The Hunting Times

So dove season is just around the corner.  We will be hunting at the Seager Ranch.  It will sound like the Civil War around the W side of Mulberry.  Any you know, if you don't eat, then you die. So for eats on that day, I am going to make a huge pot of venison gravy.  Sorry, I cannot quote the recipe - because I just make it up as I go.  I put in onions and oil.  When the onions are clear, I add the ground venison.  When it is cooked, I add more oil and remove from heat (the additional oil is required as the venison is too lean to create any oil on its own).  Oh yes, the oil I use is virgin olive that I have steeped garlic gloves in the bottle. I then add enough flour to soak up all the oil.  Then I put in equal parts of milk and water until I get the consistency that I desire.  I personally like my gravy on the thicker side.  **The Secret Ingredient is one packet of dry taco seasoning!  I learned that trick from Acapulco ...

Alex and I had a need to take the Gator back to Nick's.  We went through the woods on the way there.  On the way back, we drove the lane.  At the curve, we found a dead Cooper's Hawk.  It was rather fresh as indicated by:  no ants, no flies, no maggots; also, rigor mortis was gone and there was only a faint odor.  The eyes were still 'fresh'  - meaning not dried out and sunken.  Best guess is that it was killed earlier that day, probably in the morning, as it was now evening.  We also figured that it was electrocuted to death, for there were no obvious signs of distress.   Regardless of the cause, its life force has ceased to remain in its body.  We picked it up and took it over to Austin, so he could see one up close.  We talked about the differences in the size and feathers versus a red-tailed hawk.  Then we took it and gave it a proper burial.  From the earth it came, so to the earth it has returned. Sad day...

I purchased an Acu-Rite weather station pro for the farm.  It has the digital indoor display and then an outdoor sensor that picks up temperature, humidity, rain, wind speed, wind direction, and barometric pressure.  The indoor unit plugs into the computer and uploads data. I set it up on Weather Underground.  If you are here in Mulberry, it's pretty easy to find.  Go here: https://www.wunderground.com/ and the temperature readout closest to our house is my station.  I labeled it 'Seager Ranch.' I am pretty sure if you log in to WU from another location, it will give you the weather stations at your current location.  But for those local, you can find out why they call it "Hyper Accurate" weather, because it's right outside our back doors!  But hey, even if you are in another location, you can always adjust the map to good ole Mulberry, Indiana. It takes the station about a week to learn how to predict better weather.  But soon it s...

So ignore all the time it took to hunt, drag, bone-out, and grind any deer we harvested last season.  I thawed out a pound of the seasoned sausage we prepared late last winter and cooked up some venison meatballs for dinner Friday evening. I chopped an onion and put the entire thing in a pan to simmer while I prepared the venison.  I put some BBQ sauce, teriyaki, and club crackers into the meat and hand-rolled some deer balls.  With the onions done, I put them in a 12x12 pan, and put the balls on the heat with a small bit of Leinenkugel's Maple Dunkel.  When the bottoms got browned, I pulled them out and put them in the pan with the onions.  I then sprinkled some McCormick's Smokehouse Maple (TM) seasoning on top of them. When all the balls were done, I poured the rest of the Dunkel into the pan with a cup of brown sugar.  I brought that sauce to a boil and then poured that into the same pan.  See picture below. Half of the balls done, half co...