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Deer are regularly hunted across the United States, but some people pay exorbitant prices for imported deer meat:
Wintertime is a special time of year at Cafe Berlin, located just a few blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. This is when they roll out their menu of wild game, such as deer, wild boar, and quail. Regular customers have come to expect it. "They ask, weeks in advance, 'When does the wild game menu start? When does it start?'" says James Watson, one of the restaurant's chefs. And the star of that menu is venison. The restaurant serves venison ribs, venison loin, even venison tartar. It's food that takes your mind back to old European castles, where you can imagine eating like aristocracy.
You won't see venison in ordinary supermarkets. At Wagshall's, a specialty food shop in Washington, I found venison loin selling for $40 a pound. This venison comes from farms, usually from a species of very large deer called red deer. Much of it is imported from New Zealand.
Yet there's a very different side to this luxury meat. Less than two hours drive from Washington, Daniel Crigler has a whole freezer full of venison that he got for free. Crigler's home in central Virginia is surrounded by woodlands full of white-tail deer. For Crigler, they are venison on the hoof. And he loves hunting. "I love the outdoors. I love being out. But I also like to eat the meat," he says, chuckling. It's pretty much the only red meat he eats. And as he shows off the frozen cuts of venison in his freezer, this crusty man reveals his inner epicurean. "That's a whole loin, right there," he says. "What I like to do with that is split it open, fill it full of blue cheese, wrap it up in tin foil and put it on the grill for about an hour and a half."
And here's the odd thing about this meat, so scarce and expensive in big cities; so abundant if you're a hunter in Madison County, Virginia. Hunters like Crigler kill millions of deer every year in America, but the meat from those animals can't be sold: It hasn't been officially approved by meat inspectors. Also, the government doesn't want hunters to make money from poaching. Yet hunters are allowed to give it away, and many do. As a result, venison occupies a paradoxical place in the world of food. It's a luxury food that turns up in notably non-luxurious places.
Related: Arby's is Selling Venison Sandwiches in Six Deer-Hunting States
Deer in Multiple U.S. States Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease, Leading to Restrictions
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:28PM (8 children)
Oh, don't kid yourself... did you buy a different/uprated vehicle to go hunting in? Even if not, what are you spending in fuel, maintenance, and depreciation for the trip out to the hunting site? Do you hunt in street clothes? Not even special boots?
The trip to get to the fish is what makes offshore caught so expensive, in real terms. Especially if you consider the boat to be purchased for the purpose...
That butcher was in Seabrook, stone's throw from NASA, hell and gone from deer hunting country and one of the more gentrified neighborhoods of South-East Houston. I'm sure there were better deals out there, this one just happened to be 3 blocks from our house.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:25PM (7 children)
The only special hunting cloths I own is a $10 blaze orange sweatshirt, the $15 blaze orange hunting mittens, and a $3 blaze orange stocking cap. The fact that those things seem to last at least10 years before they need to be replaced basically means their cost is $0 per lb of deer meat. The rest is just the regular warm weather gear one needs when living in Minnesota and hunting boots are way warmer than most regular winter boots, have better traction than most winter boots, cost the same as a good pair of regular winter boots, and seem to last just as long. I don't own a special vehicle for hunting, just my sedan and the looks one gets when you have a trailer with a deer on top of it being towed by a BMW sedan (may daily drive) are priceless. Fuel is cheap at about $30 round trip, but I am frequently up at my lake property throughout the year so it isn't a special trip, I just ensure that my trip up there in November happens to coincide with deer hunting. I am up there at least once a month to check on things, enjoy the property, camp, cut and split wood, etc. so I just ensure that the November trip lines up with deer hunting. I might actually care about depreciation but when I get rid of a vehicle it no longer runs and I get $150-$300 from the junk yard and they pick it up so it that doesn't matter. Besides when you drive a vehicle with well over 200,000 miles on it depreciation doesn't really matter to begin with. Even ignoring that how much additional maintenance is needed and how much depreciation is 250 miles actually? Unless it is the very first 250 miles off the dealer lot it isn't much.
Hunting doesn't have to be expensive it is just that lots of people choose to make it expensive. Even the gear I carry in my backpack isn't specific to hunting, well the disposable game cleaning gloves are but those you can get for $1 for 4 pairs.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:59PM (6 children)
I do wish we could get to our camp in central Florida more easily, it's a 3-4 hour drive for us.
Don't kid yourself, that 250 miles, especially pulling a trailer, likely amounts to ~$120 in total costs, between fuel, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation. If your BMW was $20K and you're getting 160K miles out of it before you sell it for $4K, that's still 0.10/mile in average depreciation. Throw in 16 oil changes, 3 sets of tires, a few brake services, coolant changes, basic timing belt, water pump, alternator, and maybe not in Minnesota but A/C service, and that's another 0.05/mile even if you do the work yourself. Presumably you also pay for insurance - which gets up-charged if you're driving more than 6000 miles per year, a difference of $125 per year for 8 years is another $1K cost against those 160K miles...
All in all, you're in a good place and getting good value for your hunter's meat... but I'd wager you're rarer than 1%, even among just the US hunter population - especially if you throw fishermen, and posers who get the gear but never really harvest anything into that mix.
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(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:27PM (4 children)
There are other aspects of hunting that can't be reduced to a dollar figure. I'm not hunting or fishing to save money -- the moorage for my boat is $250/month which would buy more crabs than I eat in a whole year -- but the ones I catch taste better (no BS, I think the commercial ones sit in tanks too long starving and consuming their fat reserves till they taste bland whereas the ones I catch and eat five or six hours later go into the pot with all that goodness intact).
Personally, I started hunting two years ago because I wanted to be responsible for the entire process of eating meat -- it had been more than 10 years that I hadn't eaten any mammals for ethical reasons. When I decided to eat mammal again, I figured I should completely understand the full meaning of what eating meat entails. I'm glad I did that way. I don't eat much mammal, but when I do, I do it with full consciousness of what it means.
And lastly, if we do have to reduce everything to dollars, hunting made me a good poker player. Since hunting season ended at the end of October, I've won over $2000. Hunting made me much more patient and that has carried over into my play. Previously, I'd probably average a small loss playing poker but I'm cashing in about 75% of the small tournaments I'm playing in now (even with lousy card streaks), and consistently winning in cash games, or losing small when I lose. Hunting made me patient.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:55PM (2 children)
Someone further up the thread already mentioned that prey animal's diet affects the taste. The most detestable commercially raised meat animal has to be rabbit. I had eaten rabbit most of my life, off an on, with the seasons. After joining the Navy, we had rabbit on the menu one day. I waited in line, got my tray full of goodies, sat down, bit into some soapy tasting, overly tender stuff, and spit it out. Commercial rabbit never eats grass, or whatever other shrubbery they might find available. Instead they eat those little pellets of Gods-know-what with speckles of stuff that kinda look like corn, darker speckles that might be sugar cane, and many other speckles that no one can identify.
Commercially raised catfish don't quite taste the same as wild catfish, but at least they don't taste like soap.
Turkey? Mmmmm - depends on how they were raised. SOME commercial turkey tastes pretty good. Others, not so much.
All ruminants have the best flavor if they are grass fed. Or, if fed grain, they should only get about as much grain as they would have found in nature - which is very, very little over their lifetime. Sheep, especially, fetch a higher price if they are grass fed.
Your crabs may or may not taste odd because of diet. Or, maybe you nailed it, with not being fed for their final days.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:11PM
The commercial crabs are wild caught but they can end up in a tank for a very long time if you go buy them live. Otherwise they are cooked, frozen, and packaged but it is literally impossible to preserve crab well. It's either fresh or no-way, at least for me.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:28PM
As far as I'm concerned, farm raised fish taste like mud - especially tilapia. Ever been to a fish farm? It's not mud, exactly, that they live in, more like a broth of 60% water, 10% mud, 10% algae, and 20% fish poop.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:25PM
Yep, after sitting 20' up on an uncomfortable perch in freezing temperatures for 8 hours, most anything else is fast-paced.
We do the same for the fish we catch, would be boating anyway, but the fish are fresher and much better tasting than market bought. Plus, we mostly fish inshore, so we catch smaller, younger fish with much less toxin concentrated in them.
And, we've never taken an animal from our camping land - we lease the land to beekeepers who have had the right to hunt for the last 3 years, and unless they're lying to me, they've yet to take one, either. We've seen a huge doe many times since they've had the lease, our beekeeper told me "we don't take the girls..." seems truthful enough with the big one being as visible as she is.
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(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:40PM
Bought the car for under $10K. I have already put over 130,000mi on it in the 4.5 years I have owned it (I have a long commute), and got it with 80,000 miles on it. I plan to hopefully keep the car until it has 500,000 miles or more on it, and I don't sell off vehicles that are derivable, only sell them off to the scrap yard because they are so worn out and broken that they aren't worth fixing and no longer run.
Given that I have a long commute and regularly put on close to 30,000 miles a year on that car the little additional driving doesn't increase the insurance cost.
BMWs don't have timing belts they have chains that are lifetime, unless you really do something dumb, so that big expense is removed.
They do have weak factory water pumps that tend to fail at about 140,000 miles but for about 1/3 of the price of the OEM one you can stick a much better stewart pump in them that are a lifetime pump which I did and that was before I acquired my lake property.
Brakes on that car seem to last closer to 150,000 miles as it is a manual and unlike so many I actually know how to drive stick correctly (I can even drive a non-synchro manual without issue as well). Also as it is all highway except for the first mile and last 2 so the brakes don't get any real use heading up there and back over that 250mi round trip.
Being a manual also means that the huge area for failure has been eliminated which is the automatic transmission, especially when towing which murders automatics.
Even if I didn't own the lake property and go hunting I would still be doing things like changing the coolant every 2 years, changing the brake fluid every 2 years, changing the oil in the diff every year, changing the oil in the manual gear box every year so costs don't change. Granted the additional trips up there over a year do require another oil change but a filter is $8 for that car and I buy oil in bulk when it goes on sale so even with 7 quarts of a good synthetic that is only another $40 for the oil. AC service isn't difficult either and a can of R-134a can be had for about $7 here and even then my experience is that lack of use is what causes issues more than usage.
Suspension and tires are the only things that really do experience additional wear but the suspension gets more damage from the crappy pot-holed streets in the winter than by trailering. For tires I seem to go through them at a rate of a set a year as I like to go into winter with a good amount of tread instead of just serviceable tread to squeeze that last 5,000 mi out of them.
I even put a K&N filter in it not for the very slight increase in performance but because over the long term that lowers the costs as it is washable and reusable.
I try to be really smart with my money and vehicles as I grew up poor so I got to learn how to fix things, take care of things, and spot good deals.
There is the correct gear and then there is what people think they need which is a shit ton of other stuff for hunting. A good gun, some ammo, the correct amount of blaze orange, warm cloths, a good pair of warm boots, a flash light, compass, map of the area, a box of waterproof matches, a lighter, small first-aid kit, a smaller pocket knife, a large knife or hatchet, some rope, and a backpack are all that is needed when you are out. I do have a hanging stand I bought years ago at a pawn shop for $30 and that included 4 climbing sticks but that isn't necessary but is nice as it gets you up out of the line of sight of the deer and gets your stink up away from them as well. I don't have special camo cloths and don't buy into the fancy gear like game cams, call, rattles, scents, scent killer, etc. I find if you know an area, learn about deer, and learn how to spot their signs you don't need all that other stuff. Look for scrapes, rubs, food sources, water sources, understand the topology, changes in cover, scat, prints etc. as it makes up for lack of gear when out hunting.
Then there is the challenge and fun of the hunt. After a day of hunting back at camp you can sit and shoot the breeze with your buddies.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone