Autumnal Harvests

There is something incredibly instinctual about stocking up food for winter stores. While we may live in a modern world, the feeling of immense satisfaction you feel while staring into a freezer full of wild game, berries and fish is primal. Every year that we harvest an animal (or, as it often goes for our household, every three or four years), I can’t help but be the tiniest bit proud of how we improve at our harvesting skills, let alone the perseverance and effort spent every autumn in the bush.

While I personally haven’t had to gut an animal by myself (thanks, Michael!), I can now confidently say that I feel competent enough to tackle a deer on my own if necessary – leaps and bounds more confident than I was years ago, when I made sure to tuck a book complete with step-by-step photos on how to field dress a deer into my hunting pack, just in case. You can now find me eagerly digging through the gut pile to retrieve the heart and other organs for many delicious meals to come – a far cry from when my stomach would get the tiniest bit queasy as I rinsed off a heart for the first time at my kitchen sink.

 

Despite taking to YouTube a couple of hunting seasons ago to learn how to properly tie a butcher’s knot, I still proudly turn every neatly tied roast around to show off to anyone who happens to be nearby. Creatively and/or vaguely labelled packages are now mostly a thing of the past now that the hours spent watching videos and poring over diagrams has turned into recognizing different cuts of meat without having to flip back to references.

All of these skills are far from perfected, but as outdoorsmen and women we are blessed to live a lifestyle that constantly challenges and pushes us to be continually learning, be it in the field, in the butcher shop or in the kitchen.