Years ago, I fell into the habit of boning out all of the deer I was lucky enough to drag out of the woods. My Uncle Elton loved venison, and I always made sure he had a good supply in his freezer. Elton lived alone with two big dogs to keep him company – an over-sized boxer and a beautiful gray Weimaraner. Needless to say, those dogs were capable of putting away large quantities of food.
In addition to giving Elton some prime venison for his own use, I started saving all of the scraps from every deer I killed. I would place the scraps in a large plastic bag when I was through with the butchering job. Elton would then take those leftover scraps and cook them for the dogs.
One November I brought home a beautiful 9-point buck. After I finished cutting up and packaging all of the good meat, I took the remaining scraps and placed them in a large plastic bag as usual. Since that batch of leftovers was earmarked for the dogs, I wasn’t very particular about some of the deer hair, gristle and other debris that had gotten mixed in with the actual scraps of meat.
Elton took the 10 or 12 pounds of leftovers, cut the meat up into small pieces and dumped it into a large soup pot. Then he placed the pot on the stove to simmer for several hours. By chance, his 30-year-old stepson, Bill, happened to be visiting for several days. After hearing about my 9-point buck, Bill proclaimed in no uncertain terms that he hated venison. “I had some one time and it was awful,” he insisted. “Deer meat has a terrible taste! It made me break out in hives. I think I’m allergic to it.”
No more was said about the subject. On the day Elton put the pot of meat on the stove to cook, Bill was out. When he returned to the house, Elton had gone to run a few errands. As Bill walked into the empty house, the pleasant aroma emanating from the kitchen told him that something scrumptious was cooking on the stove. His nose quickly led him to the source.
When Elton returned home about 30 minutes later, Bill was sitting at the kitchen table gulping down his third helping of the sweet-smelling venison dog food.
“Man, this is the best beef stew I’ve ever eaten in my life,” he exclaimed. “I want your recipe. This beef stew is some kind of good!”
Elton had to walk into the other room to keep from choking. He never had the heart to tell Bill that he had been eating blood-shot venison filled with dirt, hair and other debris, or that the large pot of “beef stew” probably was not fit for human consumption. Despite his proclamation that he was allergic to deer meat, Bill never seemed to suffer any ill-effects from his wild game feast.
Elton had to be very discreet every time he fed the dogs over the next few days, as Bill kept wondering where that big pot of stew had gone. Privately, Elton and I both got more than a few chuckles out of the incident.
Two weeks later, Elton and Bill came over for dinner. By chance, my wife decided to prepare some tasty venison back-straps from my recent trophy. As always, she cooked them in the oven with very little seasoning so that they would maintain their natural flavor. Bill refused to even sample any of the delicious morsels. Instead of eating mouth-watering venison steaks, he insisted on ordering a big, greasy, hamburger from a nearby take-out place.
As we all sat down at the table to eat, Bill blurted out, “I don’t know how anybody can eat the meat from a deer. It makes me break out all over. If you really want to try something good, though, you oughta eat some of Elton’s beef stew. He made a big batch a couple of weeks ago, and it’s the best-tasting stuff I ever put in my mouth!”
Elton and I just looked at each other and tried to suppress our grins. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss!
Duncan Dobie’s first Dawn of American Deer Hunting sold more than 8,000 copies! But our Volume II is even bigger with more than 250 pages, 400 photographs, plus a special full-color section featuring some of the best whitetail paintings ever done.
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