Midwinter Meat Meditations

In early January I heard elk on the mountain behind my house. The crisp air carried not only the cow calls, which sounded like trees bending in the wind but also the otherworldly bugles of bull elk, which sounded like a soundtrack to the Northern Lights.

I had never heard of elk bugling in winter but added this surprising data point to my mental file of elk behavior that might someday be useful. You just never know. Any time you can see or hear an elk, it’s an opportunity to learn. And when you’re a hunter, every moment spent learning about your prey is a moment spent hunting. You pay dues like this eagerly if you want to fill your freezer with a year’s supply of clean, lean animal protein.

During hunting season the pace can be exhausting. But in the off-season, we can pursue our prey at a more leisurely pace. Such as from a backyard hot tub in the case of the midnight bulges. Or last week at a used bookstore, where I picked up a copy of Hunting Farmland Bucks by John Trout, Jr.

Farmland deer hunting is more than sport or sustenance but is a human responsibility. Our species has beaten down the wolves, mountain lions, and the rest of the deer’s natural predators, while at the same time converting the hardscrabble natural landscape into an all-you-can-eat buffet of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, sunflowers, wheat, barley, and lentils, to name a few. Every farm deer that you pop helps the farmers retain more of their crop for sale to humans, and will probably save somebody’s car from a high-speed encounter at dusk.

Although Mr. Trout lived and hunted in faraway Illinois, I felt a kinship with the author, as a farmland buck hunter. Flipping through it I quickly learned that a late-season North wind will get the bucks moving. That information was quite interesting to me because in my experience the North wind moves me to soak the hot springs, rather than hunt. Note to self.

Meanwhile, my favorite spot for farmland whitetails has been overrun with morons with no manners or knowledge of hunter safety. The kind of idiots who would shoot toward a suspicious sound. So I set out to find a new spot.

I finally scored, on a stunning piece of public land, early on the second-to-last day of the season. The buck was standing on the other side of the river when I shot him, and dragging his body across that river was the coldest, wettest most joyfully quasi-hypothermic experience of my life. No meat tastes as good as whitetail buck, properly killed, cleaned, trimmed, wrapped, and frozen. Not whitetail doe. Not even elk. If you don’t believe me let’s go. Meat to meat, mano a mano, pan to pan.

To prepare wild game, you often have to do more trimming than you would have with a store-bought steak. Use a sharp knife to trim off any tendons or connective tissue and sometimes even a thin slice of the surface of the meat, if it happens to get brown in the freezer. Lather your trimmed meat with olive oil, and toss with salt and pepper. Heat the pan. Pour the wine.

I love elk meat almost as much as whitetail. And given how large an elk is, I would take one over a whitetail buck if given the choice. Especially a cow or calf, which are reliably more tasty than bulls. Of course, had I been able to find one with antlers that would foster bitter pangs of inadequacy in the hearts of my closest friends… who among us would not?

On the last day of the general season, still tired from dragging my buck across the river the day before, I found fresh elk tracks in the snow. And just like that I was in my happiest of happy places, sneaking through the woods and squeezing pellets of elk poop to assess freshness. The magic of snow is it allows you to read the tracks in sharp detail. The magic of elk tracks is they lead straight to an elk.

At first, the tracks were single-file, clearly on a mission to cover ground. But eventually, the tracks fanned out, as the individual animals began to feed on tufts of grass poking out of the snow. Soon they would bed down. As the tracks slowed, I slowed down too, expecting to see some bodies bedded down on the snow. Then I saw that unmistakable glint in my peripheral vision. The same color scheme as the forest but the reds, yellows, and browns are a thousand times more vibrant. Not bedded down. It was the biggest cow elk I have ever seen. But her calf was nearby, mostly hidden in a bush. And no way was I going to shoot a cow in front of its calf. I have done that once and the memory will haunt me to the grave. So it was either shoot the calf or shoot them both.

I did not have a shot on the calf, but I had the cow’s ear in my scope at 100 yards, an easy shot. It was 3 in the afternoon, and I was alone, about three miles from the truck. I knew from learning the hard way that if I shot the cow, the calf would stick around for an easy follow-up.

But I didn’t pull the trigger. I had my buck on ice back in town, and in my laziness was able to convince myself that my buck was enough. Had it been a bull of a stature that would have my friends secretly despise me, I would not have had the luxury of restraint.

Walking at a leisurely pace, unburdened by hundreds of pounds of meat and bone, I got back to the truck in plenty of light. I went for a soak in the hot springs, and then went to Jesse Peppers Smoke Shack in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, to feast upon some brisket and deep-fried pickled-brined chicken breast, followed by a well-earned lemon bar. Nothing beats the hunting lifestyle. Whether or not you kill it yourself, you’ve earned the right to eat some meat.