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by tagsoup
I mostly joined LGC just now to reply to this thread. That looks like a good vid eelj, I watched the beginning. I wanted to ad my two kip about butchering and the cost of hunting as I'm self taught and I've done quite a few large animals.
It's not complicated. It's just meat. At it's most basic you hack up pieces of meat, cook, and eat them. Gutting a deer is probably more important than your butcher job. I'm sure there are good vids online, the main part is don't bust the gut sack or bladder, and wash out the body cavity with water as soon as you can. It's helpful to have a place to hang an animal to make skinning easier, helps with the large cuts too, cutting downhill and all. I don't age anything, and we hunt when it's very cold out.
The costs for most everything is very minimal. Poor people worldwide kill and process animals. Any second hand bolt gun of sufficient caliber with a scope is more than accurate enough for hunting. Maybe $300. Practice is mostly with a 22 rifle, off hand too, no bench rests out in the woods. Practice and practice some more. Clothing is $20 for a vest and hat together. Blaze Orange. Clothes are the same clothes I wear outside hiking or working. Hunter Safety is maybe $15. Take the class that is an actual class, real good info and it's mostly paid from Pittman Roberston funds. I've just spent 11 days walking in the snow at 8,000 feet hunting deer and elk. Fleece sweat pants, good winter boots, back pack, small stove and pot for coffee, Fleece shirt, fleece hoodie, fleece vest. All of them very cheap. Down the bottom of the pack is an emergency rain coat that fits over everything, and a down jacket. Even with temps in the single numbers and snowing I never needed to use them. Binoculars $100, GPS $300, Software for GPS $100 (On X Maps) Elk tag 45, Deer $35, Bear $45.
Knife is anything, I've used steak knives out of the drawer. For processing I rinse each piece of meat in clean water at the sink, allow to drain, cover with cling wrap, then butcher paper, and label. Later if we want burger or sausage we thaw the meat and grind it in a hand grinder we ordered online for $30. We did buy a freezer, sometimes 2 elk and a couple deer add up to 500 lbs or more. One deer could fit in a regular freezer of a fridge though a real freezer is colder. We use it all. Cut the leg bones with band saw and wrap for pho. All the flank meat becomes jerky. I cut out all the fat and silver skin I can, but if possible save all the cartilage for pho. Lots of meat ends up with silver skin or bits of fat, that's ok with me. I don't eat the fat from the body cavity but I'm fine with the rest of it.
Time off from work is a good thing to do. If you want to hunt, you should already like spending a lot of time in the woods. I don't tree stand hunt, can't out here, animals are way too spread out. I usually cover three to ten miles a day, mostly off trail. An hour each way travel. I got nothing in 11 days. Pulled a shot over the back of a cow, gave up a shot on another cow trying to move in and get a bigger one and the herd took off. Spent a lot of time chasing that herd. Only saw deer while elk hunting, and not one bear track. When it was time to hunt deer they'd migrated down the mountain. Still have a private land elk tag good until Jan 31, my son will fill that one, we've never gone empty handed with that tag.
That's it. If you've ever considered hunting, do. Shooting when it's not paper is not always easy, but one learns a lot about firearms, shooting, nature, and the scenery is good.
