Nate and I found a new place that was just ours that day. Seeing him just cut loose, without any concern for how I perceived him, was refreshing. Something has changed between us, at least from his side. Maybe it was him slipping out that praise my way, as it’s made him less conscious of how he speaks to me. It’s like I’ve gained access to Nate’s VIP room in his head in some way. Accepted for all that I am.
That feels pretty good.
So, what’s next on the agenda?
Well, we’ve got the small freezer that Mark targeted from Bancroft’s place. There’s little point talking about what happened when we went back there, suffice to say we cleaned it out of anything useful. There’s probably a few things we can go back for, but they’re just bits and bobs. The main thing was that small chest freezer, because that’s the last thing we needed in place before the big one.
Tomorrow, Nate and I are going over to the deer park. Shitting hell, I am so excited. The thought of fresh cooked meat is making my mouth water at the concept. I’m not particularly enamoured by the lessons promised of how to treat and dress a deer, but they’re skills that I need. Also, I’ve always hated the argument of superior-attitude vegetarians who get on their soapbox and say, “If you had to kill and butcher the animal yourself, you wouldn’t eat meat either.”
In that, my dear tree hugger, you are so very fucking wrong. If it means I get fresh cooked meat, I’ll strangle Bambi with my bare fucking hands as I headbutt the little bastard to death, before sawing it to pieces with a rusty knife. You have no concept of what I’ll do for fresh meat.
So next time I see you, my dear reader, I aim to be satisfied and full of meat.
You laughed, didn’t you? I bet you laughed. You’ve got a dirty mind.
September 12th, 2010
OH. MY. GOD.
Yesterday, Nate and I headed out to Dunham Massey’s deer park. We easily bagged a deer because they’re bloody everywhere, no hunting required. Just set up in a spot all quiet, wait for them to wander into view, then we worked together, both firing to take the same one down. Naturally, the rest of them scattered after the crack of the rifles, but our work was done in terms of bagging them. Easy like Sunday morning.
I asked Nate why we didn’t both shoot one and double up, because as I said, there were plenty to go around. Apparently, 5.56mm rounds are pretty small for hunting and taking down deer. In the absence of a decent hunting rifle with a proper round like 7.62mm for the job, it was more humane for us both to fire on the same animal to take it down. Unless we nailed Bambi in the heart or brain with a perfect shot, the poor bugger would stagger off and likely bleed out over a long time. Fair enough, I guess. I wanted to eat that deer with every molecule of my being, but I didn’t want it to die a slow and painful death beforehand.
Incidentally, we have some 7.62mm, but the only weapons we have for firing them are the couple of AK-47’s we found at Castle Bancroftstein, all loaded into the handful of magazines for those two weapons, and we’ve got a metric fuckload of 5.56mm in comparison, so here we are.
Nate handed me his massive knife and walked me through dressing it, because I said I wanted to learn.
Well, that was fucking grotesque.
Cut it down to the base of the sternum, then scar along the abdomen but don’t cut deep straight away. Nate couldn’t stress that enough, because if the stomach, intestines, bowels, bladder etc get punctured while you’re doing it, it will make an unholy mess inside that deer that you do not want to experience. The meat will get spoiled by all the mess; intestinal bacteria, digestive enzymes and juices, and all that other nasty stuff. You have to rip out all the innards nice and smooth and just take the meat home.
It’s a bloody awful experience the first time, rummaging your hands inside the deer, shoving everything down so you can get the oesophagus, sever it, then drag everything down and out, carefully cutting anything away from the carcass to just leave the meat. It’s a wholly unpleasant warm squishy feeling as you manhandle everything down so you can cut that oesophagus, enabling you to rip and pour everything out the split belly, but it’s actually pretty straightforward, once you get past the horror of shoving your hands into an animal’s innards to cut it apart.
Utilising our new little freezer at the lodge, we’d prepared and brought some bags of ice in a cooler box, shoving them inside the dressed carcass to preserve the meat as best we could for the transport home.
And Bob’s your mother’s brother, we had ourselves a deer, ready for skinning and eating. And I gained a new skill. A gross one, admittedly, but a girl’s got to do what she has to for survival. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d do anything for fresh meat, and I proved that.
Norah did the business on the venison, skinning and butchering it like a pro. Last night, the smell of cooking meat was nigh on orgasmic, but that was nothing compared to the first bite.
Oh. My. God.
I nearly burned my mouth, I was so bloody eager, and I just didn’t care. It was better than sex, and I will argue that to my dying day. When you’ve been eating a collection of canned and dried foods for three months, no matter how well Norah prepared them, absolutely nothing prepared me for the opiate-like high of biting into freshly cooked meat.
I don’t have the
