'Tis Hunting Time—A smallish blog

gfweb · October 3

On 10/2/2025 at 7:01 PM, Shelby said:

No....just a regular metal barn. It got beat to hell, too sigh lol.

Up here, those white side slats would open up for air circulation to dry tobacco. The Amish are big growers

Edited October 4 by gfweb (log)

rotuts · October 3

@Shelby

'''' Yeah...deviled eggs are a pain especially if you have to make a lot of them! ''''

correct. and after all that work , they disapear in a flash !

but soooooo good.

YvetteMT · October 3

I'm impressed you can get the hunters to keep the "bird guts "! I think I've managed to get 2 birds plucked, the usual is skinned breasts and legs/thighs, no matter the species! (I love gizzards and hearts and am resigned to buy them at the grocery every couple years)

chromedome · October 3

39 minutes ago, YvetteMT said:

I'm impressed you can get the hunters to keep the "bird guts "! I think I've managed to get 2 birds plucked, the usual is skinned breasts and legs/thighs, no matter the species! (I love gizzards and hearts and am resigned to buy them at the grocery every couple years)

I process all the birds myself, which is kind of a time-sink but it means I don't have to negotiate in order to get giblets.

SLB · October 4

Thanks so much for giving us what you could, Shelby! I admit I was thinking, isn't it Huntin' Time again???

It's always wonderful to read this thread, and I've come to rely on the regular hits of inspiration. Now all I want is giblets.

**Shelby** · October 4

3 hours ago, SLB said:

Thanks so much for giving us what you could, Shelby! I admit I was thinking, isn't it Huntin' Time again???

It's always wonderful to read this thread, and I've come to rely on the regular hits of inspiration. Now all I want is giblets.

Awww thanks--and thanks to everyone.

I promise--barring any hail...natural disasters etc. lol--that I'll do better for deer season. I think I'll be back on my game by then

rotuts · October 4

Another fine blog.

thank you @Shelby

FauxPas · October 9

Really good to hear you are getting back to normal in some ways!

I love your decor. So cute that Ronnie and your friend brought pumpkins for you - and the cows, ha. 🙂

I love your porch so much.

**Shelby** · 2025-12-03T15:45:05Z

Hello!

What the hell was I thinking up there saying I'd for sure be back on my game by now? 🙄🤣 For reasons I won't go into here Thanksgiving week was..........rough. BUT, time marches on and deer week stops for no woman! And I'm here!

For some reason I prodded myself into decorating for Christmas early in November. Which is good because I promise it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't already done lol. I'm glad it's done, though, because I find the twinkle lights comforting .

A few pictures of the house to get us in deer season mood lol:

My mom and step dad sent me this gorgeous FRESH wreath. It's been years since I've had a real tree or anything so I'm really enjoying the fragrance. It's hanging in the kitchen where I can see it and smell it all the time.

It's turned off pretty cold--which is an excellent thing. No worrying about it being too hot to hang a deer. I wrestled with going to the big city to the grocery store and Sam's.....but it snowed a bit on Monday and I just felt like staying home. We have enough food plus I ordered a big Misfits delivery that hopefully will be here Thursday to supplement my fresh veggie stash.

Speaking of veggies, before it froze my brother and sister in law gave us about 80 lbs of green tomatoes. I had thoughts of relish etc. but in the end we simply packed them in boxes and let them ripen. It worked a treat! Soooooo...although they aren't exactly as good as just off the vine from the garden, they are miles above grocery store tomatoes. Very grateful to them for sharing (our garden got beaten to a pulp in that hail storm). And yay! Good tomatoes with meals!

So, I'm off to finish cleaning a few things. Our hunter friend's flight was delayed from his starting point so fingers crossed he's able to make his connecting flight to get here. In a bit I'm going to start on breakfast burritos and prepping for dinner. I'll be back after a while!

FauxPas · 2025-12-03T16:01:11Z

Oh your decor is lovely! Your house is awesome, so warm and inviting.

Though I do have to ask about the Santa on the left of the fireplace there, because I think I would jump after walking into that room in the evening and maybe forgetting it was a Santa and just seeing someone standing there, hahahahaha.

I can smell the wreath also. And good job with the tomatoes!

rotuts · 2025-12-03T17:06:19Z

@Shelby

Elegant .

Kudos your way .

BTW : for this Season , Im offering IDS // SV CkDrums

for shoveling snow , esp. off the top of the Hylander ( 1 extra CD for that )

you can use the snow to keep the CD cold until you get home .

Edited yesterday at 06:32 PM by Smithy
Corrected callout at rotuts' request (log)

SLB · 2025-12-03T19:16:39Z

SQUEE!! It's showtime!

patti · 2025-12-03T21:13:34Z

Yay! I was hoping this would be happening soon.

Your Christmas decor is beautiful … the piano, the fireplace and mantel … I love it! And you have a Rushton Coca Cola Santa! I have one, too. 😍 Ooh, and tell me more about your life sized Santa! I know I didn’t see everything, so now I’ll go back and examine all the pics and read all the words. 😉

TicTac · 2025-12-03T21:13:39Z

Love me some indoor Christmas decorations, and I am not even a Christian!

Looking forward to this, as always.

PS - Fried green tomatoes are awesome!

bokreta · 2025-12-04T02:55:44Z

HUZZAH!

I'm a lurker, not a poster, but I had to chime in to say your biannual hunting sessions are something that I look forward to. This year, what with everything going on in the world. I literally stood up and clapped!

Also, I keep a fairly small fake tree with warm white lights in my main living space year round. I decorate as I have the whim to as the seasons turn. It also means that if I have little motivation or life just interferes, I have at least a token Xmas decoration in place with no additional effort.

Can't wait for updates!

**Shelby** · 2025-12-04T14:37:22Z

22 hours ago, FauxPas said:

Oh your decor is lovely! Your house is awesome, so warm and inviting.

Though I do have to ask about the Santa on the left of the fireplace there, because I think I would jump after walking into that room in the evening and maybe forgetting it was a Santa and just seeing someone standing there, hahahahaha.

I can smell the wreath also. And good job with the tomatoes!

Thank you so much! Lol....Santa doesn't scare me but I do feel at times he's a bit judgy.........

17 hours ago, patti said:

Yay! I was hoping this would be happening soon.

Your Christmas decor is beautiful … the piano, the fireplace and mantel … I love it! And you have a Rushton Coca Cola Santa! I have one, too. 😍 Ooh, and tell me more about your life sized Santa! I know I didn’t see everything, so now I’ll go back and examine all the pics and read all the words. 😉

I LOVE your Christmas decorations, too. I hope you'll show us a bit That Coca Cola Santa was my Grammy's and as long as I can remember he was always out. The life size Santa was a gift from Ronnie's mom. She got my sister in law one too. Her's is more of an old-timey Santa with pinks and mauves. She saw them while on vacation with my in laws in Georgia I believe. I can't remember whether they drove them home or had them shipped but either way I know it was a lot because he's very heavy!

11 hours ago, bokreta said:

HUZZAH!

I'm a lurker, not a poster, but I had to chime in to say your biannual hunting sessions are something that I look forward to. This year, what with everything going on in the world. I literally stood up and clapped!

Also, I keep a fairly small fake tree with warm white lights in my main living space year round. I decorate as I have the whim to as the seasons turn. It also means that if I have little motivation or life just interferes, I have at least a token Xmas decoration in place with no additional effort.

Can't wait for updates!

Awwww I'm happy that you de-lurked! You should do it more often I love your tree idea! I might just copy you!

**Shelby** · 2025-12-04T15:14:17Z

As we all know, time gets away from me and every year it seems to get worse.

Our friend got on his connecting flight--just barely. He like 10 mins between the time the first flight landed to get over to the second one. I think he's decided that it's worth it to pay a bit more for direct flights from now on and I don't blame him.

I made breakfast burritos early in the day--I never can seem to make enough scrambled eggs the first time so it took even longer because I had to go back and make more. Ronnie found a breakfast sausage mix that he really likes so he seasoned up some venison burger with it for me.

Just eggs, venison breakfast sausage, cheese, a bit of salsa and some jalapeños. I left out the usual tater tots that I love to make it less carby.

So that's done. There's enough for every morning so they won't go hungry but I will offer to make breakfast sandwiches if they get sick of these.

I decided to make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner (I get a carb pass when our friend is here lol). I've probably talked about these before but I LOVE Hank Shaw's Venison Meatball Recipe. I deviate a bit and use a tablespoon or so of Italian seasoning from Sam's instead of the fennel. And I use Lawry's salt instead of regular. OH and I used Italian bread crumbs to roll them in in place of plain.

I neglected to take a picture but after you roll the balls in the bread crumbs you just fry them in a skillet using oil. Easy peasy.

They had stopped for lunch and by the time they got home from hunting yesterday it was about 6:30 so I just made a mess of deviled eggs and put out some spicy dill pickle pretzels and every thing bagel cashews from Nuts.com. I have a very bad addiction to that place now.

I threw together a salad (you'll probably see a lot of those this time) , boiled the pasta (I had fleeting thoughts of making pasta but that was quickly put out of my mind lol), buttered and wrapped up some of my homemade French bread and warmed it and dinner was done!

**Shelby** · 2025-12-04T15:27:26Z

Our hunter friend requested ducks so I've been hoarding these in the freezer. And I think that was the smart thing to do because this cold weather seems to have sent them further south. A few weeks ago Ronnie and Scout were getting tons of them though.

(I got Scoutie a new collar. It's pink much to Ronnie's dismay but she and I love it 😁)

So I have 3 teal, 2 mallards and a pintail to roast tonight.

I may also do some guts.......

Side dishes are always a challenge it seems like. My two steam boys will be in use for the ducks and I really don't want to unload all the pans stored in my normal sized oven so that leaves the stove top as the only option. I might do stewed tomatoes. Maybe I could do scalloped potatoes and then while the ducks are resting I could throw them in the steam boy to brown on the top?

The guys got up about 4:30 this morning and are out at the shooting house. It's really cold but the wind has layed down so they might see something.

FauxPas · 2025-12-04T16:08:17Z

40 minutes ago, Shelby said:

I might do stewed tomatoes. Maybe I could do scalloped potatoes and then while the ducks are resting I could throw them in the steam boy to brown on the top?

This sounds perfect!

Scout is such a good-looking girl, how old is she now? I love her pink collar, very chic. 🙂

C. sapidus · 2025-12-04T16:09:13Z

35 minutes ago, Shelby said:

(I got Scoutie a new collar. It's pink much to Ronnie's dismay but she and I love it 😁)

I gave Red Dog a pink collar when she was 1-yo because everyone called her "he". Within a week the collar was mud brown. She's just not a pink collar kinda gal. Hope the pink collar works better on Scoutie.

One of my favorite things I ever ate was a duck salad at a long-defunct local restaurant. Wish I had paid more attention to how they made it, but I think it was a warm salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing and some mushy but flavorful cheese. 🤷🏼‍♂️

gfweb · 2025-12-04T16:10:55Z

Confit duck legs work well in a salad.

**Shelby** · 2025-12-04T16:18:56Z

8 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

This sounds perfect!

Scout is such a good-looking girl, how old is she now? I love her pink collar, very chic. 🙂

She says thank you 😊 She's 6. I can't believe she's already 6. We got her in Jan of 2020 right before the pandemic.

7 minutes ago, C. sapidus said:

I gave Red Dog a pink collar when she was 1-yo because everyone called her "he". Within a week the collar was mud brown. She's just not a pink collar kinda gal. Hope the pink collar works better on Scoutie.

One of my favorite things I ever ate was a duck salad at a long-defunct local restaurant. Wish I had paid more attention to how they made it, but I think it was a warm salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing and some mushy but flavorful cheese. 🤷🏼‍♂️

LOL yeah.....same. She got in the duck pond and it's now a dirty pink.

I love balsamic vinegar with duck.

KennethT · 2025-12-04T17:38:53Z

1 hour ago, Shelby said:

I love balsamic vinegar with duck.

I love the combo of aged sherry vinegar, finely diced shallot, a little Dijon mustard and tarragon. When I was a kid, my parents used to take me to a french restaurant that did a ridiculous cherry sauce with duck....

**Smithy** · 2025-12-04T18:40:12Z

3 hours ago, Shelby said:

So I have 3 teal, 2 mallards and a pintail to roast tonight.

Can you tell a difference between them once plucked, or do they need different treatment? Different fat content, for instance? What about flavor?

**Shelby** · 2025-12-04T19:15:14Z

28 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Can you tell a difference between them once plucked, or do they need different treatment? Different fat content, for instance? What about flavor?

My favorite are teal and pintail--mild flavored and tender. Coming in second are mallards. Mallards are a bit stronger tasting and can sometimes be a bit a bit tougher but sometimes not. I don't notice a difference in fat content except mallards are bigger so they have more of course. I'll roast the mallards together in one oven and the teal and pintail in the other. Teal and pintail take 15-20 mins. Mallards 20-25 mins. My oven on the right doesn't get as hot as the other so I have to watch it lol.

I've decided to go with stewed tomatoes and cheesy Brussels sprouts. Maybe I'll do some more bread. I'm trying to be less carby because tomorrow and Saturday I'm doing something with potatoes for sides (spell check keeps changing "carby" to "crabby"--I'm trying to be less crabby too 🤣). Tomorrow I'm going to do the fried and then pressure cooked chicken gizzards--I'll also do the duck and goose gizzards I've saved up in the freezer. Probably a salad and French fries to go with. So, tomorrow will be a looooooooooong day of frying. But, once that's done it's easy from then on. We'll talk more about that later though. Just thinking about it is giving me anxiety lol.

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