Backyard deer hunting
Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound
In a single volume, prize-winning author Wm. Hovey Smith explains every aspect of deer hunting from finding deer to cooking it for your family.
This book is designed for someone who has never, or seldom, hunted or cooked game. Basic hunting and cooking instructions are provided along with 50 tested recipes. Novice and experienced hunters alike will enjoy the author's writing style which is like sitting across the kitchen table listening to a favorite grandparent talk about hunting, cooking and life lessons learned.
Learn how to
Find deer Retrieve deer
Get permission to hunt Package deer
Obtain licenses Cook deer
Hunt deer Serve deer
Kill deer
Wm. Hovey Smith is a prize-winning author whose previous books have explored infrequently written about topics such as bowfishing and crossbow hunting. Always interested in the unusual aspects of outdoor life, he has been an avid user of muzzleloading guns which has included hunts in 30 U.S. states, Europe and Africa. These activities resulted in his being appointed a contributing editor for Gun Digest where he covers black-powder guns and hunting. He also commonly writes about knives in Knife World and the Krause knife annuals. He is also the author of 13 books and thousands of newspaper, magazine and on-line articles published since the 1970s.
Diversified in his interests and activities, the author is a Professional Registered Geologist whose work took him throughout North America. This work enabled him to hunt in numerous locations and observe how others, quite different from himself, responded to hunting and the outdoors. These experiences and observations have been seamlessly incorporated into his works as he explores hunting with humor and an appreciation for life's unexpected events.
The unusual and the almost unbelievable have always categorized the author's works. They have a fresh approach to their subjects as related to his experiences, rather than being rehashes of commonly repeated information.
This book is about providing information on how to find, kill and ultimately eat deer and other game animals that live near your home. My objective is to explain how to put meat on your family’s table as inexpensively as possible. I used deer in the book’s title because whitetails are the most frequently seen big-game animals in North America. The information is also applicable to wild hogs, bears and other big-game species.
Although outdoor writing may appear to be a glamorous profession; it is more often an obsession, rather than a vocation. Writers are paid little, late, have their work as often rejected as accepted and may spend hundreds of hours producing materials that never see print. I have often fed my family on deer and other game shot a few hundred yards from my house. I have drawn on my experiences in feeding a family when my income was sharply reduced. You can do the same. This book is designed to take someone who has never hunted through every step required to kill, clean, process and cook big game.
I have done everything that is described in this book. I have salvaged thrown-away hunting clothes from a Dumpster, drug road-killed deer off the roadside and safely consumed them. I have used nearly every knife, gun and crossbow that I have described. Where expedient items can be used or adapted, I have recommended them. Although in some categories it is impossible, most of the products that I have recommended are American made. I have concentrated on the least-expensive really workable items of their types that are available.
This book is not about looking good, owning fancy gear, impressing anyone or putting trophy heads on the wall. This book is about killing deer, wild hogs, bears and other meats-on-the-hoof and eating them. Although born in Georgia, I have spent significant parts of my life in Arizona, Alaska and Minnesota and have commonly hunted elsewhere. These experiences have been used to provide much of the information in this book.
Stay put kill deer
One of the most telling examples of the importance of “staying on stand” involved my dog Persephone. One of her favorite things was, “finding daddy on the deer stand,” but this time things worked out somewhat differently than anyone might expect.
Labs as deer decoys
This was a re-do hunt. For an assigned story I had to kill a deer with a certain flintlock rifle. I had already shot a deer with that gun, but the editor did not like the picture because some blood was present. Everything else about the story was fine, but I needed a photo of a freshly-killed deer with the subject gun. This put me and Cantank (a .45-caliber flintlock Kentucky rifle sold by Navy Arms) leaving the house before dawn. My dogs, who knew that they would be shut up while I was hunting, had already taken off for parts unknown as soon as I had let them out.
My stand was in an overgrown woodlot 200 yards from my house. Because of the thick trees and vegetation it might as well have been 2 miles. You could not see the house from the stand. Anyone, including the deer, would think that they were in deep wilderness. The hours from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM passed, but there were no deer. Finally at about 10:00 I heard the steady crunch, crunch, crunch of something approaching from behind. Slowly rising ....