Chris, our oldest son, is the locavore in this picture.
The animal is an organic grass-fed, grass-finished, free-range bull elk
who lived his life about 15 miles from our house.
“Hoffer” harvested this huge animal with a bow and arrow,
a skill which requires great dollops of
strength, stealth, endurance and patience.
This evening, our garage will transform into a butcher shop.
Several hundred pounds of delicious elk roasts, filets, and burger.
Cut, wrapped, marked, frozen.
It’s a family tradition that occurs almost every year.
Butchering an elk and canning applesauce
are the closest I come to living the Little House lifestyle
I adored when I was a suburban girl reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
are the closest I come to living the Little House lifestyle
I adored when I was a suburban girl reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
A Living Pencil 
Wow what a glorious picture. Congrats on the provisions for the year. What a wonderful thing to live in a place that you can do that. love from SC
mmmmm, looks tasty!! Congratulations to Hoffer!!
The closest I’ve come to that lifestyle is living next door to someone who butchered hogs…..or maybe the fellow I dated in highschool. He was/is a taxidermist!Handsome hunter 🙂
Do you have a wall big enough for that thing? I ate a lot of elk in college at U of Wyoming.
Great! I bet Hoffer was excited! Getting the Big One is a rite of passage for many, isn’t it?I don’t care much for elk meet, I was raised on deer, so I love that but my Dad never went after The Mighty Elk. This year the DH has a cow tag, I may have to suck it up and learn to enjoy as I give thanks for the provisions God may grant us!
@Wildflowersp – Fortunately – for me – my son is married and what he does with his rack is their decision. I prefer that those things stay in the garage and don’t come into the house. We have a large garage and lots of antlers nestled up on the walls.@applechexx – You are the first person I’ve met who prefers deer to elk. I will eat them both, but I’d always choose elk first. And I think cows taste better than bulls. Just MHO.
I’ve a friend here in town who made an elk roast for a fellowship meal and I tried it, it was very good. I couldn’t tell for sure what it was, just knew it wasn’t beef. If/when the DH fills his cow tag, I’ll have to get her to show me how she did her roast. There is a trick to cooking game meats, I’ve found, that makes them better, with deer it’s lots of pan gravy to cook the meat in.
What a feat! What a rack! Oh, how wonderful to fill the freezer with all that meat. I’ve never eaten elk but I’m sure I would like it. The best deer meat we ever ate was when a hunter friend brought a tenderloin roast to our house for dinner one night. Oh my. He also had cookouts each summer where he served fresh caught fish, dove, pheasant, quail and frog legs. I don’t remember ever eating anything I didn’t like there.I’ve been freezing apple pie filling from our abundance of apples. I’ll probably can a bit of applesauce, too. We made maple syrup one year, which was probably the closest I ever got to the Little House life. ;)Sandy
Oh, my, it’s a big’un! Well, I have sort of decided that next time I come to visit you, I should suck it up and try the elk. I’ll tell you why. I gave my Illinois friend a package of artichoke parmesan dip mix for her birthday (you have to buy the jar of artichoke hearts to add to it) and she gave it back to me!!! She said she and her DH went out to dinner one night w/ their California friends when visiting here (25 years ago!), and the friend(Bill Lowe!) ordered an artichoke with his meal. He offered to let them try it, but just the look of it turned them off. To this day, neither the husband or wife will try artichokes. Oh, how sad, I thought! Then I thought about you and the elk and gulped. Hmm…time to spread my wings, me thinks!