Saturday, December 20, 2008

Why one deer in the bush is worth two in the hand...

This story is actually a couple of weeks old, but it's been a little bit busy as of late (papers, exams, etc.), so that's why it took a while for this post.  

Anyways, to proceed with the story...

Yevgeni (room-mate from Afganistan-Russia) and myself were happily studying away one Monday night, when Dan (the son of the Swets with whom I'm staying) came in with a story to tell.  He had been trying to get a deer for weeks.  This time, he had a good opportunity to take down a good-sized buck.  But while getting a bead on it, another buck (unbeknownst to himself) walked behind the 1st deer.  So he 'killed two bucks with one shot', not always a good thing, as we found out.  (Two deer = double the work and double the meat.)

Dan had shot the deer a ways away from the road, so he recruited Yevgeni, myself, and Mrs. Swets to help drag the deer to the truck.  It was a good hike, probably a bit over a kilometer.  Part of it was through a chopped cornfield, which was quite difficult.  (I kept tripping and falling backwards onto the cornstalks.  :(  ).

Here's a picture of Dan with his two deer.

The next day, I helped Dan skin the first deer, and then skinned the second one myself later on in the week.   Dan did most of the cutting up, which was a lot of work.  Mr. and Mrs. Swets patiently worked in the kitchen, grinding up most of the meat and combining it with pork.  So we have a LOT of deer meat now!  And Mrs. Swets wasn't even sure if she wanted all the meat from one deer!  :)  But the following week, we had Gary Z. and Aaron V. over, and Mrs. Swets made some chili with the deer meat.  It was really good!

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