Monday, December 20, 2004

Roadkill.

My dogs really like venison. The four deer carcasses my neighbor and fellow church member gave me are all eaten up. So I went around to various grocery stores trying to find a good source of cheap( or free) raw meat, but to no avail.
Then on the way to work I saw a roadkill deer and thought, "Hmmmm."
I made a mental note of the location and on the way home stopped to snag it.
Well, first of all it was on a highway with lots of traffic and I felt a little embarrassed about people seeing me pick it up. Second of all, it was in kind of bad shape, gutted from getting run over and it had frozen in place and was stuck to the highway and I couldn't pull it off. So there I was with cars going by yanking on this deers leg trying to pull it free. I felt pretty stupid, plus there was still fresh blood and guts leaking out of it and I knew it would make a mess of my truck.
So I gave up.

Then on the way home , on a less busy road just two miles from home, I see a beautiful deer on the side of the road, with just a little bit of blood coming out his mouth and one mangled leg.
It had not been there earlier that morning.
So I stopped and quickly hoisted it into the bed of my truck and was off again in less than a minute.

So now my dogs have fresh venison again in addition to the kibble that many of them are not too excited about. I guess I should have gutted it and skinned it and hung it somewhere, that is if I had the tools and know how to do that. I am not a deer hunter though. My method was to let it freeze as much as possible(the 20 below cold snap helped) and then chop it up into peices and dole it out over the next few days until its gone.

The dogs were pretty excited about it. Yesturday I cut all the legs off and doled them out. Ruger got the head. He likes the head. He has eaten three so far this winter. I am sure there are lots of vitamins, in these parts as opposed to just feeding the meat. Along with the legs I cut off chunks of shoulder , because the legs really don't have much on them. Jack got the heart and some chunks of lung. They do look like a pack of wolves when they eat the raw venison. It is kind of cool to watch. It becomes pretty clear that these are not housepets. It comes only too natural to them to tear into this raw meat.
Their droppings begin to look like wolf droppings with fur and little bits of bone in them.
Ruger can actually crack open and eat the better part of a deer skull. Of all the dogs he is the most primitive one. Not too much hound blood there. He never barks, but only howls like a wolf in pure clean mournful notes. A very "arctic" sound.

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6 Comments:

Blogger Ted Heistman said...

Thanks Annie,
Glad you liked it. Guess what? Someone saw my old political blog and published an article. Check it out if you still have it bookmarked.
This writing thing may work out after all !

Ted

December 21, 2004 at 8:31 AM  
Blogger Ted Heistman said...

Annie,
Here it is:
http://truthseeker.ebloggy.com/

The Latest entry has a link to the article.

Good luck on your new blog. Keep in touch!

Ted

December 21, 2004 at 2:29 PM  
Blogger dogsled_stacie said...

Nice pic Ted! Our blogs are looking similar - ha! As our dogs are becoming savages consuming these carcasses we bring home!! It's amazing how fast they can get through them hey?

December 22, 2004 at 11:07 PM  
Blogger Ted Heistman said...

Stacy,
Yeah I thought that was funny how we both had pictures of dogs devouring carcasses. I didn't notice yours till after I put mine up. I liked that pick of Kuna. He has a big fluffy bubble butt like my Strider.

Ted

December 23, 2004 at 4:38 PM  
Blogger dogsled_stacie said...

Hah! That *bubble-butt* comment made me burst out laughing. It's so true! I never really heard of a dogs butt described that way, yet I knew exactly what you meant!

Anyways - this post is a great illustration on how kooky (focused?)mushers become once they are fully obsessed with their dogs... welcome!

December 26, 2004 at 12:19 AM  
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