Dinner is Served….

We had a busy week last week.  T had been pulled in the moose lottery this summer for the October hunt.  This was his second go around after having tagged his first moose back in 2005.

My man knows how to provide:

He wasn’t going to be picky.  First cow he saw was coming home.

Sure enough - on Monday morning, down she went.

She weighed in at 694 pounds.

We split the meat with his buddy (sub-permitee).

What ended up in our freezer and on our shelves:

• 20 canned quarts of stew meat (21 – I broke one)
• 8 packs garlic & cheese sausage
• 8 packs sweet sausage
• 7 packs hamburg
• 18 various cuts of steak
• 3 roasts

We had our first stew this weekend.  The meat is fantastic - and canned, it is so wonderfully tender.  You just dump your jar in a pot and add veggies and a bit of water and you.are.done.

Nom.

We’re heading out to target shoot today because I’ve yet to bag my first partridge.  I made nuggets with a few last week and the kids DEVOURED them.  We need some more for the freezer – I need to get on my game and stop missing the birds.

:-)

Family Day

We woke up to rain yesterday morning, but we weren’t going to let it ruin our plans.  Thermoses were filled with piping hot [homemade]chicken noodle soup and hot chocolate, woolen socks and flannel shirts tossed on and a couple of mugs of piping hot coffee made for The Man and me.  We were off on our first ever family hunting adventure.

There’s something calming to the soul to be out on the dirt roads in the middle of the woods, no cell phone service, just surrounded by trees.  The leaves are changing over beautifully in these parts.

The rain stopped and we had only the occasional shower for the rest of the day.  We stopped frequently to stretch our legs and just breath in Fall in Northern Maine.

We saw a couple of turkey vultures hanging out together.  (Look just to the left of the center of the picture – 2 black things on top of the dead tree)

 

Those are some pretty big birds.  I’ve never seen them so up close before.

I can’t end this post without giving you a chuckle at my expense.  Yesterday was the first time in ten or so years I shoot a gun.  We came upon a partridge on the road I could have hit with the door of the jeep.  It was maybe fifteen feet away – and I missed my shot.  Really?  Perhaps I should stick to Gatherer and let T keep the Hunter status of our home.

I did redeem myself on a soda bottle later in the day.  We found one on the side of the road he set up for me to have some target practice.  I took one shot.  He wanted to know where I was aiming before showing me I was spot on.  Spot on.  We should have done the target shooting first, perhaps?

Alas, we came home empty  handed - courtesy of my blunder.  That bird should have been dinner!  But, we had a wonderful day together so the day was most definitely not lost.

We’ll be going back out tomorrow.  I am determined to add Huntress to my Jill of All Trades accomplishments.

This one's for the boys

In honor of this week's moose hunt and my male readers, I'm going to share T's moose hunt story.

2005 was a big year for us. Huge. Our nephew was born in June, we were planning a wedding/honeymoon and T got drawn in the moose lottery. You know the song "Wake me up when September Ends" by Green Day? That was my theme for the year, except I was singing October in place of September.

So after the big event in September and our wonderful week away in Maui (you only get one honeymoon, my friends. We never travel so he wanted to do it big. Big we did.), T started planning his hunt.

T was lucky. He was drawn to hunt the zone he wanted. Our good friend J happens to have a family farm in said zone, with lots of land to hunt. They were only able to scout on Saturday and Sunday, but they knew one was around.

On Monday, October 9, 2006, T and his buddies were off bright and early. I can't share all of the story here because, to be honest, my eyes tend to glaze over when I hear it so I don't even know all of the details.

First thing in the morning, T got the big one. He called me immediately to tell me and I could hear the excitement in his voice. It was around 800 lbs (again - the details escape me and I don't know how to read that scale).


They were the second ones in at the tagging station that morning. Being on our friends farm had its perks. For one, they didn't need to manually drag it to a vehicle. *Enter J with a tractor*

So, T may have lost out on a week worth of fun in the woods, but he got his moose. We currently have the rack in our basement, waiting for me to find a place to hang it.

We didn't have to buy any beef for quite a few months. He kept our freezer stocked and our tummies full.