Ben's semi-live 2024 hunt thread

[TheBenHoyle]

I finally got around to grinding up my trimming from the buck I shot last season. I made 8 pounds of Italian sausage and 25 pounds of ground venison and got it all vac sealed. I fried up some of the Italian sausage and put it on my pizza last night. I was very happy with how it turned out.

Then I discovered I had another 4-ish pounds of ground venison that needs a second grind in a big bowl in the fridge. I think I'm going to season it up and make breakfast sausage patties.

This was my first opportunity to use the LEM grinder I bought in the fall. I had been using a little grinder attached to my Kitchen-Aid. This is such a big upgrade. I did have a little bit of trouble with things jamming up on the first grind. But it was relatively easy to pull it apart and clear it.

Anyway, I'm getting a lot of practice in with my bow. Feeling good out to 40 yards I shot 50 once and it was pretty good, but I don't think I would want to shoot an animal that far out. I'm just trying to be confident in shooting longer ranges since I don't know that sneaking in to 20 or fewer yards is realistic in a Hawaii sheep hunt.

 

[TheBenHoyle]

I was able to make up 26 breakfast sausage patties with the rest of that ground venison. I froze them individually so I can just pull out one or two at a time.

I totally forgot to put in garlic per the recipe, but I was really happy with the flavor anyway.

It is funny that when I first got into hunting I daydreamed about having all this meat to process and I was unsuccessful in killing a deer for like 3 years and by the time I finally had deer meat to process I forgot about all the sausages I wanted to try making. Over the past couple years I have slowly gotten back into the idea of processing meat.

I do have 25 pounds of ground venison and I might circle back to it to make up some summer sausage or something later this summer. But for right now I am done with meat processing for a little while.