishing trips.

When cooking for these activities, there should be a blend between quick and easy and filling and tasty.  This is recipe fits that bill nicely. It can range from as simple as two ingredients for easy cooking in the field to a tasty dinner for the family. This is something that is a staple for us when hunting and fishing because  it is simple as can be. When in the field you need to do is open a quart jar of canned venison and warm it in a skillet and then add a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce. At this point, apply it to a bun and you are ready to eat. This is warm, great tasting, and quick outdoor meal.

This is not where this recipe ends, I have a recipe for everyone to try if you have more than a single burner Coleman Stove or in your kitchen. First it is important to remember that there is more than one way to achieve the pulled venison, there are recipes where it can be cooked in a crock-pot or slow-cooker  but I prefer to use canned venison that is pre-cooked. This method allows for this meal to be cooked in under 10 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 4 Cups (1 Quart) of Pre-Cooked Shredded Venison
• 1.5 Cup - BBQ Sauce
• 2 Tbsp - Molasses 
• 1/4 Cup - Brown Sugar
• 2 tsp - Mince Garlic
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Step One: Add mince garlic to a lightly oiled pan and sauté until brown.

Step Two: Once the garlic is browned, add the BBQ Sauce and Molasses to the deep walled skillet and bring to a simmer.

Step Three: After the sauce is brought to a simmer, slowly add in the brown sugar until it is dissolved.

Step Four: Mix in the shredded venison and allow for the mix to warm and salt and pepper to taste.

After the venison and sauce and combined thoroughly and warm apply to a bun or roll. If you have any Pickled Ramps, they make a great topper for this sandwich.

The Return to Foggy Mountain

It has been blatantly obvious over the last year or so I have been absent. For those of you have have been following along know I have been in school, getting married, and starting a new job and working. With this whirlwind of life bearing down on me, I blogged when I could, but that was very seldom. I did manage to throw in one of the many book reviews I have to do and the story of my buck in bow season, but other than that I didn't get on here much recently. At this point, I started to think if I just needed to call it quits on the blog. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't intended to be a pity, woe as me post, this is more of a back story to lead into the true aspect of this post. Between finally graduating Graduate School and falling into a rhythm with work and life and some serious encouragement from my wife, I decided to keep blogging. The last part of this was trying to move past writers block.

Moving past writer's block has been an ongoing struggle, I've been trying to write this post since the second week of December.  All the while I was still reading all my favorite blogs to try and spark some form of a post I'd want to write. The spark wasn't there and the old stand-by post just weren't what I wanted to put out there. Many of the post I was reading involved hunting season recaps, year end reviews, and previews of what's to come in 2013. When looking at that, as I said before I didn't have much to recap from hunting season nor did I have much for a year end review. I guess I could go the route of giving my goals for 2013 and what I have planned. That is what I'm doing that in a form but not completely.

What I started to think about was why do I blog anymore or at this rate why do I want to keep blogging? I had started this blog blind and the only guidance I had was trying and mirror other more popular blogs in hopes of attracting more of an audience. This lead to me writing post that where more about producing a certain quantity of post not the quality of what I truly wanted to post. This is something that also played into my writing block and not writing for a while. After thinking about it more, I realize I started this blog because I couldn't find another blog about hunting, fishing, or foraging in West Virginia and because I enjoy writing and sharing my adventures as well as giving and getting advice. Now with that being said, I may write on these topics, but by no stretch of the imagination am I an expert in any of these fields. That's what makes it fun in writing, as it is labeled in the header, these are my misadventures and will help me and hopefully anyone else that is reading, grow as an outdoorsman.

To bring this full circle, what I am saying with all this rambling is that I am not here to try and make this blog my gateway into the outdoor industry. I am here because I love the outdoors and everything it has to offer. All I want to do is be able to share my adventures and advice with everyone that wants to hear it and show a positive outlook on West Virginia. I feel like I got away from that and want to get that back. I am not going to list my goals that I have for this year to come, at least not now.

A thing at inspired me to start this blog was my love for blogs like Hank Shaw's Hunter-Angler-Gardener-Cook, Georgia Pellegrini, and author Steven Rinella. I am no where near as skilled as any of these great chefs/hunters, but I do love to cook, can, and preserve wild game, mushrooms, ramps, and other things found in the wild or garden. I'd like to and plan on having more posts concentrating on this topic. This is  the main area that I want to integrate into the blog more. There will still be content on what I am doing as far as hunting, fishing and everything that goes with that, but not as much of the filler stories just to produce a post. Trail Cam Tuesday will still exist  yet it will be on a much more limited basis, which I believe will actually make it better. This is not going to be a major change to the blog or the content, this is more of an update on the mission statement of this blog and to explain to everyone where I've been. Although I might not have the same regularity of post as before I hope the quality of the post will make up for that. Thank you all for following along and I hope everyone has a great new year to come!

MEAT EATER: Book Review and Interview

With hunting season in full swing, it is time to start putting long hours in the stand. For those long sits, I normally like to take a book to break up the mid-day down time. In mid August I was lucky enough to get an early copy of Steven Rinella's latest book, "MEAT EATER," as named after his hit TV show. I highly, I repeat, highly recommend this book to be with you at camp, in your stand, or even in you lazy boy for that lazy rainy Sunday while watching football, it is that good. I have have now read it twice and am still carrying it in my truck to read whenever I get some down time. This book does not just cover Steven Rinella's adventures in hunting, yet it dives in deeper to why we hunt and the experience we get when hunting. This book is a great read for anyone from the casual to obsessive hunter, as it will turn anyone into a true MEAT EATER. Below is a short interview I was able to conduct with Steven.

Foggy Mountain Meanderings: To begin, I'd like to thank you, Steven, for standing up and believing in the idea that hunting for sustenance is still acceptable in today's world! With that being said, you have an amazing passion for hunting and the outdoors, but that passion also comes through while you are preparing the food, where and when did this passion begin? And how do you continue to let this grow, do you pick up techniques from others or learn by trial and error?

Steven Rinella: My family ate a lot of wild game when I was a kid but it wasn't exactly adventurous cooking. My dad had a commercial sized deep fryer that he kept in the garage and he ran everything from salmon to squirrels to snapping turtle to deer through that thing. My mother did more creative cooking, like the occasional minced meat pie and roast wood ducks and sautéed venison liver. My own personal passion for eating wild game started to develop when I moved away from

college and began eating wild game for all of my at-home meals. Being stuck with my own cooking really inspired me to figure things out. Later, when I was about 26, I moved to Montana. There my potential pool of ingredients seemed to quadruple. Suddenly I was coming into elk, mountain lion, blue grouse, you name it, and I really started experimenting heavily. At that time I also started reading books by some of the great chefs like Escoffier, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin. Also the food writing of the novelist and poet Jim Harrison, an avid hunter and eater from my home state. Everything started to coalesce, and my love of hunting expanded into a love of cooking as well.

FMM: A common question in these interviews is what was your favorite hunt or what hunt are you looking forward to, sorry but that seems to be a little too easy. My question is what was one of you most difficult hunts (conditions, gear failure, injury/illness, etc) and what advice would to give to anyone else attempting this hunt to help overcome this?

Steven: I’ve had so many tough hunts it’s hard to pick one. Everything from gear failure to bad weather to illness to just plain miserable luck. But the difficult hunt that most readily pops into my mind was a mule deer hunt last fall in Montana. That trip was at the tail end of a three-pack hunting venture that went from Arizona (coues deer) to California (hogs) to Montana. In Arizona I managed to pick up some waterborne virus. In California I got coated in poison oak after butchering a hog that must have been rolling in the stuff. By the time I was in Montana, where it was -5 degrees, I was harboring a colon infection and open sores. When I got home from that trip I was passing blood and I landed in an emergency room. Spent four days in the hospital. That’s a hell of a hunting trip!

FMM: As someone I highly regard and look up to as an outdoorsman, what would be your message to hunters and non-hunters alike as to why hunting for sustenance is such an enjoyable goal?

Steven: For me, and for many other hunters, hunting for food taps into something that feels primal and instinctive. The history of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans goes back some 50,000 to 100,000 years, and for the vast bulk of that time we lived off hunting. There are cave paintings in Europe dating to 36,000 ago years that demonstrate a very complex relationship between human hunters and their prey. The residents of this continent were hunting since their
arrival about 14,000 years ago, and mostly kept at it until just a couple hundred years ago. So I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I suggest that we humans are built for hunting. Or rather, built from hunting. It makes us feel real and alive. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here today.

For more information or to order your copy of MEAT EATER, check out www.themeateater.com.

Don't Call It a Come Back: My First Archery Buck

It's no secret, I have been an absentee blogger the past few months. Marriage, school, work, all the normal excuses; not to sound like a broken record but I am going to try and get back on track. It is after all, my favorite time of the year.

This past Saturday was opening day of archery season in West Virginia. For the first time in five years, I was completely unprepared for  archery season. At this point I had ran my trail cameras all summer, but that was it. I had a few very nice bucks on camera and the majority of them were coming in during the morning hours. My hopes were as high as they could be for this season. Little did I know this opening day would be one to remember.

After finally getting my first deer with a bow,  I was hoping to get another deer early in the season. After knowing I had deer, especially buck coming in between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM, I was planning on holding out until at least then. That was a lot easier than I thought it would be, the fog set in early and finally lifted around 8:15 AM. By this time, I was sure I had heard deer milling around but still hadn't seen any. At around 8:45 AM I was scanning the area when I thought I heard something  but still hadn't got visual conformation of the noise. A little before 9:00 AM I finally saw what was making the noise, it was a buck using a licking branch. I couldn't tell which one it was, but it seemed to have a nice body and decent main beams. I was wanting to wait for a decent buck, but at the first sight of this deer I grabbed my bow just in case... By the time I got my bow the buck had closed in from 115 yards to 85 yards. At this point there were two trails this buck could have came in on, one would have allowed me to get a perfect broad side shot, but that didn't happen. The other trail he took, lead him on a string to within six yards of my stand. This didn't allow for me to draw on him, at this point I thought my chance was done. At that point,  he turned to walk away and and this allowed me to draw back on him. This caused him to spook a little bit, but this actually allowed for a better shot. He spooked out to 22 yards with a quartering away shot. This took a millisecond to get my sights on him and release, it felt like a great, solid shot but I didn't see him drop in my sight.

As the rule goes, at least with the guys I hunt with, if you don't see them go down, you back out and give them time. Not more than five minutes after I shot my buck a spike came in on the same trail and worked its way through the area. I watch this buck for a while and finally got down from my stand a worked my way back to the truck where I was meeting Jared. At this point I wasn't sure, but was feeling good and just wanted a cup of coffee, funny I know, but Jared and I even discussed while waiting to go recover the deer about how great that cup of coffee is after taking a deer. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see the truck door already open and Jared working on perking a pot of coffee. As I was walking up the trail he caught side of me and I gave him the thumbs up I got one, but then the conversation of what happened ensued. After telling him this and a discussion of previous deer shot like this we decided to wait a minimum of two hours. After waiting over two hours we went back to track if from my tree stand. I was worried about finding blood, because I did not get a pass through, but this was not an issue. After finding the first spot of blood 10 yards from the shot, it looked like the trail was painted with blood. we proceeded to track this deer 50 to 60 yards over top the ridge and a quarter of the way over the side. At this point we lost the blood for a second, at that same time we heard twigs start to snap and my stomach sunk, we saw the deer and it went another 25 yards over the hill before we lost sight of it.  We held tight there to make sure it didn't advance any further and we backed out again. This time we back out and went to make/eat lunch and wait another two hours. After a great lunch and a little fretting on my part we went back to where we saw the deer jump up and we found the spot where it bedded down, then in 10 feet from it was another bed covered in blood with my arrow, still fully intact. At that point we heard something crashing and trashing down through the woods and finally come to rest in the creek. We held tight for 20 minutes to make sure it didn't get out of the creek, then we slowly progressed toward the creek. Over this four hour period and bumping this deer twice it still only traveled 150 yards roughly.

After looking at the shot placement and gutting the deer, I had got a double lung shot, but I missed the heart as it was a little high. All in all, this was a great day and an even better opening day and not bad for the first buck I was able to take with my bow. Now for a picture of the buck, it is a 2.5 to 3.5 year old 8 point. This is the same buck as pictured above on the bottom right.