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Last fall he hunted out of state for a whitetail, it was a bucket list hunt for him and so he ended up getting the only deer he needed about a month prior to me getting mine the final weekend of the Minnesota firearms season. He came over and helped me process the buck, he is extremely proficient with a skinning and boning knife and more hands make faster work, particularly when he is about and very thankful to him on the cold November evening that it was.
We got the hide off, he asked what I was gonna do with it, I had no particular thing in mind for it, so I said if you want it, it’s yours, he says with my hide I’m tanning and this one, I’ll have just the right amount of leather. Help yourself. Off came the meat, all the silver skin removed and again he says you want this tallow, I said no its all yours. I was busy cutting up various chunks of meat, this for grinding, some steaks, the inner loins, the back straps all being tidied up and he was cutting what looked to me like little slices of tallow taffy. Maybe an inch thick, couple inches long and he ended up with a very large stack of it. He asks, “Do you have any extra newspaper, I said up stairs by the fireplace, he was back in a jiffy carefully wrapping the pieces in the paper, I asked what’s up. He says, oh you’ll see. And then next year you wont be so quick to give it away.
Last night, the temps dropped like any frustrating spring evening only he pulls in and says how about a little campfire tonight, I said sure, we pile stuff in the firepit, snow clumps all around, blackbirds whistling above tattered cattails, two bag chairs and out of his pocket came a small satchel and from it came a baseball sized pack of the tallow taffy, each piece gingerly unwrapped, strategically placed on the firewood, it didn’t do much at first, but once it started to melt, it sizzled, it smelled like grilling steaks which we were certainly not doing and eventually each chunk bursts into flames, to wit I mentioned, yer right, this fall, I’m keeping my tallow. We must have burned a pound of it, took the sting right out of spring, warm, sizzling and melty, and the aroma, he even left me a small sack, my kinda guy.
- The Trout Whisperer
