The Catchatarian™ Cookbook & Lifestyle

Annie’s first deer hunt, October 2007

Let me start by saying I have been traipsing around the woods of Colorado, Elk hunting for 6 years now. I DO NOT have one in the bag. I have smelled, spooked, tracked and pushed them, but have not killed an Elk – YET! But I did get a deer, and here’s the story.

My husband Barney and I spotted a group of deer across a meadow and decided we could move in on them. We pushed them a bit as we tried to “sneak” (they were fully aware of us, just didn’t care that much – deer are very curious. Clue. Curious = Dumb) across the snow covered meadow. The deer stopped about 50 yards away, there was a fence post to rest my gun and everything was looking good. Let me remind you that I had hunted but never shot a big game animal. I was VERY nervous and filled with adrenaline! I steadied the gun on the fence post. I looked through the scope and put the crosshairs through the kill zone. I was ready! I pulled the trigger. CLICK.

I looked at my husband, he forgot to put a bullet in the chamber! Yes yes, I know what you are thinking. Why didn’t I KNOW that there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber? Because! I am a girl, and it is freezing out, and I am billowing through snowdrifts and swamps, climbing over fallen trees…. The least the guy can do is load my rifle (well he can carry it for me sometimes too). So he did, he had loaded my gun back at the truck, but apparently he had forgotten to pop one in the chamber.

What ensued next was a “discussion” between husband and wife. Clue. Discussion = Fight. Deer were running away and I was standing there frazzled! We got it together and moved on. Deer luckily don’t tend to move too far before they get “curious” again. We set up again. Fencepost, crosshairs, deer 100 yards ahead broadside– pulled the trigger, and dropped her! This time around things went right. We got to the animal and she was dead. We proceeded to skin and gut the animal. We removed the heart and liver. It is very intense to hold an animal’s heart in your hand right after you kill it. It’s a far cry from what this girl from suburbia ever thought she would be up to. This is always a good time to give thanks to the animal for sacrificing their life for your food, a practice we always like to include. This really does make you think how FAR removed most people in the US are from knowing where there food comes from. FYI- I keep the heart for soups and stuffing. I use the liver to make a liver parmesan – I know how it sounds but it’s really good! The End.

Sept. 1, 2009, Grouse hunting, Lenado.

Barney and I went hunting in Lenado. (Few things for the audience – I am a much newer person to the ol’ hunting game than my husband. When I started I told his friends to treat me as though I was their 13 year old younger sister, tagging along, now that I am much more accomplished (ha!), I might be 16 if I’m lucky.) Also you should note, that since we are “food” hunters and not “sport” hunters, we shoot grouse that are on the ground and in trees – and still miss sometimes, but the point being that I get REALLY excited if I shoot them in the air! I sometimes actually jump up and down.

Back to Lenado…. My husband Barney and I were road hunting (we do this intermittently with walking hunts) we spotted a couple of grouse heads bobbing along in a field. We park and walk into the field without the dog. We see that there are a group of at least 3 grouse. I shoot at one on the ground – miss. Spook them, they fly. Barney misses. I miss (Yes there is a whole lot of missing going on). And then to my amazement I get a second shot off – thus being 16 and not 13 anymore, I sometimes get a 2nd shot off! – and I drop it from about 40 yards! Barney says, “Well that wasn’t very impressive”. I say, “What do you mean? I got one!!!” He says, “What? WELL GO AFTER IT!” – birds tend to run when not hit well enough! Not this one though, I found it lying where I shot.

Birds: Annie – 1, Barney – 0 (First time for everything)

So we are on our merry way. We stop for a walking hunt. A funny thing about hunting, you are walking, looking for birds/animals, so why is it every time you see one or flush one you are spooked and startled? Well this was the case as usual when our dog, Max, flushed our next group of grouse. They started going up in all directions and we were shootin’ up a storm. It was over and Barney said, “Well that wasn’t very impressive.” I said, shockingly “I got one!” He said, “NO WAY! WELL GO GET IT!” Max did the job for me and found my bird.

Birds: Annie – 2, Barney – 0 (Should I even comment? I RULE!)

End of story, Barney shot one, blah blah blah. It was my first ever getting more than him and 2 in the air!!!!! Something I did figure out that day. I started using high brass #6 loads as my shotgun shells. I use a twenty gauge, yes I am a girly wimp and the 12 gauge gets a little cumbersome for me. Barney had me using quail loads – #7.5. I think he was trying to sabotage my game! Well needless to say I smartened up and showed him. The End.

I know, there’s a reason they call it hunting and fishing, as opposed to killing and catching. And I certainly wouldn’t expect to come home with my limit every day. But sometimes I feel like Forrest Gump before the hurricane hit when he said, “Shrimping is TOUGH.” Well, grouse hunting is tough too.

Colorado is so beautiful in the fall that I don’t mind taking a walk in the woods with a dog and a gun. And since I eat fish and still have a lot of elk in my freezer, I’m not overly concerned about filling my freezer with grouse. But I do think it’s odd that you might see birds one day in a certain spot on the mountain, and you return to that same spot three days later and don’t see a single bird, unless you count camp robbers and hawks. It snowed a little up high this week so we though conditions would be ideal. When you can see grouse tracks you stand a very good chance of finding birds. And when there is just a little snow on the ground but there is still vegetation sticking through the birds will still forage on the ground. But we went to all our best honey holes and did not see one track. It was quite chilly–26 degrees on the car thermometer–so maybe the birds had sense enough to be curled up in the trees. Or maybe the weekend of elk hunting spooked them to higher ground. Or maybe we were there too early or too late in the day.

I had pheasant black bean soup in the fridge at home, so we called it a day and headed back home. Of course we saw a GIANT turkey on the trip back down, but we already have our Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer. And of course if we had been hunting turkey, there is no WAY we would have seen that bird, but that’s half the fun of it.

We call grouse “dumb” sometimes, because they will just sit on the ground and let you shoot them. So far this season though, it sure seems like the grouse are smarter than I am.