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"Wasting" Meat

I got a hot take on this one.

Law should only require the backstraps be taken.

Ok ok I know that’s probably unpopular, and I take and use all of the animals I kill, BUT the fact is in most of the country whitetails are overpopulated. 99% of rifle only hunters or people who hunt a couple weekends a year and don’t really get that into hunting will only shoot 1 buck or 2 bucks and no does. That does not help control the population. These type of people see the processing of a deer as a chore. It needs to be socially acceptable to kill a deer for the sake of killing a deer, and maintaining a healthy population. I’m no biologist, but if you can see 40 of something in a hayfield at once that means there’s too many of them.

I’ve got 6 deer down so far this year. I also have giant freezers full of all the beef I want. I do not need more meat, but I need to kill more deer. We have found creative ways to use the meat and I encourage more people to do so. The fact remains, most people will not kill does until it becomes less of a chore.

My family honestly does not eat that much burger or ground meat. We do steaks and roast mostly. So this is something that I really do consider doing when I am learning how to quarter in the field. I don't want to waste meat, but I always assumed that it was 'wasteful' to leave in on the field. But maybe that's not the worse thing you can do. I might honestly try to learn how to debone in the field for just the main cuts, use leftover spare smaller piece for stews.
 
Including myself in the party discussed, but this thread made me think “has anyone responding in this thread considered how it looks to people who aren’t hunters?” And “Has anyone responding here considered the parallels in how this discussion is going, compared to other recent medical/biological phenomena?”

Random tangentially related question - do sales of doe pee, and other deer bits gathered from farming them go to PR funding or something like it?
 
Totally agree with this part.

Not so much with this part. But I know little about landfills. It's just that I can't imagine they are these magical places where all regular natural processes of the universe cease to function.



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They literally do stop once they get buried far enough. Unless its such a large landfill that what you send doesn't get immediately buried, scavengers dont get a chance at the food.
 
They literally do stop once they get buried far enough. Unless its such a large landfill that what you send doesn't get immediately buried, scavengers dont get a chance at the food.
What happens to burried fill? Preserved in perpetuity? No bacteria/decay? Preserved for all time? After people, will the contents of landfills exist in exactly the state that they were when deposited? Again, must be magic if so. I'm sorry if I sound like a snarky a$$. Not my goal. Just trying to get us to think about the real differentials at work in these choices. It's the economist in me. Seen and unseen consequences of choices/tradeoffs.

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What happens to burried fill? Preserved in perpetuity? No bacteria/decay? Preserved for all time? After people, will the contents of landfills exist in exactly the state that they were when deposited? Again, must be magic if so. I'm sorry if I sound like a snarky a$$. Not my goal. Just trying to get us to think about the real differentials at work in these choices. It's the economist in me. Seen and unseen consequences of choices/tradeoffs.

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When you bury stuff so deep, all the air is crushed out it, which is why even compost piles fail of you get them too big. Even bacteria needs some kind of air.
 
What happens to burried fill? Preserved in perpetuity? No bacteria/decay? Preserved for all time? After people, will the contents of landfills exist in exactly the state that they were when deposited? Again, must be magic if so. I'm sorry if I sound like a snarky a$$. Not my goal. Just trying to get us to think about the real differentials at work in these choices. It's the economist in me. Seen and unseen consequences of choices/tradeoffs.

The economist sometimes needs to think like a biologist :D. Joking aside, the decomposition of organic matter is the result of biological processes. Just like humans and everything else, microorganisms need a certain set of environmental conditions to survive. They've evolved to survive above or within a short distance of the soil surface, it doesn't take very much depth to completely change the environment. In landscaping, I've commonly dug down a couple feet and the soil is blue because of the reduced iron from lack of oxygen. So it wouldn't surprise me at all that under a heavily compacted landfill the environmental conditions for decomposition are very poor to nonexistent. That said, I'm not implying anything about diseased deer disposal, that's out of my wheelhouse.
 
The economist sometimes needs to think like a biologist :D.
Funny...and fair enough.
Joking aside, the decomposition of organic matter is the result of biological processes. Just like humans and everything else, microorganisms need a certain set of environmental conditions to survive. They've evolved to survive above or within a short distance of the soil surface, it doesn't take very much depth to completely change the environment. So it wouldn't surprise me at all that under a heavily compacted landfill the environmental conditions for decomposition are very poor to nonexistent.
As mentored I know little about landfills and only a little more about biology. I can see the point being made here though. I think I'm thinking on a longer term scale such that delays in decomposition are not of concern. Nutter's point that energy can neither be created or destroyed is the small scientific nugget that my economic intuition is resting on. If we think that natural processes including bacterial decomposition means deer carcasses are not "wasted", then it follows that if that process is interrupted by certain environmental conditions, then the energy is continuing to be stored in that carcass (not "wasted") until at some point the conditions will after such that the energy transfers to other organisms. This sounds clearer in my head than in words typed here, but I've already gone on long enough.
That said, I'm not implying anything about diseased deer disposal, that's out of my wheelhouse.
Same here. Whole other enchilada.



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The lack of decomposition due to lack of air is a thing for sure. Look at those bronze age "mummies" archeologists find in peat bogs. They are better preserved than some folks I see shopping at Walmart.

As to delaying the inevitable, I can see that. The energy we use today from coal was energy stored by ancient plants from the sun millions of years ago. Maybe in the far future people will fuel their homes with compacted deer coal from ancient landfills.
 
Funny...and fair enough.

As mentored I know little about landfills and only a little more about biology. I can see the point being made here though. I think I'm thinking on a longer term scale such that delays in decomposition are not of concern. Nutter's point that energy can neither be created or destroyed is the small scientific nugget that my economic intuition is resting on. If we think that natural processes including bacterial decomposition means deer carcasses are not "wasted", then it follows that if that process is interrupted by certain environmental conditions, then the energy is continuing to be stored in that carcass (not "wasted") until at some point the conditions will after such that the energy transfers to other organisms. This sounds clearer in my head than in words typed here, but I've already gone on long enough.

Same here. Whole other enchilada.



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Haha... I think we're all in that boat... understanding this stuff at a superficial level but how stuff actually works....yeah not so much...haha.... if we want to go to the extremes we could even argue that these processes will continue to go on long after our species is gone and nature's gonna nature so in the end... doesn't matter what we do at all... but that's a little fatalistic
 
The lack of decomposition due to lack of air is a thing for sure. Look at those bronze age "mummies" archeologists find in peat bogs. They are better preserved than some folks I see shopping at Walmart.

As to delaying the inevitable, I can see that. The energy we use today from coal was energy stored by ancient plants from the sun millions of years ago. Maybe in the far future people will fuel their homes with compacted deer coal from ancient landfills.
Yep. They might fall apart if you touch them but nothing can actually consume them in those conditions.
 
Haha... I think we're all in that boat... understanding this stuff at a superficial level but how stuff actually works....yeah not so much...haha.... if we want to go to the extremes we could even argue that these processes will continue to go on long after our species is gone and nature's gonna nature so in the end... doesn't matter what we do at all... but that's a little fatalistic
I love that line from Fight Club where the guy says, "on a long enough timeline everyone's chances of survival drop to zero". So yeah, long term none of this matters. In about a billion years our sun will have burned through enough of its hydrogen that it will swell up and become a red giant and at that point it will likely engulf the three inner planets, Earth included.
 
I love that line from Fight Club where the guy says, "on a long enough timeline everyone's chances of survival drop to zero". So yeah, long term none of this matters. In about a billion years our sun will have burned through enough of its hydrogen that it will swell up and become a red giant and at that point it will likely engulf the three inner planets, Earth included.
.... haha....we soared the mood...
 
When you bury stuff so deep, all the air is crushed out it, which is why even compost piles fail of you get them too big. Even bacteria needs some kind of air.
I dug some bridge pilings across the edge of an old landfill{when everything was covered in a hole}. There were newspapers you could still read, bluejeans you could wash and wear. It seemed nothing had deteriated. Of course that was not on the grand scale of the landfills now but still eye opening.
 
My family honestly does not eat that much burger or ground meat. We do steaks and roast mostly. So this is something that I really do consider doing when I am learning how to quarter in the field. I don't want to waste meat, but I always assumed that it was 'wasteful' to leave in on the field. But maybe that's not the worse thing you can do. I might honestly try to learn how to debone in the field for just the main cuts, use leftover spare smaller piece for stews.
Any cut can be cooked to perfection on a smoker or in a crock pot, including necks and ribs and stuff you might traditionally bone out or grind
 
I got a hot take on this one.

Law should only require the backstraps be taken.

Ok ok I know that’s probably unpopular, and I take and use all of the animals I kill, BUT the fact is in most of the country whitetails are overpopulated. 99% of rifle only hunters or people who hunt a couple weekends a year and don’t really get that into hunting will only shoot 1 buck or 2 bucks and no does. That does not help control the population. These type of people see the processing of a deer as a chore. It needs to be socially acceptable to kill a deer for the sake of killing a deer, and maintaining a healthy population. I’m no biologist, but if you can see 40 of something in a hayfield at once that means there’s too many of them.

I’ve got 6 deer down so far this year. I also have giant freezers full of all the beef I want. I do not need more meat, but I need to kill more deer. We have found creative ways to use the meat and I encourage more people to do so. The fact remains, most people will not kill does until it becomes less of a chore.
Agreed or donate them. We have butchers that belong to a venison donation coalition where you take your deer to a processor. We need to practice better deer management by shooting more deer period.
 
Went to the “skinning camp” today to skin a deer I had killed. We live on state lines and have to skin where killed due to CWD restrictions. When we took the carcass into the woods there wasn’t a hair remaining of the previous three that had been deposit there over the last month.
 
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