More than 2 years ago I made a post about building and setting up your own turkey feeder. If you’ll recall, I suggested that one of the more important points in turkey feeders is that the turkeys won’t leave their general area to use your feeder. You need to place it in a nature travel path or area of high concentration. It also seems to help if it’s open.

So what about your front yard? Well my wife and I had been seeing a hen recently with 8-10 poults. Usually we saw them on the driveway, but upon closer inspection I discovered that they were also dusting in my jalapeno plants! So I went down to the creek and pulled the feeder I had up this spring (the one that gave me these shots) and moved it to my own front yard.

I didn’t see any turkeys for a few days but there was some suspicious sign. After a week I set up a camera to see what was coming by:

As you might imagine, it wasn’t taking long for the feeder to get cleaned out. Experience has taught me that once the deer find a turkey bucket you’re going to have a hard time in that spot. They learn that they can head-butt the bucket and then eat what falls out. A few of them will get in the pattern of hitting it at night and by morning the bucket is empty. Obviously the deer (and coons) had found me, so I tried to switch over to cracked corn hoping the deer would be less interested. Nope. In the past 2 weeks they’ve cleaned me out of 100 lbs of cracked corn. The turkeys were still coming in every day but I was going broke… So now for the past few days I’ve taken to throwing out about 4 cups of cracked corn each night when I feed the dogs. So far the deer seem to think picking through my yard for cracked corn is a waste of time… but we’ll see…

Anyone have any experience on this? Ideas?

If you’ve been reading for a little while you may remember the piece I did on doing your own European style deer mounts. The extremely short version:
1) Clean extra tissue off the head, INCLUDING THE TONGUE, LOWER JAW, AND EYES
2) Put them in water
3) Dump the water when it stinks
4) Depending on the temperature of the water figure on 4-10 weeks

Well, doing elk is the exact same except for two small adjustments:
1) Use a bigger tub
2) After a week or so remember to pull the ivories

They should look like these two from the 2010 season:

For a more detailed breakdown of why I like the cold water method and how to do the other methods, click here.

I just finished the whitetail European mounts from this past fall today. Over the past several years I’ve done them a few different ways.

First, you need to clean the deer. Cut the head off and cape it out. For whitetails you need to get rid of the lower jaw, tongue and throat area tissue. Also remove the eyes and any extra muscle tissue you can find. All of this needs to be done around the time you kill the deer unless you want to deal with a disgusting mess at some later date. Once the hide and large chunks of meat are gone you can decide what you want to do next.
(more…)

Sunday will be a sad day for me. Just like September 1st brings excitement for the adventures to come over the next several months, February 15th brings an end to another season and a few weeks of moderate depression. This evening I took several guns apart and cleaned them, a sad ritual. But I decided to make the best of it so I took some pictures to see if I could make an educational blog post…

First, we start with a dirty but otherwise healthy Browning BPS:

(more…)

I wrote this piece last year but I’m recycling it for this year.

I keep getting Google hits on this topic because of this post. Unfortunately that link doesn’t really help you handle a dove with the feathers still attached. No worries, it’s an absolute no brainer to clean a dove once you’ve done a few.

1) Get some doves and a pair of game shears:

(more…)

So yesterday we covered the first part of the process for making jerky. Now we’ve got a bowl full of sliced goose meat and we’re ready for part 2…

Since goose has a heavy, greasy flavor and we cut the meat thick, we’re going to need a strong marinade. In this situation I use my “Jalapeno” recipe.

4 cups Soy Sauce
4 cups Worcestershire
1 Table Spoon Garlic Powder
1 TS Onion Powder
2 TS Coarse Black Pepper
5 TS of Jalapeño Powder

The jalapeño powder is obviously the secret to this flavor. With 4 T you’ll get a good flavor but it won’t be very hot. With 6 it will be hotter than some will like. I grow the peppers in my garden and dehydrate them myself. Once I have enough dried I’ll obliterate them in the food processor until I’m left with a very fine powder that is positively toxic. You may want to wear latex gloves and goggles when you’re dealing with it. You could use hot sauce or red pepper flakes if you don’t want to mess with whole peppers but the flavor makes it worth the work.

Put everything in some type of shakable container and mix it up real good then pour some in a Ziploc and add the meat. Make sure you mix and shake the bag so that all the meat is separated and coated.

I usually let it sit at least 24 hours but I’m not sure it makes any difference. I suspect as long as the meat was fully coated you could skip the waiting and still end up with good flavor.

After marinating you’re ready to start drying. My drying has evolved from a couple of terrible ideas. The first time I made jerky I used toothpicks and suspended the strips of meat from racks in my oven. It was time consuming, it made the whole house stink, and it was messy. I found that tactic on the internet somewhere but after one try it was clear I needed a new plan. Next I used an oven rack like so:

It was also messy, slow, and smelly. Part of the problem is that with these racks you can’t drop the temp low enough to keep from partially baking the meat.

Now I use this thing:

There is no contest, you need one of these. It’s faster, cleaner, and handles larger batches than any of the oven methods. It came with 4 but 6 racks makes a full gallon sized batch. You can add up to 20 racks, or so I’m told. It also produces a better product because you can control a lower temp. For today’s run we’re using 125 degrees for 5 hours. I’ll do about 3 hours one day, put the racks in the fridge over night, and do 2 hours the next day. I think it allows the moisture in the middle of the thicker pieces to spread out and get a more even level of drying. With thinner cuts 120 for 4 hours is standard.

When you’re done I put the jerky in the freezer for storage. I’ve never tested it to see how long it will last at room temp but I once sent two batches to Iraq and it arrived in good shape.

A few final tips:
- With heavy marinades (like those with tomato paste) it will take longer, sometime a lot longer.
- With sugary marinades either add oil or spray the racks with pam.
- With acidic marinades (like pineapple juice) don’t leave it soaking too long or the meat will get mushy.
- The type of pepper you add to pizza has a good flavor and sticks to the meat well. It can be substituted for black or red pepper.
- Write the recipe on the bag you store the jerky in.
- Don’t underestimate the effect the weather has on the drying time. Dry winter air is much faster than humid summer air.

Sometimes I just have to laugh when I read about how so-and-so just loves to eat wild game X. If you look online you’ll find guys who will tell you that shovelers, carp, bears, coots, whitetails, geese, etc are all, “better than filet mignon”. I understand that they may take extreme pride in their harvest, but most of those things actually suck to eat. Obviously it’s all relative; a nice young back strap is generally good, while a 5 year old buck’s fore-quarter might be barely edible.

But here’s my take on the subject: If you aren’t short on meat, make jerky out of the lesser quality stuff. If you have elk or caribou cut them into steaks and save the whitetail for jerky. Pick a big batch of teal and breast out the geese. You get the idea…

Now how to make that jerky?

First you’ll need the meat. Today we’re using goose breasts.

Make sure you wash the breast well then cut off the fat and connective tissue. If you breasted the goose well you’ll also want to remove the smaller piece of meat underneath because it has a tendon running through the middle of it. You can use that meat but you’ll need to cut that tendon free.

Don’t forget to check for shot. Generally I make a small cut across any pellet hole I see and then check to see if it came out the other side. You don’t want steel in your jerky and you really don’t want it in your electric meat cutter.

For me a full batch is a fairly full 1 gallon Ziploc of finished jerky. To accomplish that amount you’ll need about 5 larger goose breasts all cleaned up. Since breasts usually come in even numbers you’re probably looking for either 2 or 3 birds.

Next you’re going to have to cut the meat up. To make that job easier make sure you dry the breasts well and then put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes or until they are lightly frozen. It makes the meat easier to get consistent and clean cuts with.

Once frozen you’ll be ready to cut. If you want thicker jerky you’ll probably want to cut the meat by hand with a sharp knife. The thicker jerky works better with the more mild forms of meat like antelope and venison. It doesn’t work as well with goose because the flavor is strong and not particularly good. For today’s examination we’re cutting goose medium thick with a knife.

With a cut this thick we’re going to use a strong marinade to cover the natural stank. We’ll discuss marinade tomorrow. If you’re using mild meat or sweet flavoring you can use an electric slicer. It’s much faster, but it doesn’t give very consistent cuts at the thicker settings.

Tomorrow we’ll talk marinades and drying…

dihardhunter over at The Outdoor Smorgasboard is an actual deer scientist so when he talks about whitetails you should listen. He recent published an article over at the Realtree site on native vs. non-native food plots. Take a look here.

I’m not going to lie, this may be my favorite wild game dinner. First, you have to clean and breast the doves. Cut the breast off like you would on a turkey or duck. Make sure to check where you see holes and try to get any lead out.

(more…)