Three Details

The last steak you ate did not actually start out in a package.   At some not intolerably distant point, the steak was part of an animal that perhaps lazed in the afternoon sun on a hillside or maybe spent an entire summer frisking alongside a stream in the mountains.  Something that most of us might consider a bit ugly happened between when you picked up the package of steak at the store and when the steak was yet part of an animal plodding alongside the stream.

Living in a modern society, where hamburger and steaks are perpetually found in shiny squared packages immediately next to chilled beer and flower displays, divorces most of us from the less-than-pretty reality of “processing” meat.

Dismantling a beast is both hard work and messy.  Knives and cleavers are required.  Saws are needed.  Machines are used.  Think of what your local auto repair shop looks like as car is dismantled and then add blood.

Hunting season has always provided me with a reality check on this.

Yesterday, I helped a friend field dress and then hang a mule deer.  I must tell you, the inside of a deer is not exactly filled with gleaming clockworks.   I will spare most details…save the three that struck me yesterday.  These are the same three details that struck me when I was young boy watching as my father and grandfather dressed deer “harvested” during our yearly hunting trips:

Spilled blood smells like a marriage between motor oil and freshly cut metal.

The eyes of a dead deer fade to gray quickly.

The tongue of a dead deer remains sticking out from its mouth.

I will happily share in eating this year’s venison.  I offered to help butcher the animal.  Though long ago I lost my own desire to hunt and to kill, I celebrate the arrival of each hunting season.  I am thankful for what our mountain living provides.  I am thankful for the deer and knowing whence it came.

--Mitchell Hegman