Backyard Deer Hunting

Go Where the Action Is

Hovey Smith — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:21:56 +0000

This site primarily concerns my new book, Backyard Deer Hunting: Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound. Although I do update it occasionally, the real action is at my more general content website, www.hoveysmith.com and blog http:\\hoveysmith.wordpress.com. The blog has video clips on cleaning deer and hunting alligators in addition to comments on how to make inexpensive meals from products gathered from the outdoors. A click on the above links will take you there.

Backyard Deer Hunting available

Hovey Smith — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:10:31 +0000

Backyard Deer Hunting: Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound is now available for purchase through the AuthorHouse.com website. This book contains 271 pages, 11 Chapters, 100 photos and 50 recipes. A following section in this blog contains the chapter headings and Introduction. The retail price of the book is $19.95 and it may also be purchased at a reduce price directly from AuthorHouse’s webpage or as an electronic book from AuthorHouse for $7.99. Go to www.authorhouse.com , open the bookstore block on the upper right part of the page and follow the instructions.

This book is intended to help novice hunters and wild-game cooks hunt legaly, safely and effectively and also to properly process and cook the game that they take. It includes sections on salvaging road-killed deer, along with materials on how to cook small game and geese, turkeys and other large fowl.

Written from the author’s own experiences, this book relates a number of unexpected events that took place on the author’s hunts. Rather than repeating information that has been commonly published before, this approach make for an intertaining read while simultaneously providing useful information.

For more information on this and the author’s books on crossbow hunting and bowfishing go to blog, www.hoveysmith.wordpress.com and website www.hoveysmith.com.

Crossbow Hunting was published by Stackpole in 2006 and is available from bookstores and electronic outlets such as Amazon.com. It contains information on a variety of crossbows having different capabilities and price ranges, hunting instructions, hunts from all parts of the globe and concludes with chapters on cleaning and wild-game cooking.

Practical Bowfishing is no longer in print, although copies are now being sold from Amazon.com for between $70-$125 a copy. The author still has a some books which may be ordered by sending a check in the amount of $50,00 to Wm. Hovey Smith, 1325 Jordan Mill Pond Rd. Sandersville, Georgia. If you send me a receipt for the purchase of a copy of Backyard Deer Hunting from any vender I will sell you a copy of my bowfishing book for $20.00. For more on my books go to www.hoveysmith.bellsouth.net.

Book Cover proof

hoveysmith — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:14:29 +0000

For any author who has worked on a book manuscript for months, it is a significant event to finally see his thoughts realized in the proof for the book cover. With conventional publishers, the cover design is often not even run by the author with the result that sometimes embarrassing things happen like the author’s name is misspelled or some vital fact about his life is wrongly stated in his biographical information.

Having been on both sides of the picture from designing and publishing many of my own books to depending on trade publishers to do it, my present dealings with AuthorHouse have been a welcome combination of the two. I came up with the rough design of the cover materials (both front and back) and the spine printing, and they came up with the background colors, type fonts, arrangement of the printed materials on the pages and positioning of the prominent photos on the cover.

My cover is distinctive in that it uses two photos. The top photo is a nice adult doe standing in a backyard setting. The bottom photo on the page is a table set with a number of cooked deer products from the recipes in my book. Prominent arrows connect the two photos reinforcing the “Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound” theme of the book.

The dishes are nothing fancy, but in fact were the least expensive that I could purchase at my local Walmart Superstore. The overall result is to give the impression that hunting and cooking local deer is an activity that anyone can do, and not an activity that can only be done by the financially affluent.

Put some fish in your diet

hoveysmith — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:39:57 +0000

Although not discussed in my book Backyard Deer Hunting, but completely covered in Practical Bowfishing; carp have almost

Both the gar and carp from a GA lake are excellent eating fish.

started to come into spawning mode where I live in Central Georgia . As temperatures warm in regional lakes, they will start to spawn there too. This is the time to bowfish carp and either put them in the freezer, canning (making salmon in common speak) or smoking them. It does not take elaborate equipment to bowfish carp. An old recurve bow, boat and trailer such as I use can do the job very well. They may be also be shot by wading in the shallows. May is a prime month for taking carp in most of the country.

These three carp were bowfished one day, and one of them became my dinner the next day. The other two are now in my freezer. I like to used these for baked fish and then use the remainder to make a fish salad with diced pickles and mayonnaise.

Practical Bowfishing may be ordered from me by sending a check for $17.95 to Wm. Hovey Smith, 1325 Jordan Mill Pond Rd., Sandersville, GA 31082. This book not only contains information on gear, fish that may be bowfished but also has recipes for cooking carp, gar and other fresh and salt-water fish.

hoveysmith — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:54:55 +0000

Backyard Deer Hunting

Converting deer to dinner for

pennies per pound

Wm. Hovey Smith

Table of contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Setting up your hunts

Finding an area

Getting permission to hunt

Local regulations and licenses

Hunter safety instruction

Chapter 2. Getting the gear

Clothing

Hunting boots

Butt comfort

Crossbows

A crossbow hunt

Conventional bows

Guns

Muzzleloading rifles

Accessories

Recommended loads

Sighting in and shooting

Cleaning

Hunting with muzzleloaders

A muzzleloader hunt

Cartridge Rifles

Calibers

A cartridge gun hunt

Shotguns

Shotgun cleaning

A shotgun hunt

Used guns

A second gun

Knives

Sharpening

Sheaths

Hunting knives

Deer stands

Built-up stands

Ladder stands

Climbing stands

Metal tripods and towers

Insects

Chapter 3. Scouting for deer

Your, a friend’s or family lands

What to look for

Recognizing deer sign

Tracks

Beds

Deer rubs

Scrapes

Placing deer stands

Food

Water

Travel paths

Prevailing winds

Ground blind or tree stand?

Ground blinds

Tree stands

Preparing for

opening day

Essentials

For longer hunts

Baiting

Walking out the door

Chapter 4. Deer hunting

Stay put, kill deer

Labs as deer decoys

The responsible hunter

Can you physically do the hunt?

Safety

Ten commandments of firearms safety

Added precautions for muzzleloaders

Archery safety

Added precautions for crossbows

Safety with knives, spears and axes

Interacting with partners

Buddy hunts

Relations with your host

Respecting the land and the game

How much time?

When should I go?

Chapter 5. Humanely killing big game

Game anatomy

Making that first shot count

Learning to use new hunting tools

Size of the sure-kill area

Chapter 6. Finding and extracting your deer

After the shot

Double-duty retrieve

At the shot site

Where is it?

Using dogs

Labs as deer retrievers

Deer drags

Drag sheets

Homemade deer carriers

Deer sleds

Processing in place

Packing it out

Chapter 7. Skinning and cleaning

Skinning tools

Deer skinning

Mechanical aids

Tanning deer hides

Cleaning deer

Getting started

Simple tools can work

Saws

Axes

Clippers and shears

The yuk factor

Safety

Chapter 8. Larger and smaller game

Really big game

A packer’s share

Some dos

Some don’ts

Small game

Squirrels

Rabbits

Birds

Large fowl

Chapter 9. The road-kill café

Salvageable deer

Cleaning

Sorting and packaging

Deer for your pets

Chapter 10. Long-term meat storage

Basic butchering

About hogs and bears

Wrapping

Canning

Drying

Salt and sugar-cured meat

Chapter 11. Cooking

Basic implements

Small electric appliances

Where do I get this stuff?

Basic foodstuffs for the kitchen

Outdoor cooking

Sheet iron cookery

Deer Recipes

Basic deer burger recipes

Pan-fried deer burgers

Grilled deer burgers

Deer puffball meatloaf

Deer potato skillet

Sausage making

Southern sausage seasonings

Italian sausage seasonings

Bratworst mix

Boudin

Sausage loaf

Sausage potatoes

Sausage sweet potato soufflé

Eggplant deer sausage savory

Dill deer potato salad

Spaghetti sauce

Cooking pasta

Deer chili

Weather day beans

Cut meat recipes

Gaucho deer

Shish ka-bob

Deer roast and pot roast

Deer roast

Pot roast

Cubed and country-fried steak

Cubed deer steak

Country fried deer steak

Deer stew

An adaptive Indian curry

Other critters

Squirrel stew

Steamed rabbit and onions

Road Warrior pheasant

Road Warrior duck

Duck rice

Cooking large fowl

Giblet gravy

Turkey dressing

Egg bread

Hoecake

Southern cornbread dressing

Poached pecan panfish

Vegetables

Sweet corn roasted on coals

Roasted yams or sweet potatoes

Hunter’s ratatouille

Garlic-ginger-olive potatoes

Socko succotash

Bean soup

Enhanced pork and beans

Desserts

Homemade apple sauce

Fruit or berry bread

Poached pears

Fruit bread

Homemade pumpkin pie

Pumkin pie spice mix

Putting on the Ritz

Mississippi white sauce

Supplier’s Addresses

Index

Author’s books and publications

Backyard Deer Hunting

Converting deer to dinner for

pennies per pound

Wm. Hovey Smith

Introduction

This book is about providing information on how to find, kill and ultimately eat deer and other game animals that live near your home. My objective is to explain how to put meat on your family’s table as inexpensively as possible. I used deer in the book’s title because whitetails are the most frequently seen big-game animals in North America. The information is also applicable to wild hogs, bears and other big-game species.

Although outdoor writing may appear to be a glamorous profession; it is more often an obsession, rather than a vocation. Writers are paid little, late, have their work as often rejected as accepted and may spend hundreds of hours producing materials that never see print. I have often fed my family on deer and other game shot a few hundred yards from my house. I have drawn on my experiences in feeding a family when my income was sharply reduced. You can do the same. This book is designed to take someone who has never hunted through every step required to kill, clean, process and cook big game.

I have done everything that is described in this book. I have salvaged thrown-away hunting clothes from a Dumpster, drug road-killed deer off the roadside and safely consumed them. I have used nearly every knife, gun and crossbow that I have described. Where expedient items can be used or adapted, I have recommended them. Although in some categories it is impossible, most of the products that I have recommended are American made. I have concentrated on the least-expensive really workable items of their types that are available.

This book is not about looking good, owning fancy gear, impressing anyone or putting trophy heads on the wall. This book is about killing deer, wild hogs, bears and other meats-on-the-hoof and eating them. Although born in Georgia, I have spent significant parts of my life in Arizona, Alaska and Minnesota and have commonly hunted elsewhere. These experiences have been used to provide much of the information in this book.

I have always felt that my books should consider topics that were not beaten to death by other authors. My two previous outdoor books, Practical Bowfishing (Stoeger, 2004) and Crossbow Hunting (Stackpole, 2006), have been noted for their complete treatment of the subject and the inclusion of information on game processing and cooking. Backyard Deer Hunting follows the same format.

You, the reader, will be frequently addressed in this book, and I will offer my best guidance on a given subject expressed in simple language. Does this mean that I know everything about everything? No. However, I have hunted all of my life, lived in many parts of the country and mostly eaten things that I shot. I almost never buy meat, but live off the deer, hogs, wildfowl and small game that I hunt. I have published 13 books and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. I have accumulated in some 67 years a great deal of knowledge that I am more than willing to share in as straight-forward a manner as possible.

Some photos in this book show big-game animals being killed and butchered. If you are going to kill and clean animals, you need to be prepared for the results. I will attempt get you ready to do these necessary tasks. I have seldom met people that I could not teach something to or learn something from. You should adopt the same attitude in using information from this book.

You can also learn from other hunters’ experiences to add to your store of practical knowledge. Grandpa or even Great Grandma may also have useful information about wild game from a time when much of the meat on the family’s table was killed by the same hands that served it. It is proper that this should be so. It does honor to the animal that gave its life and to the hunter who killed the animal to provide food for his family. This is a practical demonstration of the eternal cycle of life, death and renewal that is much more realistic than the plastic-wrapped packages of meat at the butcher counter.

Women can hunt too. Although hunting is often considered a “guy” thing, women can be as good hunter-providers as men. The typical stereotype is that men hunt and women cook, which is bullshit. I know, and have known, many women who were excellent shots and hunters and many men who were marvelous big-game cooks. In a family, it is most true that the person who kills something is the one who is also going to have to clean and cook it. When it can cost more than $150 to get a deer processed and you can do the same job with $15 worth of materials, it makes since to do as much of this as possible. Particularly, if you are out of work and have more time than money.

Teaching yourself to hunt is a productive activity that brings financial and psychological benefits. Although every hunt may not produce game, you are going to do it better next time, and hunting gets you out of the house. Financial hardship brings stress on families, and it is good to periodically step away from the noise of everyday life, enjoy nature and accept any gifts that might be offered.

There is no reason why your spouse and kids cannot participate. It often helps to have another pair of hands when processing meat or cooking. This provides the spirit that “we are all in this together.” Think about the life that your grandparents had. Everybody in the family did something to keep the family going. There was work about the house, in the garden, in the yard, with the livestock, in the kitchen and keeping the family in clean clothes. This was more about doing the job that needs to be done and not about “my job” or “your job.” I have lived alone most of my life, and with the death of my wife five years ago am alone again. Whatever gets done at my house, I do. If I can live by myself and maintain a reasonable lifestyle, that means that a family with more pairs of hands can, at the least, do equally well.

Some very practical reasons for consuming wild-game meat are: 1. It taste good. 2. It is free of antibiotics and other things that may be injected in commercially-prepared meats. 3. Wild game meat is naturally a low-fat product. 4. You know exactly how your meat has been treated and what went into it.

5. Removing excess game animals keeps the wildlife population healthy. 6. Animals taken from near-urban areas reduce deer-car collisions. 7. Hunting provides a psychological getaway while also providing outdoor exercise to relieve stress. 8. When done close to home, hunting provides low-cost, high-protein meals for better family nutrition.

The need for this book was recognized by many publishers once I presented the concept, but none felt that they could publish it rapidly enough to be available on by mid-summer of 2009. Fortunately, Author House, a print-on-demand publisher, provided a means to produce this book in time for it to reach the hands of those who needed it.

Thanks also go to fellow Georgia outdoor writer, author and friend, Jeff Samsel who edited the book. Samsel’s contribution was valuable because he is a fisherman who seldom hunts and could view this material as a perspective user, rather than as an expert advisor.

Wm. Hovey Smith

Whitehall

Sandersville, GA

February, 2009

Backyard deer hunting

hoveysmith — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:58:59 +0000

Backyard deer hunting: Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound is a new book designed to allow people who have never hunted or cooked wild game to take advantage of North America’s abundant game populations to feed their families. It has been a year-long struggle to get this book into print because many potential publishers could not see the need, felt that my one-book treatment of such a complex subject was impossible or that the millions of people who are likely to be unemployed this next hunting season would buy books.

At this moment, April 29, 2009, the book has been received by the publisher, and I am promised galley copies of the text and the cover in 15 days. This will permit the book to be published in June, which will be in time for the 2009-2010 hunting season.

It appears that the book will be about 230 pages, have 100 illustrations, 50 recipes, a supplier’s list and index. It will be available as both on-line and in soft-cover editions from Author House. As of this time a price has not been set.

I have written this book in an easy style, like talking to a favorite grandparient, and sprinkled it with many real-life events from my own experiences. My objective is making this book not only an an informational read, but also an enjoyable one.

In later postings, I will share some of the contents of the book and trace its progress towards release.

Wm. Hovey Smith

Backyard Deer Hunting

Go Where the Action Is

Backyard Deer Hunting available

Book Cover proof

Put some fish in your diet

Table of Contents

Backyard deer hunting