I didn’t fill my elk tag last year. I didn’t get a deer, either. I didn’t even get an antelope. Part of that was because I didn’t take enough time off to go hunting. But I didn’t realize how long the effects of too few days hunting in a season would last until I made dinner last Friday night.
Because I had a lot of room in my freezer, I decided to fill it with meat from a steer my dad butchered. He had every inch of available space in his own freezers filled, and he sent me back to Cheyenne with some of his extra meat. I thought it was a gracious gesture until I sat down to a T-bone last week.
Let me just say that I’ve eaten some pretty nasty meat in my life. Heck, I lived in the dorms and ate at the cafeteria in college. ‘Nuff said. But this steak was the worst thing I’ve eaten in a long, long time.
My dad raises longhorns, and he takes a lot of grief for it. I’ve had a lot of people tell me they wouldn’t eat longhorn beef if you paid them. But Dad has butchered several of his cattle, and until now, they’ve all provided excellent meat. But this steer was a 200-year-old longhorn-corriente cross, and I think we’d have been better off if we’d eaten his horns than his meat.
I’d much rather have a freezer full of elk steaks. Even a big, old herd bull would have had better meat than that ancient steer. But that’s a given. Elk meat is quite possibly the best meat man has ever tasted.
Had I shot a deer or an antelope, I wouldn’t have had to resort to filling my freezer with old steer. I wish now that I’d been able to get out for at least a few more days. But then again, knowing how I hunt, I still might not have come home with any meat.
Next season, I’m going to devote more time to hunting. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve eaten something far worse than crow. But I’d much rather eat venison.
