Missouri’s opening weekend of deer season was warm but ended with cool venison in the freezer! Watch as the Team hits the woods and punches the first tag for the season! Plus, the GrowingDeer Prostaffers have been watching several big bucks that they hope to be hunting soon!
Grant recently spoke to a Kentucky FFA chapter about soil, forestry, wildlife and everything in between! Listen to what Grant shared with these future leaders!
Whether you own land or not, you can utilize many acres of public land for hunting!! Intern Wes Mason shares how public land can help all hunters enjoy the pursuit of whitetails!
Your “everyday” home clothes dryer produces a lot of scent. Drying your hunting clothes outside is a great way to reduce scent and prepare your gear for storage and use.
2 pounds sliced venison
4 tablespoons butter
½ onion, sliced
½ cup yellow mustard
½ cup brown sugar, packed
½ cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
Dash of red pepper
Salt, to taste
Hamburger buns
Directions:
Cook the onion in butter until soft.
Add the yellow mustard, brown sugar, cider vinegar, dry mustard, red pepper and salt.
Simmer until the brown sugar is dissolved.
Put sliced venison in slow cooker.
Pour sauce over venison.
Cook on low for 8 hours.
Serve venison on hamburger buns with toppings of your choice.
This post was originally shared on the GrowingDeer Facebook page. Click this link to read the original post and comments.
If you’re like me, you spend all year waiting until the temperature cools and leaves begin to drop, itching to get into a tree stand. I’ve been interning for a little over a month and one thought comes to my head daily, “Man! I wish I was lucky enough to have my own Proving Grounds.” I’m sure many others have the same thought when watching GrowingDeer and seeing their success. The good news is that you do have your own Proving Grounds – roughly 640 million acres of it.
Most people do not realize that we are the only country in the world with this unique system of public lands that is available to everyone and most of it is open to hunting. A quick search on your state’s game and fish or natural resources website will yield all of the public lands accessible to you, both state and federal. Most have specific details about each area – maps, regulations, harvest data, etc.
Don’t forget about preparation! Just because you don’t have your own piece of hunting property doesn’t mean you can sit around all year waiting for the season. You don’t have to dedicate your time to planting food plots, putting out trail cameras, hanging tree stands, and all of the other activities that come with having your own property but you still need to use your time wisely! This means scouting, scouting, scouting.
Two of the details I mentioned earlier are the biggest components for scouting public land and you don’t even have to get off your couch. Maps and harvest data for specific locations can give you a great head start on your plan for the fall. Identifying map features such as pinch points and travel corridors for deer can save you time before you scout in the field. Looking at previous year’s harvest data will show you how much pressure will be in the area. Deer dislike pressured areas so if you’re willing to hike further than the next person, you’re one step closer to a public land bruiser.
After learning how our public lands came to be, it makes the thought of harvesting an animal on them that much more appealing. Thanks to people like Teddy Roosevelt who had great foresight to set aside lands for the American people, I’ll be trying my hand at a public land buck this fall.
1 lb. bacon
2 lbs. venison tenderloin
1 – 2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
Kosher salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
8 oz. sliced white mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Place bacon on a slotted baking pan.
Bake bacon in the preheated oven until halfway cooked, about 10 minutes.
Set bacon aside.
Brush venison with olive oil and then season with onion powder, salt, and pepper.
Place tenderloins into a roasting pan.
Cook venison tenderloin for about 1 hour until almost done (145 degrees).
Add bacon to top of venison and put back in oven for 15 – 20 minutes or until venison is done (160 degrees) and bacon is crisp.
Start the cream sauce by sautéing mushrooms in butter until soft.
Add garlic to mushroom and butter and sauté for another 1 – 2 minutes.
Add cream and simmer until sauce is heated throughout.
Serve sauce with tenderloins.
This post was originally shared on the GrowingDeer Facebook page. Click this link to read the original post and comments.
The original recipe, Bacon-Wrapped Venison Tenderloin with Garlic Cream Sauce, can be found here.
Join the GrowingDeer Team as they kick off their 2017 deer season in Kentucky. Arrows fly and venison hits the freezer! While on their trip, Grant speaks to a local FFA chapter about soil health, agricultural practices and forestry. Grant and the Team then travel to Nashville, Tennessee to help a landowner and his daughter develop their Proving Grounds!
You do not have to be a hunter to enjoy venison. This recipe is proof! Several members of my family do not hunt yet they all enjoy a good meatloaf. In fact, this recipe is my father Larry’s favorite.
Keep in mind recipes are just suggestions. This will work with your favorite meatloaf recipe. I would recommend you use part venison and part ground chuck. The ground chuck has more fat in it and keeps the venison moist. I shape these into mini-meatloaves because they cook in 30 minutes, quick enough for a workday supper.
With a new food plot created and planted, the GrowingDeer Team sets out to find the best tree to hang a Summit Stand! See how we select a hunting location to approach, hunt and exit without alerting deer. In addition, Grant shares one of his favorite food plot techniques to ensure that deer have quality forage during both the warm and cool days!
The color of a deer’s coat during the early season can help hunters select stand sites. Read this week’s blog to find out why knowing the daily temperatures and a deer’s coat color could help you become a more successful hunter this season!
Your hands are often the most exposed. If you don’t wear gloves, black face paint is a great alternative to help break up the color and make movement harder to detect.
Many deer hunters are now busy scouting for deer season. When you’re scouting you should not only pay attention to where the deer are, but what they look like. Specifically, what does their coat look like? Pay attention to those trail camera images. Do they reveal deer that suddenly have spots of red and brown hair? Do the coats of these deer appear shaggy and unhealthy? This small detail can yield big dividends when planning where to hang your next stand. Read on to understand why.
White-tailed deer appear this way because deer molt or shed their hair twice a year. This time of year the short reddish hair falls out and is replaced by longer gray hair. The short reddish hair was their summer coat. The reddish or lighter color hair reflects the sun’s energy compared to the darker winter hair which absorbs the sun’s energy in the form of heat.
During the spring the opposite is true. During late March (typically, depending on location) deer shed the darker gray, longer hair and replace it with the thinner, shorter reddish hair. The timing of molting seems to be trigged by factors other than current conditions.
This information can be used by hunters to pick stand locations during the early season. For example, let’s assume deer where you hunt have already started getting their winter coat and the temperatures are still warm or warmer than normal. Deer won’t move much during daylight hours and will bed in areas where they can stay cool during these conditions. This means deer will likely bed on north facing slopes or in shady areas where there’s a breeze. They probably won’t move much during the heat of the day and will typically arrive at food sources just at dark or later.
You can use this information to select stand sites based on the deer’s coat color and daily temperatures in your area. Understanding this simple biology can make you a more successful hunter!
Let us know what you are seeing by posting on our Facebook page! It’s a great way to get into conversation with other deer hunters.
Grant shares tricks for aging bucks in the field as we develop the 2017 hit list. Also, follow the team as they help landowners in Oklahoma and central Missouri improve the food plots and habitat on their properties. Gene Price from Trophy Rock stops by with a great new technique to improve food plots and make quality minerals available to a deer herd in any state.
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