If you’ve been following along with my column the past few weeks, you might remember my mention of an upcoming late season deer hunt out in West Texas with my friends Jeff Rice and Larry Weishuhn. Deer can be harvested through February on many TPWD managed lands ranches and the lease Larry is on still has a number of does and a few bucks that need to be taken. Our goal is to put some late season venison in the freezer and generally have a great time hunting and enjoying camp life for a couple days.
I’m still at home; we head out to West Texas early in the morning. Today is prep day and I will be working on getting some of our ‘grub’ ready. I learned a long time ago that after a day of hunting and coming back to camp after dark, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour or two preparing dinner. Oh, I’ve been in many hunting camps where we ‘lived out of the can’, eating everything from canned soup to cold cut sandwiches. Nothing wrong with that but for those of us that enjoys cooking and happen to have plenty of game in the freezer, why not put our cooking skills and game to good use!
Let me give you a ‘run down’ of some our meals that I will prepare today. I will chill them in the frig and into the cooler they go early in the morning when we head out.
Breakfast first
No time early in the morning for cooking a big breakfast before heading out to hunt. I will fry a couple pounds of freshly made breakfast sausage, made from the lean meat from that Choctaw mule foot hog I shot a couple months ago up on the Choctaw Hunting Lodge, owned by the Choctaw Nation up in southeast Oklahoma.
Of course I will need biscuits which I will prepare with an easy recipe using two ingredients, self-rising flour and cream. Several of these ‘sausage biscuits’ wrapped in foil will make a quick and easy meal each morning before heading out on the hunt.
The main course
I have a couple of wild pork backstraps marinating and will put them in my Smokin Tex electric smoker in a couple of hours. With the thermostat set at 225 degrees, I will use hickory wood to give the backstraps a good smoke flavor and then add some barbeque sauce and wrap in foil and allow them to slow cook for about 4 hours until the meat is very tender. This will become the main event for the first evening meal when sliced thick and served on hot bread. The remainder of the meat will be chopped and prepared for lunchtime sandwiches when we come back to camp for a few hours between hunts.
Next comes what might just be my favorite -- camp or home -- meal of all, skillet baked beans. I’ve enjoyed many recipes for baked beans through the year but the one I am about to tell you about is the tastiest of all and, very easy to prepare. First, you will need a couple cans of what is called “Baked beans”. These beans are well done of course but far from what I consider tasty baked beans. Buy the cheapest ones you can find, I usually stock up at the Dollar Store. These rather bland beans can easily be transformed into a side dish you that will likely become one of your favorites. Begin by putting a bit of cooking oil in a skillet and add chopped onion, chopped peppers ( jalapeno or pablano) and cook until soft. When the veggies start to soften, add several cloves of chopped fresh garlic and continue cooking a couple minutes. Don’t overcook the garlic. Next add the canned beans, the amount can vary to suit the number of folks at camp. Add a can or water and bring up to a simmer. I love brown sugar and probably use more than most so add as much as you wish as well as a couple tablespoons of your favorite thick barbeque sauce. These ingredients transform those bland canned beans into a very tasty side dish. If you prefer, you can cook northern beans and use them in this dish but canned beans are cheap and easy and work well for me. I expect these will go will with the pork backstrap.
Drum stick snacks
I often buy the weekly meat specials at the grocery store and this week, chicken drum sticks were on sale. I bought a big package, seasoned them with Cajun seasoning and smoked them with pecan wood until they were fall off the bone tender and a bit crispy on the outside. These can serve as appetizers at camp and possibly be munched on our drive out to west Texas.
Stir fry, as well
Our friend Jeff Rice has a stir fry planned with marinated wild pork sliced very thin. I’m not sure whether it will be cooked in a conventional Asian stir fry or sweet and sour pork with Jasmine rice. I’ve tried Jeff’s stir fry dishes and eagerly look forward to whatever comes out of his wok.
Fresh steaks
Larry Weishuhn is a master at grilling everything from boneless chicken thighs to thick cut venison steaks. There’s a big fire pit right behind the old stone camphouse and I expect Larry will be working his magic on some pieces of very fresh venison backstrap cut about three-quarters of an inch thick. Cooked over a very hot mesquite wood fire, it’s hard to beat fresh backstrap, especially from those West Texas deer. Larry taught us that venison from deer that live on a winter’s diet of a plant called filaree are exceptionally tasty. I remember the venison we enjoyed out there about this time last year and it was exceptionally good.
It appears we will be doing a great deal of eating on this little three-day hunt. Hope we can find time to do a little deer hunting!
Remember our 6th Annual Outdoor Ron-de-Voux at The Top Rail Cowboy Church in Greenville on March 1. There will be plenty of campfire cooking at my little camp, the chuck wagon teams as well as the Purtis Creek Dutch Kettle Cooks. So far, we have enjoyed great weather for the event on the beautiful 12 acres but if it rains, there is a big covered arena we can use. There will be live music and lots of booths with vendors offering all kinds of items. A chili cook off is scheduled for this year which promises to be lots of fun. For more information or to secure a booth, contact James Carr at 903-426-2045 or Marshal Jarvis 903-461-9917.
