T1B

...for donating all that chemical free, hormone free, free range meat to the soup kitchens.

I know if I was baggin' a bunch of squirrels I'd have a hard time parting with any of it for a bunch of free-loading hippies and other people of a minority persuasion.

BOGART, Ga. - As the whiff of fall descends in northeast Georgia, Victor Devine readies his bow for an annual rite he's observed since boyhood: the deer hunt.

His family of five eats about 100 pounds of venison a year. But in recent seasons, Mr. Devine has returned to the woods to take one or two extra animals, for the benefit of strangers.

He's part of a national "hunters for the hungry" campaign that is racking up record amounts of donated deer, wild hog, and squirrel meat to bolster soup-kitchen chilis during the coldest, leanest stretch of the year for poorer Americans.

.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071011/ts_csm/ahunters

kill 'em and grill 'em !

Rack those guys.

Oh, and the PETA folks can bite me. Top of the food chain has its perks. And venison chili is one of them.

BSmack wrote:Rack those guys.

Oh, and the PETA folks can bite me. Top of the food chain has its perks. And venison chili is one of them.

Venison chili is great, but your OL has to pay the price of your horrid flatulence for the next three days.

bison chili is the bestest there is. but, if you are gonna do jerky, nothing beat venison.

btw, bsmack, your tree huggie hippie fliends are gonna kick you outta the club when they here your take on hunters.

smackaholic wrote:if you are gonna do jerky, nothing beat venison

^^^^ Never had salmon jerkey.

OCmike wrote:

BSmack wrote:Rack those guys.

Oh, and the PETA folks can bite me. Top of the food chain has its perks. And venison chili is one of them.

Venison chili is great, but your OL has to pay the price of your horrid flatulence for the next three days.

NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM. If my wife wants to lead her life in a constant sticky fetid mist, that's her business - as long as she keeps helping me open the Diet Beer Twist-Offs. Also, how's she supposed to know the cloud stinks? Does she ask a chef or some other expert?

Sin,
BAcridMist

smackaholic wrote:bison chili is the bestest there is. but, if you are gonna do jerky, nothing beat venison.

btw, bsmack, your tree huggie hippie fliends are gonna kick you outta the club when they here your take on hunters.

Would it break your heart to know I began handling guns at the age of nine, got my first .22 for my 10th birthday, got my hunting licence at age 14 and shot in Sporterifle competitions for 4 years during high school?



http://www.sporterifle.org/

Anybody ever had squirrel chili?

From the article I gather it's one of the staple dishes south of the Mason Dixon line.

Hmm...Biggie's salad has been a little squirrelly of late.

--cuda

Jsc810 wrote:Yeah I've been donating to Hunters for the Hungry for years, they have an 'empty your freezer' day every year right before deer season. I end up keeping the back straps and tenderloins, but give the rest to them.

A few things.

First, maybe it’s a regional thing, but around here the backstraps are the tenderloins.

Second, it sounds like you wait till right before deer season to give away the year-old deer you’ve got left in your freezer. Yum.

And lastly, I have also donated deer in the past. I donate the whole deer. Generally the same day I shot it. I don’t cherry pick the best parts and donate the rest. I figure that someone who needs a little help putting food on the table for their family appreciates the better cuts as much as I do. Maybe that’s a regional thing, too.

Sudden Sam wrote:

Mikey wrote:Anybody ever had squirrel chili?

From the article I gather it's one of the staple dishes south of the Mason Dixon line.

Oh yeah. We have it with every meal. Great over grits and cornpone (whatever the hell that is).

It's also on the menu at every fancy eatin' place. Nothing better'n caviar with squirrel chili.

C'mon, Mikey!

I was just wondering, 'cause about the best we can do around here is gophers, a few coyotes and maybe a red tailed hawk once in awhile. Those hawks don't have much meat on them, though.

Yeah, actually we got plenty of squirrels here too, but they're ground squirrels and pretty damn skinny. And rabbits up the ass too, but admitting that wouldn't have fit in with theme of my post.

I did go huntin' some rockfish last Sunday, and kilt me about a dozen. Only three were big enough to take home though.

On a related note, I just saw the first possum in the yard in a couple of years. They're coming back, but the last couplefew years have been about coons. It's a cyclical thing, and both breed so prolifically, and are so populous that they get dysentary epidemics every few yeras, then they are a little more scarce for a year or two. The Retarded Coon is no longer with us -- he used to hang out on the back patio during broad daylight, terrorizing the cats(which keep all of the other rodents like moles and gophers in check, but want nothing to do with possums, coons, and squirrels.

But I've got approximately 1,000,000 squirrels living in the backyard (they dig the Giant Sequoia, and all the other trees). But the Big Daddy has gotten so fat, that when he jumps from the pondo pine to the roof and runs across it, the house freaking shakes. It's like a squirrel-quake.


If I had a digicam, I'd post some pics of Big Daddy -- it would apparently make the Sotherners' mouths water.

I seriously doubt that you have a giant sequoia (sequoiadendron giganteum) in your yard.

Unless maybe you, or some other human, planted it there. In which case it would most definitely not be giant yet.

Mikey wrote:I seriously doubt that you have a giant sequoia (sequoiadendron giganteum) in your yard.

Huh?


While I'm a few miles north of the Giant Sequoia's native range... I ain't that far north.

The Giant Sequoia is an EXTREMELY popular ornamental around here... EXTREMELY. A trend that started with "after the gold rush" settlers from NoCal/Southern Oregon.

They reproduce on their own.

Their upper reaches are distinct from their bretheren to the south, in that the slightly shorter, but more intense growing season causes the top to "reach" a little, and the upper few feet of the tree looks like it's been put into a pencil-sharpener(that's the term local arborists use for it, anyway... see pic below).


As far as the backyard model -- why yes, a human planted it there, just like most of the other large trees on the lot. The sequoia is about 40 years old, just like the house/lot. At present, it stands about 80 feet, and the trunk is about 6 feet in diameter. I'm guessing that makes it larger than any tree in the entire LoCal region, which would certainly make it "giant" by your standards.


WTF are you talking about? The Giant Sequoia is a prolific breeder/grower around these parts. VERY common tree, albeit slightly outside of its native area, which basically ends just short of the Willamette Valley to the south.


Newsflash -- if it's a drought-resistant temperate climate tree, it grows better here than where you are... regardless of where you are. This area is kinda famous for that... tell me you knew?




Here's an example of a young, small sequoia -- This is a small example, but it illustrates the "pencil sharpener æffect."






The following pic is a much larger example. The pics are taken at Eastmoreland Golf Course (a muni, where the US Am Championship has been held). The sequoias are around 80-90 yerars old, and the pics don't do the Eastmoreland sequoias justice -- there's some big mothers.

My friend's neighbor across the street cut down a Giant Sequoia not too long ago, because it was too big to be that close to the house. From the age of the house, the tree was probably just short of 50 years old. It really thrived in its location, and after it was cut, the diameter of the stump measured in at a staggering 11 feet.

My neighbors have an old sequoia that's right next to a power pole. Wish I had a digicam, since it's kind of cool -- the power company constantly knocks the top off, so it stands less than 20 feet. But the trunk has encompassed the pole, and now there's a wooden power pole sticking up out of the trunk of the tree... it's kinda cool.



But so much for your "serious doubts," eh?

OK, you could be right. I originally thought you prolly had a coast redwood (sequoia sempervirens), which a lot of people mix up with the giant sequoia just because of the latin name, and it probably grows pretty well up there too.

But I have been known to be wrong, about once a decade.

Mikey wrote:I originally thought you prolly had a coast redwood

They do pretty well, but not nearly as common, nor do they grow at the prolific rate of the Giant Sequoia. I'm uncertain as to their natural reproduction, as well.


I can see literally dozens of very large Giant Sequoias from my front door.


You should learn to never step to a U&Ler when it comes to trees. Hell, they teach forestry in grade school around these parts (or they used to when I was a lad).

Dinsdale wrote:

smackaholic wrote:if you are gonna do jerky, nothing beat venison

^^^^ Never had salmon jerkey.

no, I haven't had the pleasure. Sounds good though. You ever have venison jerky? It is pretty epcot.

smackaholic wrote:

Dinsdale wrote:

smackaholic wrote:if you are gonna do jerky, nothing beat venison

^^^^ Never had salmon jerkey.

no, I haven't had the pleasure. Sounds good though. You ever have venison jerky? It is pretty epcot.

You didn't ask that in a serious manner did you? Not only did he have venison jerky, but he prolly knows someone from a family in the U&L that not only invented it, but also sold the recipe to the Indians. Of course the U&L venison jerky is better than anywhere else in the country or on the planet if you think about it.

All around.

BSmack wrote:

All around.

"pussy ain't nothin' but meat on a bone..." -- luke campbell

Jsc810 wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote:

Jsc810 wrote:Yeah I've been donating to Hunters for the Hungry for years, they have an 'empty your freezer' day every year right before deer season. I end up keeping the back straps and tenderloins, but give the rest to them.

A few things.

First, maybe it’s a regional thing, but around here the backstraps are the tenderloins.

Second, it sounds like you wait till right before deer season to give away the year-old deer you’ve got left in your freezer. Yum.

And lastly, I have also donated deer in the past. I donate the whole deer. Generally the same day I shot it. I don’t cherry pick the best parts and donate the rest. I figure that someone who needs a little help putting food on the table for their family appreciates the better cuts as much as I do. Maybe that’s a regional thing, too.

There is a difference between backstrap and tenderloin. The backstraps are on the outside or top of the spine, they generally are about two feet long and about 5 inches in diameter. The tenderloins are much smaller, maybe about the size of your fist, and are under the spine near the shoulder.

Like I said, it could be a regional thing. What you call tenderloins, we call inner loins. And BTW, they're much closer to the hips that to the shoulder. And if you look at a beef chart, you'll see that the tenderloins are where the backstraps are on a deer. But if you google backstraps and tenderloins, the majority of sites dealing with venison come down on your side as far as terminology.

Jsc810 wrote:The meat I give away has been vacuum packed and sealed, nothing wrong with it, and in any event, donating it is better than throwing it away, even if it is almost a year old. They're happy to get it.

You're still a schmuck for not giving away the whole deer when it's fresh. I'm sure that the next time you're in for some medical procedure and the doctor has run out of lube, and he decides to use a little spit, you’ll be happy to get that.

fukk you goobs. i'm sure them poor folks are happy as shit to have deer hooves and entrails that jsc is nice enough to give them. prolly boil down to a right tasty soup broth.

I studied dendrology at the University of Maine around 1958, and although it seems that the tree has been reclassified (I knew it as Sequoia gigantea) I did recall that its range was located in the Sierras.

verify that here:

http://www.sierranevadaphotos.com/geogr ... /index.asp

and here:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron

I wish Prof Hyland at Maine was still around and have Dinsdale send him photos and samples of his "giant sequoias".

The natural range of giant sequoias is a small area of the western Sierra Nevada in California. I've been to several of the "groves" in Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Forest, and the ancient trees there are freakin' unbeevable. If you dig a little deeper though, you'll find that they have been successfully cultivated as ornamental trees and many other areas.

True that, I'm talking natural range too
--if I recall there is a "sequoia cultivar" growing at Mount Vernon in VA.

Wolfman wrote:I studied dendrology at the University of Maine around 1958, and although it seems that the tree has been reclassified (I knew it as Sequoia gigantea) I did recall that its range was located in the Sierras.

Y'know, I've long had a minor-league passion for the beautiful sequoia. I've actually done some not-particularly-extensive study on them. And I believe the botanist have been debating the "native range" of them for 100 years or more.

Interesting subject, actually.

The Giant Sequoia is thought to be by far the predominate tree over much of the planet 200 million years ago. But as climatic conditions changed and whatnot, they disappeared from most of its habitat. Fairly suddenly (by earth-age standards), they were no longer "the man" over Europe and North America, and they hung on through a few suitable spots along the West Coast.

It's known that there's only decent groves in select spots in the Sierra. BUT... I know I've been told that there's been very small smatterings, often individual trees, that were interspersed through the mountains along the West Coast. I KNOW I've been told (for what that's worth... very little), that in the days of the settlers, that they'd find the occasional Giant Sequoia up through the Siskiyous and through Southern Oregon, possibly as far north as Roseburg (which is about 70 miles south of Eugene). Once you go any farther north from there, the soil composition and climate change enough that any of those ancient stock couldn't thrive, and became extinct along with all of the other sequoias around the world.


I won't say yes or no to either proposition, but considering the similar climates and soils and whatsuch (hell, us Native Snobs refer to anything south of Roseburg as "Northern California, even though it's 150 miles from there), I'd say it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility... but I ain't no botanist.


But as an ornamental (which as mentioned, became quite the rage as disgruntled gold rushers came north to kill beavers and whatnot), the Giant Sequoia absolutely thrives around here. And with the early examples being planted in this area 150 years ago, you do the math on the type of beasts that might be present. Other parts of the world haven't been nearly as successfulgrowing sequoias as an ornamental, because they end up being prone to the indiginous diseases, the sequoia-killers being not present on the West Coast(same issue they had trying to grow native European grape vines in California during the 1800's -- nearly killed off all of the native varietals in the process). Although, around here, the sequoias definitely do not like the ultra-dry summers. Matter of fact, before it started raining a little a couplefew weeks ago, the backyard beast was getting fairly unhappy, as it often does in late summer. The inner needles/leave thingies start to brown, particularly in the upper reaches. An arborist actually mentioned that letting that happen was bad, and that can be an invitation to disease in sequoias. So it gets some serious gallonage dumped at the base starting in late August/early September.


In my last sequoia post, I mentioned "the following picture"... and didn't post the pic. It was this one --






Neither the tree nor the closeup I was looking for, but you can see some golfers in the lower right, for a little perspective. The other trees around it are no small fry. But they've grown some serious monsters at Eastmoreland. Fairly low-lying spot, plus it gets watered, being a golf course. They seem to really thrive there. There's some extremely old, maginificent examples of some sequoias on the grounds of my county courthouse(which I generally try to avoid), but can't find a picture of them.


As far as the study of trees goes, the Giant Sequoia is a fascinating one -- used to provide shade for dinosaurs all over the world, and somehow managed to escape extinction by hanging on to its few available niches.

And did I mention that while the Backyard Unit won't make any record books for its size, it still may be of interest to the folks at the Guinness Book, since sitting at its base may be the largest pile of racoon feces that mankind has ever seen. The filthy little bastards climb up and down one side of it, and shit down the other... going into the lower branches is actually kinda gross.


Did I mention the coonshit pile is HUUUUUGE? That rotting pile of nasty must be about 2.5 feet high, and 5 feet across. Gnarly.

Dinsdale wrote:And did I mention that while the Backyard Unit won't make any record books for its size, it still may be of interest to the folks at the Guinness Book, since sitting at its base may be the largest pile of racoon feces that mankind has ever seen.

You’re oh so quick to blame those adorable little creatures, but are you sure that some of your bar-time “dates” aren’t responsible?

Goober McTuber wrote: You’re oh so quick to blame those adorable little creatures, but are you sure that some of your bar-time “dates” aren’t responsible?

I think you need to review your T1B history.


My bar-time "dates" eat it after they excrete it.


But thnks for reminding me about that. Guess I won't be participating in any "what's for lunch" threads today.

Dinsdale wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote: You’re oh so quick to blame those adorable little creatures, but are you sure that some of your bar-time “dates” aren’t responsible?

I think you need to review your T1B history.


My bar-time "dates" eat it after they excrete it.


Because when it comes to recycling, the U & L wrote the book.

Got it.

You U&l'ers take that second harvest thing to a whole different level.

rack?