A little help with the deer this year ~ November 15, 2006

David Heiller

It’s kind of fun to process a deer, and this year was even more enjoyable, thanks to Rosie the dachshund.

Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for cutting up deer. I asked Nathan Hahn how he liked it, because I knew he had shot a deer. His proud mother, fill, had announced it to her coworkers at the Caledonia Argus.

Even Rosie couldn't handle
 this hunk of venison

Nathan replied, rather forcefully, that cutting up deer is not his favorite activity. That came as no surprise. I was 16 years old once.  It's not a chore that most young folks relish.

In fact, Jill chimed in, her family was giving the deer away. The weather was warm, and they didn't know when they would get to it, and they had so much meat already, being Hahns and all.

And that led to me getting a deer that cost me nothing more than a sincere thank you. It was an even better way to acquire a deer than last year, which came at the expense of the bumper of my Honda Civic.

So I took half a day off work on November 10 and brought the deer home. I hung it on a hook in the milkhouse in the barn, using an old hemp rope. Our two big dogs were mildly excited about this temporary visitor, but Rosie was nothing short of obnoxious. She barked and sniffed and ran and whined and dashed in and out, as if this deer was nothing more than an oversized possum.

Finally she worked up the courage to give a tug on the leg of the deer, and just about then the old hemp rope gave way and the deer came crashing down. Rosie somehow avoided getting squashed. She is amazingly quick. But from that point on Rosie wasn’t quite convinced that the deer was dead. That was fine with me, because she kept a safe distance, growling most of the time, while I did the skinning. I didn’t like the idea of stepping on her, or tripping on her while holding a sharp knife.

I got the skin off, then removed the legs, the loins, and all the other meat that I could. It was satisfying work on a warm fall afternoon. Rosie got some of her courage back too. Every so often a scrap of fat would fall on the floor. Then I would have to be quick to pick it up before Rosie raced in to get it. She won more than once.

I put the meat in pans and buckets and carried them into the house, then set up shop again at the kitchen table. It was tedious work, cutting up the meat, sorting it by quality: steaks, stir fry, grind meat. But it felt good, putting up the food. It’s a tradition that the old farm has seen in its Thomford history, and there was plenty of it down in the valley at the old Heiller farm. You think about things like that when you are doing a chore like cutting up meat.

Rosie guarding David's well deserved rest.

Rosie “helped” me with this job too. The other two dogs sat at a respectful distance, but Rosie sat under the table and gobbled up everything that came her way. She even fished a hunk of bone out of the waste bucket. She didn’t get far with it—I managed to pry it from her jaws, which is normally not an easy thing to do. I think she was too full to put up a good fight. She looked more like a water balloon than a dachshund by this time.

The deer is all cut up now, and ready for freezing and grinding. (Mike’s Meats in Eitzen does a fine job of the latter.) The carcass and unused trimmings—most of them, that is—have found a home in the woods, where the coyotes and crows and vultures will do their duty.

It’s a good feeling having meat in the freezer. It goes with the snow that fell last week, and dark days and the coming of winter. Those ancient instincts. That’s why I like processing a deer. And having the help of a little dog isn’t bad either.

I put the meat in pans and buckets and carried them into the house, then set up shop again at the kitchen table. It was tedious work, cutting up the meat, sorting it by quality: steaks, stir fry, grind meat. But it felt good, putting up the food. It’s a tradition that the old farm has seen in its Thomford history, and there was plenty of it down in the valley at the old Heiller farm. You think about things like that when you are doing a chore like cutting up meat.