Today I skinned my first white tailed deer all by myself. It was kinda funny, actually, because it was a roadkill, and a cop pulled up right behind me as I was dragging the deer to my car, to put in my trunk.
"Excuse me Ma'am...what are you doing?"
"Um, I like to tan hides...this deer has a beautiful hide still..."
"You can't just pick up deer on the side of the road..."
"I can't...why not?"
The cop floundered around for a reason for a minute, then, realizing I had a point (the deer was in good condition with a nice hide,) he said "well you have to have a tag for this..." and went to his car to write me a tag. A few minutes later he came back and said "do you have someone to help you with this, because legally I can't help you lift this into your trunk.."
I talked the cop into helping me lift the deer into my trunk after promising him I wouldn't eat it, although at that point I had every intention of eating the deer. (Later, while skinning it, I realized it's intenstines had exploded and it wasn't edible.) It was great to have a cop helping me for once with something. Actually, now that I live with my brother-in-law who is a cop, I have help from a cop on a almost daily basis; but anyway.
Now a full grown deer is a lot more to deal with then any animal I've ever skinned before; luckily my mom lived a short distance away and when we where kids, used to skin roadkill deer on our kitchen table, so when I called her, she was willing to help me. Mom and I attacted chains to it's back legs and hoisted the deer out of my car into the rafters of her garage so I could skin it. But before I did anything else, I noticed it had bulging mammory glands and decided to milk it, having had friends who have fed me the milk of various roadkilled animals before (usually deer as well.) I felt sad, knowing that this was probably either a pregnant deer or a mommy and somewhere in the woods, a baby or baby fawn(s) where starving to death. This was Bambi's mom I was about to skin; I felt more grief over this deer then probably any of the animals I've skinned previously. I had to spend quite a few minutes praying and talking to the deer; apologizing to her for our car culture, petting her and holding back tears. Then, I got a quart jar and milked her. White tailed deer milk tastes suprisingly like cows milk, only it is quite a bit thicker and creamer then the stuff you can get in the store. While I milked her, I almost cried over and over again, thinking about tiny baby deer who butt their heads under their mom's bellies to get the milk flowing; how surely very reciently, this was a living mom deer who was feeling the same type of ectasy that human moms feel when their children nurse from them as a young fawn (or I guess at this time of year, a nearly grown fawn,) nuzzled and butted under his mom.
After the milking, I began the skinning. Again, way more emotional work then I'm used to. Maybe it is because deer are larger, or this one was so fresh (her body was still very warm as I cut into it,) or deer are so amazingly beautiful, or because she was a mommy, for whatever reason, I kept almost crying as I spent two hours taking her skin off. My mom came out to watch a few times and put her hands on her hips and kept saying "I feel more inclined toward vegitarianism watching this..."
"Thats funny," I said, "it doesn't make me feel more inclined toward vegitarianism, but I do feel I need to get a gun to kill my own deer, rather then relying on roadkill, so I don't have to deal with things like exploded intestines...I was really looking forward to some venison steaks..."
Anyway, I've got a lot of scrapping, stretching, tanning, etc to do with the rest of my week.
Love ya,
Carrot
