Country Focus: Deer Hunting, Unofficial State Holiday

It’s an unofficial state holiday today. Opening day of deer season in North Dakota. Days of anticipation, planning and scouting to find the perfect spot to fill your tag. I’m not a hunter, however, I do enjoy eating deer sausage.

My dad hunts. He doesn’t walk shelter belts anymore. He said he’s too old for that, so he uses a stand in the CRP. Uncle Rudy would bring a few friends and his son from Fargo to hunt on our land when I was a kid. The one guy always brought Dad a bottle of Blackberry

Schnapps as a thank you gift. Dad doesn’t drink that stuff so he would take it to the Napoleon Livestock sale barn and give the bottle to the guys unloading the cattle trailers. Dad rarely had to wait to get his trailer unloaded. One year, Uncle Rudy’s gun went off in the cab and shot a hole through the floorboard of Dad’s Chevy Scottsdale pickup. That pickup never did run quite right after that.

My husband also enjoys deer hunting. His signature shot is taking out the hind end. Last time he had a tag, we took the deer in for processing and added cheese to the sausage. I picked up the meat and looked at the dollar amount on the receipt. “What the?!!” Oh, wait..He didn’t shoot out a hind quarter this year, so we had way more meat than normal. When we were first dating, Tom helped make deer sausage at a friend’s

place near Wahpeton. I tagged along to help debone. I called Dad to tell him since I had never done that before. Dad’s reply, “They let you have a knife?” Yes, they did Dad, thank you very much.

Good luck to all the hunters this year and be safe.