Who said "There is no such thing as a free lunch?"
I have been collecting road kill for decades although until recently, it was just pheasants and the occasional rabbit. As I saw it, there was no difference eating one that had been recently killed by a car than one that had been shot other than with the former there was no risk of cracking a tooth on a piece of lead or whatever it is they use in cartridges these days. In 2016 we moved from North Kent to a small village in Worcestershire. With a far more rural location, roadkill became more abundant and not just with pheasants and rabbits.
Shortly after moving here I came across a young fallow deer buck that had been killed by a car. It was very fresh and not too far from home so I could not resist the opportunity. It was rush hour, which isn't exactly very busy here but as it was on a country lane and after dark, I decided it would be safer to return to collect it a little later rather than join in the deer's fate. So, I went home, had a cup of tea and made a plan. An hour later I returned with a torch and an empty boot. I was on my own as my husband was working away and wouldn't be home until the weekend. Just as well really as I'm sure he would have tried to talk me out of it. I parked as close as I could to it and got out to retrieve it. Now fallow deer might look slightly built but that doesn't mean they are lightweights. That is all solid muscle so when I grabbed hold of its legs and lifted, nothing happened. All I could do was drag it back to the car. Great, I have a Qashqai and the boot is quite high on these cars compared with some. There was no way I was going to be able to lift it and it was now beginning to rain. Never-the-less, I had come this far, I was not going to give up in a hurry. I managed to lift it's front end up enough to get his shoulders over the rim of the boot. Pushing my body hard against it to trap it in position I then managed to hoist the rear end up and eventually got it into the boot. Rigour mortise was setting in and the legs were now quite stiff and sticking out too far to close the boot. Pushing and shoving made little difference. One leg was broken anyway so wasn't a problem but the other three took a lot of effort to bend enough to close the boot. Finally, I did it and off I went to get it home.
The thing with deer is, they are so large they take a long time to cool down. For this reason, you have to eviscerate them quickly or bacteria in the gut will cause the animal to decompose from the inside out and spoil the meat. I'd never gutted anything this big before so that prospect was daunting but having got it home I couldn't turn back now. I couldn't exactly change my mind and dump it in the rubbish bin! so, I looked up a few YouTube videos. All very helpful but they were being done 'in the field' where it didn't matter how much mess was left behind. I was having to do this in my potting shed! I decided to cover the floor with an old cardboard box flattened out and newspaper. The deer was laid on top and I took a dustbin liner and laid that out with the open end up close to the deer's stomach. Luckily, I had a sharp boning knife which made cutting through the hide a sinch. You have to be careful here not to nick the stomach sack or the contents can taint the meat. Once the guts were exposed, wearing rubber gloves, I just reached in and scooped everything out into the dustbin liner. Now, if I had been a bit more experienced and a little less squeamish, I would have taken the time to sort out the liver, kidneys and heart, but at the time I just wanted to get this 'nasty bit' all over and done with so I tied up the bin liner, sealed it in two more, just for good measure, and dumped it in the dustbin. Job done. Now I had more time to think about and research, how I was going to cut the carcass up. Ideally, it should have been hung now for a week or more but I still couldn't lift it so had to contend with leaving it on the shed floor.
I wanted to get it butchered before my husband returned as I wasn't sure he'd approve so I couldn't leave it too long. It was back to YouTube to learn how to do this. It said I was going to need a butcher's saw. I didn't have one nor did I have the means to go out and buy one, they are not exactly popular items in the local stores so instead I bought a small wire hacksaw from B&Q. Luckily we have a large kitchen table which was going to be a far better place for the butchering than the shed but before I could put it there I first needed to make it a bit lighter. I cut the legs off below the knee and removed the head cutting through the bone with my hacksaw which I quickly realised wasn't really up to the job. Despite having no guts, no head and shortened legs, it still appeared to be just as heavy. Having covered the table with more cardboard and a think plastic sheet, also from B&Q, I had to use the same technique to get it onto the table as I did to get it into the car, but I managed it. It was a Friday morning and it took me nearly the whole day to skin, joint, package, get it all in the freezer and clean up but it was so worth it. That night my husband, Paul, came home and I cooked a couple of the steaks. They were absolutely beautiful, just melting in the mouth. Paul loved them and from that point on my roadkill forays were going to take a whole new turn. This blog will be about past and present roadkill events.
Oh, and not forgetting, I had a hide to tan, so guess where I learnt how to deal with that? 😁
Shortly after moving here I came across a young fallow deer buck that had been killed by a car. It was very fresh and not too far from home so I could not resist the opportunity. It was rush hour, which isn't exactly very busy here but as it was on a country lane and after dark, I decided it would be safer to return to collect it a little later rather than join in the deer's fate. So, I went home, had a cup of tea and made a plan. An hour later I returned with a torch and an empty boot. I was on my own as my husband was working away and wouldn't be home until the weekend. Just as well really as I'm sure he would have tried to talk me out of it. I parked as close as I could to it and got out to retrieve it. Now fallow deer might look slightly built but that doesn't mean they are lightweights. That is all solid muscle so when I grabbed hold of its legs and lifted, nothing happened. All I could do was drag it back to the car. Great, I have a Qashqai and the boot is quite high on these cars compared with some. There was no way I was going to be able to lift it and it was now beginning to rain. Never-the-less, I had come this far, I was not going to give up in a hurry. I managed to lift it's front end up enough to get his shoulders over the rim of the boot. Pushing my body hard against it to trap it in position I then managed to hoist the rear end up and eventually got it into the boot. Rigour mortise was setting in and the legs were now quite stiff and sticking out too far to close the boot. Pushing and shoving made little difference. One leg was broken anyway so wasn't a problem but the other three took a lot of effort to bend enough to close the boot. Finally, I did it and off I went to get it home.
The thing with deer is, they are so large they take a long time to cool down. For this reason, you have to eviscerate them quickly or bacteria in the gut will cause the animal to decompose from the inside out and spoil the meat. I'd never gutted anything this big before so that prospect was daunting but having got it home I couldn't turn back now. I couldn't exactly change my mind and dump it in the rubbish bin! so, I looked up a few YouTube videos. All very helpful but they were being done 'in the field' where it didn't matter how much mess was left behind. I was having to do this in my potting shed! I decided to cover the floor with an old cardboard box flattened out and newspaper. The deer was laid on top and I took a dustbin liner and laid that out with the open end up close to the deer's stomach. Luckily, I had a sharp boning knife which made cutting through the hide a sinch. You have to be careful here not to nick the stomach sack or the contents can taint the meat. Once the guts were exposed, wearing rubber gloves, I just reached in and scooped everything out into the dustbin liner. Now, if I had been a bit more experienced and a little less squeamish, I would have taken the time to sort out the liver, kidneys and heart, but at the time I just wanted to get this 'nasty bit' all over and done with so I tied up the bin liner, sealed it in two more, just for good measure, and dumped it in the dustbin. Job done. Now I had more time to think about and research, how I was going to cut the carcass up. Ideally, it should have been hung now for a week or more but I still couldn't lift it so had to contend with leaving it on the shed floor.
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| A vacuum sealer is a must when doing anything like this. Luckily, I already had one. |
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