11-23-2025, 10:39 PM
(11-23-2025, 06:21 PM)argentus Wrote: I suspect all birds are delicious. I know that chukars, sage hens, pheasant, doves, ducks, geese, chickens, grouse, pigeons, quail and turkeys are delicious. Therefore, one might surmise that all of them are so. If we accept that humans are allowed to consume creatures for their protein, then we must assign rules to govern their consumption. I have my own rules that are far more stringent than the laws where I live.
When I was 7, my father gave me a Daisey . 177 pellet gun. I loved my rifle. He told me that anything I killed, aside from bugs and rodents, I was obligated to eat, so as to not waste them. I shot a sparrow, and he made me pluck, clean, roast and eat it. That lesson has stayed with me all my life. It's a good lesson.
It would be a lot of work to clean a sparrow for the amount of meat it contains. My father also told me if I killed it I should eat it. He let me practice on birds till I was about ten years old, but at that age I was allowed to use a 22 rifle instead of the bb gun and because of the range and danger, I was not allowed to shoot little birds anymore. Which was good since I shot a lot of Killdeer birds when I was young with my bb gun. I had a lever action bb gun, one of the good ones, not the cheap ones my cousins and friends had. It had a longer barrel and was accurate, but for the accuracy I had to buy the more expensive bbs that had better balance.
I got the bb gun when I was about seven too, my first knife when I was around six. But I was well trained in safety by that time. I whittled with my grandfather when I got my knife, he taught me the safe way to do it...but of course, I did get a few cuts, since a sharp knife is safer than a dull one, I spent lots of time sharpening my knife on a stone...which meant I also used it more often and that led to little cuts. I still always have a knife on me all the time, I also have a tape measure in my pocket, and always something to start a fire....a lighter is usually in my pocket.
I feed four does and five fawns when they come around. Just bought eight five pound bags of spuds for them today for a buck a bag. that is enough to subsidize their diet, also we throw out about three carrots and three apples over the day. One of the does likes a slice of bread or two, but I don't give them bread too often, too much is bad for their health I learned, but a treat is not harmful. Costs us about a buck and a half to two and a half bucks a day to feed them. We have names for some of them, and there is one buck that also stops by occasionally, but no deer hunting here...unless of course, TSHTF happens, and I still will not shoot a fawn no matter what. It is a safe haven for them on our property. Some will stay in our yard, sleeping under some pine trees, till the snow gets deep. they then go herd up somewhere with the rest of the deer sometimes in January or Febuary usually.
I have shot around four or five bucks in my life and I am paying the deer back now by feeding them. I am paying my debt to them for taking their lives...and I buy grass fed organic beef instead.
We do not waste much food, the wife and I and even the great grandkids that eat here when they get off the bus waste very little. Yet We throw out about a hundred fifty pounds of food a month. The deer also eat all the carrot peels, the potato peels, the apple cores and peels, and even cereals and all the bread scraps if the kids do not eat all their toast...they love the strawberry jam on the toast too.
We used to throw out food for the crows too, but we quit that because they ate all our tree frogs in the yard last summer. When I would mow, I had the grandkids or great grandkids over to pick up the frogs and bring them into the woods, there were three kinds of tree frogs and toads in the yards...lots of them every mowing till the crows ate all of the tree frogs in our yard. They kept the bugs down in the grass. The cost of feeding the deer is not as high as it seems, I only mowed twice last summer, the deer kept it mowed...but they pooped in the woods so no fertilizer for the yard. They ate all our marjoram this fall, must be some Italian genes in them. they never did that before, something changed in their diet, maybe we should not have been giving them garlic bread scraps with some spaghetti sauce on it.
If there is an atomic war, eating deer or wild animals will not be wise if they are poisoned with radioactive fallout. But if you need to, a little shur gel will help to stop absorption of the radioactive compounds in the meat. It binds to the radioactive particles and they get pooped out I guess, but it will not stop all of it. so we would still be screwed. Same with the fish in the lakes, but streams might be a little safer. But face it, there will be no game or fish left if that happens. Iodine usually only helps with radioactive iodine, not what is in nukes.
