Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What Is It About 300 Pound Deer?

I give up a big AMEN to that MD. It took me over 30 years to kill anything over 180", partly because my stomach took control over what little brain I have.

JB: I'll tell ya,and you've said it in articles before and I remember it,but these BIG bucks,killed before the rut,eat like butter.
That hog I killed in Alberta was fabulous and we ate him down to the toes.Merlin, my Alberta outfitter,is a butcher by trade,and he "chunked" him for me,like into roasts instead of steaks.

So what I do is marinade the roasts in the refer for 5-6 days,and then put one on the grill.I have non-hunting friends who come over when I do this and they want to know when we can do it again.....so I gently but firmly tell them to get a rifle and go get their own

Merlin says I am one of very few hunters who goes to the trouble of getting my meat back from Alberta;but I would no more think of leaving it than I would using someone else's rifle to kill one

Bob, thats pretty much what Ive been doing as well, cut 'em into roasts and marinate- though I usually inject them to speed up the process. Sear on the grill, put the lid on and change the position every ten minutes or so...cut into steaks....MUCH juicier and more tender than pre-cut steaks!
And in my experience, mule deer need to be kinda hand picked to be really good, but Ive never had bad whitetail, 55 pound fawn or 300 pounders in the rut, whitetail is ALWAYS good!
Ingwe

My stomach takes control more often than not these days, especially when I have a fistful of Whitetail Doe tags...
I'm getting too old and fat to run the ridges, I have all the horns I can eat, and those haystack deer with pudgy bodies look better every year!
Ingwe

Hey Ingwe and Bobin..I too marinate for a few days. Care to share your secret marinade recipe? Mine is the plain old zesty italian dressing.

Ingwe, you need to go visit my parents.
Bring some earplugs though, it gets kinda loud shootin' out the kitchen window towards the silage pit.....(grin)

Ingwe:I've been lucky with mule deer and they have been generally good.But yes the whitetail seem to do better in the rut than the mule deer. The one I killed in late November (posted here somewhere)ate great,and at -25 degrees he had no chance to spoil!

The roasts ARE better IMO,and I don't "steak" them anymore.

I picked out a fat 4x4 in Alberta the last day to take home last year,and I missed downhill through the tree tops,so came home with no meat.....

JG: That works about as good as anything, and mine is nothing exotic or fancy. I defrost,hand dry the roast,and use an olive oil with either balsamic or red wine vinegar(sometimes I add a splash of red wine that falls outta my glass).

Sprinkle generously with salt,pepper,some Italian seasoning,and crushed up garlic cloves(fresh,always).I hand rub all this stuff on to the roast and stick in a glass dish, covered with cling wrap.Every 24 hours I flip it over,and spread the marinade.

Only CLOSE friends are allowed to partake.As the roasts near readiness,high security measures are required.More than once I have returned home to discover my son sitting,burping contentedly,and with a guilty expression,exclaims..."Gee Dad, that venison roast was REALLY good".... kids.....

Earplugs no problemo...
How many tags can I get at their place? and can we arrange to "grain" 'em about a month ahead of time?
Ingwe

My fave is " Mr. Yoshidas" Sauce a teriyaki thing you can get at Costco...simple, easy, and good...kinda like me!
OK...OK... two out of three???
Ingwe

Bob & others: I appreciate the kind words. That lunker is by far the largest in body size that I've ever taken.

And what Ingwe said is right: If you take your pics to a Kodak kiosk, for GOD'S SAKE DON'T use the Kodak disk. He is absolutely correct that the associated software is a royal PITA!

And I really like what Mule Deer said about processing the deer in chunks. I did that to this past season's buck (240lb 10pt whitetail). Have really enjoyed the roasts and have tried a couple of his better half's recipes. MMMMMmmmmmMMMMM!!! Even MY wife liked it. Getting ready to do some in the smoker.

BTW: As a matter of scale in the lunker pics I posted, the truck that my buck was in was an '01 F250 Super Duty. Big truck and big deer. Here's another with my German Shep, Bo in it. He was really stout built and around 95 lbs in that pic, and you can see how the buck dwarfed him.

Skeezix; thanks for latest pic for perspective. I would have like to seen you standing next to that deer in the pic of him hanging...Anyway, Ive shot alot of them that looked like that, but they were lying in the bed of a Nissan pickup!!!
And my dog is an Australian Shepherd ( about 50 lbs) !
Ingwe

Gotta agree with that! Thanks. That one drew a belly laugh out of me and that's a good feeling.

Ditto as well to chunking meat in quality roasts that can be steaked easily. I started experimenting with that a couple of years ago and did quite a bit of a moose that way last Fall. Lately I've been powder coating them with Rudy's Rub just before I start cooking them, a dry mix I got from a barbeque place in San Antonio. When I'm alone, I cook them in a skillet and start slicing steaks off the end of the roast as soon as they are seared and cooked a quarter inch deep or so. I'll flop the rare side down for a few seconds and go at it. Hoooeee... I gotta go fix some of that.

A double handful of mushrooms in the skillet don't hurt things a bit.

It's all about ego....pure and simple.

Much bigger animals than 300 pounds are killed handily with the .30-06 and less every year.....and not just a few.....a helluva lot of em.

Bob, here's a me too story, brought to my mind as I read your account of the big buck that dwarfed the others.

Two Decembers ago was the last time I saw one of the monster size mule deer. It was a migration route in timber with occasional clearcut. Grey dawn; trees, brush and deer were black silhouttes against the snow. Glassing through peekaboo gaps in timber I spotted a nice average 3 year old with at least three and probably a 4x4 rack. I moved to get a better look and saw two more larger bucks sparring near him in a ragged clearcut. All three bucks had swollen necks, blocky bodies and the two larger ones were heavy and deep. I started an approach stalk.

Then I saw a buck that simply dwarfed the others, standing apart a little from them. I would not have realized how big he was had the other bucks not been there for comparison. Massive deep and long body and huge neck against the snow, with his head against a black timber background hiding all but the faintest whiff of antlers when he moved. I never got a look at his rack.

Crunchy snow did me in on my approach. The other three bucks bolted, but he smoothly stepped behind brush and slipped away into the timber. I'm still thinking about that buck, and will be there again this Dec. as I was last year.

Okanagan: I hope you find him! Yes a really big one like that,once seen,is very hard to forget.They are so much larger than an average "big" deer that my first reaction is always ..."What is THAT"; I know it's a mule deer,but mysense are not ready to accept it.You are in BC correct? I have seen some pictures of absolute brutes from BC.

My feeble advise(not that you need it is that when I see a buck like that from now on,I am not going to waste any time sizing up racks. It has got me into too much trouble,and I can think of two massive bucks within the last few years that I should have just killed instead of trying to size them up....BIG mistake....reading too much of this B&C stuff.A buck that big and old is a trophy regardless of his head gear.

And I've found you had better kill him pretty quick once you see him,because they have a wraith-like ability to just melt off undetected.

I truly hope he is still around for you come the fall.....


And the steaks/roast sound great prepared like that!

+ 1 on a big old buck like that being a trophy no matter what his headgear. This is in central BC and most of the bucks don't have antlers to compare with Colorado and Arizona deer.

He may be gone but he will have left some genetics. I have racks from three mega bodied bucks taken in that area, up to seven years apart, and they all have the same antler frame configuration. All but one have an odd point in the same spot, plus a couple more smaller bucks with that genetic marker.

With the blitzkrieg clearcutting of recent years due to pine bugs, mule deer population is rapidly growing in that part of BC. At least one forester I know, and I, believe that the bugs are doing what unsuppressed fire accomplished in centuries past. There aren't many high scoring bucks there but with the increase in numbers and feed quality, I predict that an increased number of B&C bucks will come out of that region within the next three to seven years. That still won't be many record book bucks.

Alberta is a better bet for mega body bucks, and they have bigger antlers as well. And it is usually at least a little more open to see them and hunt them.

I found another pict last night of the "round mound" from Manitoba.

Good Lord...

That's probably 130"+ of horns on 350lbs of whitetail.....unbelievable.