Fresh and Never Frozen

Tonight my family shared a celebration meal! We were blessed with an early, October harvest. A small doe walked out just after legal-light at 15 yards and I was able to add another bow kill to the family’s food supply.

As I came up the drive with my fresh kill my children celebrated and danced. My wife came out of the house to kiss and congratulate me. My kids find themselves caught up with all the excitement and certainly know a delicious meal is on the way! The celebration deer loin has become some what of an expected tradition.

This back-strap was particularly delicious because the meat was cooled in a Coleman on ice, driven home and then placed in the fridge for 24 hours before it found itself in a marinade of soy, worcestershire, various spices and a little brown sugar for a crust. It was then grilled indirectly to a tender and juicy medium-rare and served after a short rest. It didn’t survive long after that as my little pack of carnivores did what they do best.

As the kids celebrated the fresh harvest, the quick kiss and the embrace I shared with my wife had deeper meaning than one might think.

This year, as grocery store shelves and retailer aisles ran out of supplies, especially running short on meat, times became hard for many. With three children, it was easy for my wife and I to grow nervous as fragmented news reports began to pop up stating food was getting harder and harder to find. It was natural to feel afraid and panicked at the idea of not having meat to feed our children. But then soon after our fears began boiling over, a peace brought us back to a simmer. We both recalled that over the last year, I was able to harvest 4 deer and we had a freezer almost entirely stocked with ground meat, steaks, sausage and jerky. The provision we were blessed with left us prepared for the worst of days. I suppose we’ve always stocked the freezer for this very reason, but in the fear and anxiety felt in the early days of food-shortages, we had forgotten that we were already prepared.

Never again will we rest until we have a stocked freezer, ready to weather whatever storms come our way.

But enough of that! Now for the important take-away: Please save at least one back-strap from being frozen and grill that bad-boy up as soon as possible! There is nothing quite like a fresh harvest’s tender strip of marinated perfection to put a garnish on a successful day in the woods.

A venison tenderloin after a 20 hour marinade then cooked indirectly on the grill to a 145° internal temperature.