Kefta Kebabs (Photo by Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post)

This ought to go without saying, but to learn to hunt deer, you go to a place that has deer to hunt.

I wanted to learn. I’m a carnivore, but I don’t want my choices to wreak environmental havoc; by taking an overpopulated, methane-producing ruminant out of the system, you’re actually doing the planet a favor. Also, venison ragu.

Unfortunately, I live on Cape Cod, which has about 20,000 hunters and maybe seven deer. And not just any seven deer: seven Darwinian survivors with mad hunter-evasion skills. Hunting on the Cape makes you seriously doubt the deer-are-overpopulated proposition. When you’re sitting in a freezing deer blind, rapidly losing feeling in your toes, you expect to see a deer about as much as you expect to see a yeti.

It’s a long, cold lesson in what a deer doesn’t sound like. Squirrels, they don’t sound like deer. Wind doesn’t sound like deer. Sparrows don’t sound like deer. But, before you’ve heard an actual deer, they all sound like deer.

After three deerless seasons, I was ready to throw in the towel. But then my husband, Kevin, and I got the invitation that changed everything.

You see, we have this friend. A friend with a farm. Three hundred acres’ worth, some 60 miles outside the District, a place reputed to have a more promising deer-to-hunter ratio, and we were invited to hunt it.

It was worth a shot.

We showed up, Virginia hunting licenses in hand, the day before the season opened last November, to get a feel for the place. Our friend had given us very specific directions and warned that we should go slowly on his half-mile-long driveway. “There may be deer on it.”

Yeah, right. Deer on the driveway. Hanging with the yeti.

We turned into his driveway, and there must have been 20 of them.

We spent the afternoon walking the property, looking for deery spots. And we saw deer, or signs of deer, just about everywhere. Turns out, the farm is a 300-acre sardine can of deer. You could practically shoot at random and hit one.

Kevin and I each picked a field and set up makeshift blinds; his was a hay bale, mine was the truck bed. (Deer were used to seeing trucks around the place.) That evening, we sat in our spots to get a deer preview.

In my field, at first, there were no deer. A bit later, there were still no deer. And then, suddenly, there were deer. I didn’t hear them arrive; I just saw that a few brown-gray spots, suspiciously different from the brown-gray background, were moving. It was as though they had just seeped out of the woods. Once I was attuned to what a deer at dusk looks like, I saw that there were at least a dozen. Maybe two.

Kevin, in his field, saw even more than I did.

It was starting to seem possible that, finally, I would shoot my deer.

Although deer hunting was new to both of us, DIY food was not. In the five years since we left Manhattan for the wilds of Cape Cod, a move we made more or less by accident, we’ve raised – and slaughtered – our own turkeys, ducks and pigs; grown mushrooms, figs and garden-variety vegetables; and caught more fish than I can count. I’d never shot anything, but Kevin was an experienced bird hunter, and he gave me a shotgun for my 47th birthday. My one successful hunt with it taught me both that I don’t care for duck hunting and that eider ducks are borderline inedible. I wanted to take a deer not just because the deer need taking, but because you get a lot of food for the one life. Also, venison ragu.

The morning the season opened, pre-dawn, Kevin went to his hay bale and I climbed into the truck bed. At first light, I could just barely make out deer, but they kept their distance. There were at least six, maybe eight, but not the Mongol hordes of the evening before. I watched them, willing them to come closer. But as the sky brightened, they dispersed, and a mere 15 minutes after sunrise they were gone. It’s as if they knew. I decided to try something else.

The something else was another cleared area, upland of a little pond, bordered by some tall grass. I had barely settled in the grass, behind a pretty significant rock, when two small does came up the hill, right toward me. I was surprised that they didn’t seem to know I was there, and, almost without warning, the lead doe was a mere 10 yards away.

I pointed the gun. I had a shot. But it didn’t feel right. I hadn’t had time to find a position that felt solid, with my gun steady. I felt rushed and unready. I put the gun down. The does turned tail when I moved, and trotted down the hill.

It was, to date, the closest encounter with deer I’d had, and it surprised me that merely having one in my sights and thinking about shooting it was enough to set the adrenaline flowing.

I found a comfortable position and waited for my heart rate to go down. Once it did, I positioned my gun on the rock, with my scarf as a pad. There were a few deer in the distance, but they wandered into the woods. I sat alone, deerless, for probably 20 minutes. And then two small deer appeared on my left, moving toward me. They slowly came into range, stopping to graze, stopping to listen, then taking a few steps. After about 10 minutes, the closer of the two, a button buck, wasn’t more than 15 yards away, but he was facing me. I needed him to turn broadside. For a long time, he didn’t. I kept my gun trained and tried to breathe slowly and calmly.

Deer hunting, in my imagination, happened fast. You sat in your blind, the deer showed up, and you either had a shot or you didn’t. In real life, I had plenty of time. Time to aim, to think, to decide. When he turned, I was ready. I aimed for just behind his shoulder, a little below the center of the body. For the first time in my life, I took a shot at a deer.

I saw the red bloom on his side. The shot was, astonishingly, perfect.

Guns are funny that way. They fire where you aim them, particularly at short range. It’s very reassuring.

The little buck jumped and promptly ran into the woods, about 10 yards away, and I did what everyone tells you to do in that situation, which is, for a minute, nothing. Take a breath. Empty the gun. Let the adrenaline subside.

I had carefully noted where he ran into the woods, a skill I’ve honed during years of playing the kind of golf game in which things go into the woods all the time. What I dreaded – what every hunter dreads – was wounding an animal and not being able to track it. I dreaded it, but I didn’t think it was likely. I saw the shot, and although I knew precious little about deer hunting, I did know it was the kind of shot that kills.

The deer wasn’t more than 10 yards in, dead under a tree. It was very small. But it was a deer, and I had shot it. I had shot it carefully and well.

Although much of my career has been characterized by underachievement, there have been a handful of accomplishments I’ve been proud of. I’ve written a few useful things and even won an award or two. I can fillet a bluefish perfectly, make a world-class pecan pie and do 20 push-ups. It’s not a star-studded résumé, by any account, but there’s just enough to know what pride feels like.

This was an accomplishment of a different order. I took the deer to the local processor, and I felt a brainstem level of satisfaction, walking in with blood on my boots, my deer in the truck. Man, the hunter! Except, woman.

The feeling lasted until I did the math. My little buck yielded a mere 14 pounds of meat. Divide 14 by the greenhouse gases involved in driving a diesel F250 from Cape Cod to Virginia and back, and it comes to ecocide per pound.

I was counting on Kevin.

And, later that day, he also shot his first deer, a big, beautiful doe.

I was ready to take it to the processor and break out the champagne, but, oh no. “Processors are for sissies” were, I believe, his exact words. We could break down this deer ourselves.

I know my husband, and I knew that what he really wanted to do was try a little trick he’d found on the Internet. “We’ll hang the carcass from a tree,” he said, “and tie a rope around a rock that we slip under the hide at the back of the neck.” The fun part comes when you tie the other end of the rope to the truck, which you then use to peel the entire hide off the deer. “I saw it on video,” he said. “It works.”

And damned if it didn’t work, just like in the video. In fact, we now have our own video.

We quartered the deer and put the quarters in the cooler. Altogether, we drove home with about 70 pounds of meat, some of which was earmarked for our family Thanksgiving.

Corny as it is, I’m a believer in giving thanks at Thanksgiving, and I felt a visceral gratitude to the animals that were feeding our family. Irrational, I know; it’s not as if they volunteered. But I think we humans have a primordial imperative to feed people we love – we wouldn’t have survived as a species without it – and doing it with that particular venison ragu felt absurdly, involuntarily gratifying.

We gave thanks for each other, for deer, and for friends with farms.

—

Kefta Kebabs

4 to 6 servings

Herbs and spices play well together in this recipe, inspired by variations of spiced-ground-meat-on-a-stick in the Mediterranean and North Africa.

It is important that you use finely ground venison and that you knead the mixture well so the kebabs will stay on your skewers; a manual meat grinder or grinder attachment for your mixer is good to use. An instant-read thermometer is not necessary here, but we’ve provided the correct internal temperature in case you wish to use one.

These kebabs work best with flat metal skewers, but in a pinch, you can spear the ground meat with two parallel bamboo skewers instead. If using the latter, soak them in water for at least 30 minutes before using.

Serve with roasted or grilled vegetables, crusty bread or rice and tzatziki.

MAKE AHEAD: The spiced venison mixture needs to rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 day in advance.

Adapted from “Buck, Buck, Moose: Recipes and Techniques for Cooking Deer, Elk, Moose, Antelope and Other Antlered Things,” by Hank Shaw (H&H Books, 2016).

Ingredients

1 pound ground venison

1 small onion, grated or minced

2 tablespoons minced parsley

2 tablespoons finely chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained (optional)

2 teaspoons dried mint

1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

Steps

Combine the venison, onion, parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, if using, dried mint, cayenne pepper (to taste). cumin, salt, black pepper and coriander in a mixing bowl, using your clean hands to thoroughly incorporate. If you can, run the mixture through a meat grinder. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (and up to 1 day).

Prepare a grill for direct heat. If using a gas grill, preheat to medium-high (450 degrees). If using a charcoal grill, light the charcoal or wood briquettes; when the briquettes are ready, distribute them under the cooking area for direct heat. For a medium-hot fire, you should be able to hold your hand about 6 inches above the coals for about 4 or 5 seconds. Have ready a spray water bottle for taming any flames. Lightly coat the grill rack with oil and place it on the grill.

Alternatively, heat a grill pan over medium-high heat.

Form the meat on the skewers in 2-to-3-inch oblong lengths (about 1 1/2 inches wide) so the portions just touch each other on the skewers. Grill for 4 to 6 minutes, turning them as needed, so there’s some even charring all over; the interior of the meat should register 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer.

Serve warm.

Nutrition

Per serving (based on 6): 100 calories, 17 g protein, 2 g carbohydrates, 2 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 15 mg cholesterol, 190 mg sodium, 0 g dietary fiber, 0 g sugar

—

Haspel writes about food and science and farms oysters on Cape Cod.

Author Information:

Tamar Haspel writes Unearthed, a monthly commentary in pursuit of a more constructive conversation on divisive food-policy issues. She farms oysters on Cape Cod.

 

(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Tamar Haspel