Only the Country Girl!

[Loyalist Dave]

So I work in a rather urban area, with urban (my corporal lives inside Washington DC) and suburban folks as coworkers in my office, save for one "country girl". So as I posted in the hunting journal portion, I got a small doe last Sunday.

My office mates asked about hunting since they knew I was going to be out there..., and I shared the photo I had taken. Then in the afternoon for the beginning of evening shift, the "country girl" arrived...she grew up outside the little town where I live, and her beau is a big deer hunter, and she takes one quick look at the photo and says,

"Gee that's a little one!" AND she wasn't talking about the overall size of the photo....



Well, sometimes you can't catch a break!

LD

 

[Baxter]

So I work in a rather urban area, with urban (my corporal lives inside Washington DC) and suburban folks as coworkers in my office, save for one "country girl". So as I posted in the hunting journal portion, I got a small doe last Sunday.

My office mates asked about hunting since they knew I was going to be out there..., and I shared the photo I had taken. Then in the afternoon for the beginning of evening shift, the "country girl" arrived...she grew up outside the little town where I live, and her beau is a big deer hunter, and she takes one quick look at the photo and says,

"Gee that's a little one!" AND she wasn't talking about the overall size of the photo....

View attachment 2818

Well, sometimes you can't catch a break!

LD

IMHO, the "little one(s)" usually taste very good.

 

[renegadehunter]

Sure beats tag soup!

 

[Patocazador]

We call them yearlings but they're really fawns. Baxter is right, they taste real good.

 

[Baxter]

Sure beats tag soup!

I've had that a few times; not very tasty or nourishing at all.

 

[hanshi]

Personally, I like 'em to be a size I can hook a fish stringer to and carry on my belt.

 

[Ricochet]

Perfect size, don't have to grind it to eat it!

 

[sb 54 cal.]

That's more than I got this year

 

[Logcutter]

You hunted pretty hard and that's success. A does a doe. Congrats L. Dave!

 

[PluggedNickel]

Better eating than a tough OLD buck that's for sure! I've taken button bucks back when I was deer hunting late season. I married a country girl 47 years ago, still together after all these years. I seem to recall her saying something like that back when. I'm not sure she was talking about my deer though! LOL

 

[No Deer]

Those are the ones we target. T&T (tender & tasty). Takes more to fill the freezer, but worth it.

 

[renegadehunter]

When one of my elk archery hunting partners or I get down to the wire and end up sticking a calf we call it "calf-iar".
Yearlings are a little disappointing in the amount of meat they yield, but they sure do eat mighty good.

 

[Carbon 6]

The size of your big gun just makes it look small.

But, yea, it's a spotless Bambi. Don't feel bad though, I've seen plenty of guys who had to tag one with spots.

 

[Walkingeagle]

Hey LD, just for perspective I once shot a doe that quickly became a spotless fawn and dressed out at 17lbs on the meat hook. Yielded roughly 10lbs of meat!
Still way better than tag soup sir!!
Walk

 

[Choctaw]

You should have sent her out to direct traffic for about 12 hours. That always got my attention.

I really like venison and I think your deer would be perfect eating.

 

[azmntman]

I once shot a calf elk at 280 yds and dressed it and threw it in the trunk of the corolla. Drpped off at the butcher (after waiting for all others to leave) and weighed 128 lbs...like a deer. GOOD. Wife say why I say "told ya I needed a new scope, looked like a bigun when I shot it" (and it did, HEAVY timber and saw a neck and head as I squeezed.

GOOD EATS

 

[Spikebuck]

Well, I think it's bigger than the one I had to do a mercy killing on with my bow this year. I pass on fawns now-a-days (have shot my share, though), but this year after bringing my dogs home from our normal daily 3 mile hike, my Golden Retriever was very interested in the hillside across the gully from my yard. I took a look and this absolutely tiny fawn was there struggling to make it up the bank with a clearly broken front leg very high up. It did make it up the bank with great effort and disappeared into the thick growth on the other side. My son-in-law still had an unused tag, so I called him, told him where the poor thing went, and he was able to track it for a while, but never caught up with it, so I figured it would maybe make it. I've seen deer with broken legs that were hanging by only skin make it before when they show up the next year, sans the leg.

Well, two days later I was out on my deck and looked into the ravine below my house, and there the poor thing was laying under a pine tree and looking extremely weak. It was watching me, but was not even attempting to move anymore. I had my bow tag left, so I told my wife that I had to go fulfill my duty as an ethical hunter and went down into the ravine and put it out of it's misery. Upon examination, I could see that a shotgun hunter had hit it very high in the leg, a couple inches below the chest line, and had caused a compound fracture that this little button buck was just not going to recover from with cold and snow. I could see where he had been trying to feed in my ravine as the snow told the story of a stumbling, falling deer with beds all over. I think it field dressed 52#, which is tiny for a Minnesota button buck in December. Once processed, the meat filled something akin to a large boot box. The tender loins were about the size of my index finger! Not much meat, but hopefully it will be tasty, despite this deer's deteriorated condition.

 

[Walkingeagle]

Thank you for doing the right thing Spikebuck. A hard pill to swallow using your last tag, but speaks well to your character sir.
Walk

 

[CapnJack]

Tag or not it was the right thing to do.

 

[rickpa]

Fat doe beats poor buck, same with young unz. Caint eat antlers.