Reclaiming the Bow

As a youth, the fact that archery season was much longer than firearm season appealed to me. I purchased a small Bear Silver Mag bow, adjustable in draw weight from 30 to 40 pounds, set up my hay bale back stop, and started what would soon become a passionate hobby of looking for arrows nearly buried in fescue turf.
I don’t know who I was trying to fool anyway. Early in life I decided that successful bow hunters were either:
a. Much more serious about hunting than I’d ever be; or
b. Hunting in an area with a much denser wildlife population.
I hunted exclusively on my family farm. You could hunt deer and turkey there successfully, or you could go days, or weeks, on end without seeing either. They were around, but seemed often to stay in the proverbially greener grass on the other side of the property line fence. I considered it a good day of deer hunting if I got within a couple of hundred yards of deer. Getting within bow range seemed about a likely as wrestling a deer to the ground bare-handed and putting it in a submission hold.
But we’re out of venison. Firearms season is more than a month away. I may not have much time to partake in firearm turkey season this fall. Urban archery is legal in Columbia. And Ann knows someone with backyard deer, and also thinks she knows where I might get close to a turkey. Maybe I should give urban archery a try.
I checked Bass Pro, and it looked like bows were going for $350 and up. I didn’t think I wouldn’t to go there at this point. It was time to dig up the Badger.
Back in the 1980s, before I abandoned archery, I decided I needed to upgrade from the Silver Mag so that I could lose arrows at greater distances. My friend Troy had just the thing: a Browning Badger, with a 70-pound draw weight. We struck the deal during a Tom Sawyer-like caving expedition in southern Gasconade County, and Troy retrieved the bow from where it had been bouncing around in the back of his ’68 Chevy pickup, and $60 later I was a set.
But now it’s 2011. For more than two decades this bow had been stored in a clean, cool, dry place. Would it work? Is a bow from my high school days still safe and effective? Would this lead me to start listening to Aerosmith and Whitesnake again? I took it down to the creek and set up one of those self-healing Styrofoam targets in a place where there was ample backstop to absorb any stray arrow. I backed off, really just far enough so that if I hit something hard the arrow wouldn’t bounce back and get me. I asked Ann to back away from me, in case the bow splintered or a string broke. Then I pulled it back and let one fly.
It hit the target. Not the concentric circles that really constitute the target, but the ample white border around those circles. The bow didn’t break, and I didn’t even lose the arrow. I shot several more times to relearn how the multi-range sight pins work. Soon I was lethally accurate, albeit at a very close range. It would have to be an extremely foolhardy deer or turkey that would fall prey to my arrow. I don’t think you’ll find many deer anymore rash than within the city limits of Columbia. I would have to give this a try.

My Hunt for the Elusive Hickory Nut

This weekend our family went to Fred’s folks’ farm to visit-and do farm things. Included on the list of things we wanted to accomplish during our visit was to collect hickory nuts for the Woods to Food project. On Saturday morning Henry and I walked through some fields to see if we could find any hickory nuts. Fred’s mom and dad said they had seen zero hickory nuts this year, but like a good daughter-in-law, I was skeptical. And, turns out they were right! Go figure that a farmer would know his own farm! We found several hickory trees and not one nut. I even hung from the lower branches and shook the trees hoping some nuts would fall, to no avail.

Shellbark Hickory Tree

When we got back to Columbia I asked a couple foresters who work state wide and they both said this is a very poor crop year for hickory nuts. Our MO Dept. of Conservation nursery manager told me that hickory trees only have a good crop of nuts every two to three years and the past two years hickories have had good nut production. So, he expected this to be a poor year, hickory nut wise. In fact several squirrel hunters have apparently called in asking where the hickory nuts are. Squirrel hunters tend to focus their efforts around hickory trees this time of year because they know that’s where the squirrels will be-feeding on the hickory nuts. Well, I NEED HICKORY NUTS, TOO (said while stomping). Humph. There are something like four h. nut recipes in Cooking Wild . . .and they really look good!
Before this weekend I was hoping to be picky and harvest only shellbark hickory nuts. Are you familiar with shellbark hickory? It looks like shagbark hickory except the bark in more stripy rather than platy when it peels away from the tree. And, shellbark tends to grow on sites with deeper, more fertile soil. They are not as common as shagbark hickory, but produce a much bigger nut than any of our other Missouri hickory trees. Anyway, now I’m apparently desperate for any hickory nuts.
We’ll see. Not all hope is lost yet. In fact, do you know of any hickory trees that are producing nuts in the Boone County area? Is so, please let us know. You can comment on this post. And, if a pile of hickory nuts suddenly showed up at our front stoop, I’d consider it a gift offering and borderline religious experience.
Until then, the hunt for the elusive hickory nut continues.

Fish from the Farm

Two weeks ago we were bemoaning the loss of summer on a chilly Saturday, but last weekend on the first weekend of fall it felt like summer was back. At the end of a quick trip to my parent’s farm we decided to get in a little fishing before we got back on the road.

We set out for the pond near the house, a mature pond that can provide bass, bluegill or catfish when the time is right. We have just about covered all the catfish recipes in the book, so today we were going for bluegill. The boys turned over some sticks and found a few worms, and I grabbed a grasshopper when I was opening the gate on the way down to the field.

I started with the grasshopper and Oliver had a nice bluegill hooked before I even had the second rod baited. I then baited the first rod with a worm, and the second with a grasshopper. It took a bit this time, but the grasshopper proved successful again.

I went to work to catch some more. There were plenty around, but most were pretty small, and in the hot afternoon sun they were also hard to catch. I learned a long time ago that the time to catch grasshoppers is in the cool of the morning when they are moving slow.

Oliver hooked a couple more fish that slipped off before he got them landed, so the demand for bait was running high. By the time we got our third fish on the bank it was time to get on the road. They were all good-sized, so I cleaned them and put them in the freezer when I got home. Hopefully soon we’ll get a chance to add a few more to the number.

Boone County Burgoo with squirrel, page 50

Funny how kids can pick up on nuances about food I thought reserved only for adults. Henry at 10 thought the tasty "Burgoo" was a a meal for a cool Fall day. And, Oliver, 7, thought it tasted like a Thanksgiving meal, imagining the Indians and pilgrims with a dinner similar to ours: onions, beans, vegies, squirrel, potatoes and corn all cooked together. It's neat to hear what those two are thinking about, especially when it doesn't have to do with legos. For this meal, Fred boiled his four squirrels for about three hours and deboned the meat, thank goodness. Really, I wasn't too looking forward to that process. The rest of the recipe came together pretty easily. I had to make some substitutions: couldn't find okra for one thing, added parsnips for another. Parsnips-there is an underutilized root crop. The burgoo (not a term I've heard before and I feel a little fake using it, but wow, what a cool word it is!) turned out better than I expected. Squirrel is a rather sweet, rich meat that I find not at all gamey. The flavors were rich and complex-I somehow expected a more standard, bland affair. Unbelievably, our little O-meister ate every bite-onions, tomatoes, peppers, beans and all. So, it must have been something because I've never seen him work through a dinner like this without mining out the couple ingredients he can stand and leaving the rest.
If you've never cooked with squirrel, I'd give it a try. I grew up not thinking there was anything wrinkle-your-nose funny about eating squirrel at all and am glad for that. Fried like chicken it's tasty. And, boiled and deboned it's very versatile. Just don't stare too hard at the pot of boiling squirrels because it's not the most appetizing site.

Squirrel Interupted

“We must get squirrel.”  - Natasha Fatale

Sometimes a squirrel can complicate things.

On Saturday we were at my parent’s farm, on the rare occasion of them not being around. We had been cutting wood, and were planning on doing some fishing. Ann went to town to grab something for lunch, and the boys and I were going to gather some bait. But I heard an incessant chattering that I couldn’t resist to investigate. I checked around the back on the house, and there was a fox squirrel in a walnut tree raising a ruckus. I knew we were out of venison, and there was one squirrel recipe and two squirrel cooking suggestions in the book that we would want to pursue. I currently had four squirrels in the freezer, so adding another to the mix would be a good thing.

I ran inside the house. I discovered the one thing in my parents’ home that follows a basic safety recommendation: don’t store guns and ammunition together. Although I’m pretty sure it was unintentional, I found guns and ammo all over the house in various places, but had a hard time finding any that matched.

I selected a Smith and Wesson 2206, a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and a search of a few random drawers on the porch produced a couple .22 shells out of the bottom of each. This would do.

I went back outside. The squirrel went to the top of the tree, but it wasn’t hollow, didn’t have a nest in it, and there wasn’t another tree within jumping distance, so I had it. It took a couple of shots, but well within my limited ammo allotment I dropped him. Unfortunately he didn’t drop all the way to the ground, he got caught in a crotch of the tree on the way down.

I considered shooting him out, but didn’t think I could do it without potentially wasting a lot of meat. So I went to the garage and found an extendable pruning saw on a long plastic pole. Long, but not long enough. I climbed up on the fence under the tree. Shaky, and still well short of the mark. I went back to the garage and retrieved a step ladder. Even from the top step I was still too short.

At this point I consider getting out the tractor with the loader, and having Ann lift me up into the tree with the bucket, but employing a 100-horsepower 4x4 cab tractor seemed like a rather excessive measure to take in retrieving a squirrel. So I folded up the step ladder, placed it directly against the tree, had Ann hold the ladder, and I stood on the top-plastic part that is labeled “This is not a step.” From there I stretched out, with the pole pruner fully extended, and was able to eventually nudge the dead squirrel out of the tree.   Mission accomplished, although I had burned most of fishing time retrieving the squirrel from the tree.

Any of you who know my father, or any other 82-year-old farmer, might have been surprised to read that he has a Smith and Wesson semi-auto pistol, and if you haven’t known me for more than 20 years, you might be surprised to read that a handgun was my first choice for going after a squirrel to begin with.  I’ll explain both those things in a later post.

Squirrel

From Fred:

I was in college before I learned that some people attach a stigma to eating squirrels.

I was shocked to find out these people weren’t just PETA vegetarians, they were meat-eating city dwellers. Some of them even fished, and supported the idea of hunting things like deer. But they looked down upon eating squirrels.

I have come to understand that it’s because some city squirrels are practically domestic. They’ve never been hunted. They aren’t afraid of people. They get fed peanuts in the park. They are practically pets.

Not so with country squirrels. Take a leisurely hike in the backwoods, away from state parks and other areas with lots of people, and you probably won’t see any squirrels. If you do see them, they might be 100 yards in front of you, jumping from tree to tree. They are wary, and not particularly easy to hunt. The best method I’ve found is to find a place they are likely to be, and sit down and wait perfectly still for a while. If they don’t hear you, they’ll come out of hiding. This is why I see more squirrels when I’m deer hunting than when I’m squirrel hunting; when I’m deer hunting I have more patience to sit still for longer periods of time.

I grew up with squirrels being the first type of game that someone learned to hunt. Firearms started with toy guns, moving up to a non-lethal but potentially dangerous to eyes Daisy one-cock BB gun, followed by an Crossman Air Rifle that fired either BBs or pellets which could theoretically kill things, then advancing to a .22 caliber rifle, or a single-shot Winchester 20 gauge, either of which could be purchased on a garage sale or auction, possibly with a case and some miscellaneous ammo, for about $60. You were then officially ready to begin pursuing squirrels, your first real hunting.

After a couple years of squirrel hunting, you add rabbits, turkey and eventually deer to the list of prey, but never give up squirrel hunting. The idea of someone starting out hunting by hunting deer with a large caliber rifle seemed absurd. We would call such a person a city hunter, and avoid being within ½ a mile of said person during deer season.

It’s not that deer hunting is harder. The kill zone on a white tail being hit with a heavy center-fire bullet is dramatically larger than the kill zone on a squirrel being hit with a .22. That’s what makes squirrel hunting the logical first step before deer hunting- it is where you learn basic hunting skills and marksmanship. 

I realize this small game to large game progression in hunting is probably no longer the case. I see the faces of the incredibly young hunters in the weekly newspapers after they get their first deer. I wonder how they withstood the noise and recall of sighting in their deer rifles. And I say to these little tykes, “Congratulations on your first deer, but tell me, how many squirrels did you get this year?”

Spiced rubbed venison with plum sauce, page 45

Oh, my stars. That was good. I just pulled the last two packages of venison out of the freezer, two pounds of deer loin. Our loin meat is sliced already, so I tied the slices together in an attempt to bring it back to its pre-sliced state. The spices in this recipe are a mixture of thyme, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, garlic and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Sounds like an interesting mix, doesn't it, like Mexican meets a snickerdoodle? Well, it's worth trying, let me tell you.
The plum sauce to accompany the loin, if you'd like, called for Missouri plums. Somehow, wild plums did not cross my mind when I read "Missouri" plums. I went to the store hoping for something labeled Missouri plums, and not seeing anything began to get the large kind one usually finds at the store to eat. Then at the bottom of the shelf I saw little, dark purble plums that reminded me of the ones we picked from the neighbor's orchard tree when I was a kid called damson plums. The ones in store weren't labeled, but I thought these might be close to "Missouri" plums since they looked similar to ones from our neighbor. I quickly stewed them on the weekend and put the sauce through our old food mill to get the seeds out. The seeds were a bit too big for the mill and made for quite a clatter.

Anyway, last night I made the loin. All four of us loved it. The venison was flavorful and interesting and the plum sauce acted like a chutney and really added to the meat. My connotation with plum jam is to serve it at breakfast with toast and tea, not to douse my venison with it. So, the first bite I was hesitant. But, once again the combination of flavors grew on me and I quickly came to be crazy about the dish. At dinner I served the plum sauce humbly as a blob beside the meat. I think you could really dress this recipe up for a regal dinner by swirling the plum sauce over the venison and rest of the plate. No one is going to mind a bit extra of the plum sauce, it's totally devine.

So, now we are out of venison. Wah. I can't go any farther with the venison recipes until and if we get a deer this fall. Pressures on, baby!