This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of North American Whitetail magazine.
I’m not the first hunter to walk into the deer woods with his father heavy on his heart. That kind of sentiment typically indicates that a son or a daughter is trying to squeeze one more memory out of a relationship that’s either going or gone, but that’s not the case in this case. This year, I walked into the deer woods with my father heavy on my heart because my old man was craving chicken fried deer steak.
Dad wasn’t eating much even before he went into the hospital, but by the time he was admitted, he had nearly quit eating altogether. He had always been a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but dessert was about the only thing we could convince him to choke down until a doctor decided he needed more calories and prescribed an appetite stimulant. It worked. Well. Seemingly overnight, dad went from staging his involuntary hunger strike to wondering about what the hospital cafeteria might be serving for lunch, and from there it didn’t take long for the cravings to set in. Those cravings covered all manner of wild game but finally landed on chicken fried deer steak, and dad put the word out to his three sons that he wanted a deer.
On my way down to southwest Oklahoma to hunt with a friend, I stopped off at the skilled nursing facility where dad was recuperating. I’d no more than walked into his room when he reiterated his desire for a deer, and I’d barely sat down before he started shooing me out so that I could make my destination in time for an afternoon hunt. I was walking out the door when dad stopped me. He wanted to make sure I had his butchering order down just in case I connected with a buck.
“I want everything that can be cut into steaks to be cut into steaks. I want those steaks cut three quarters of an inch thick and I want them tenderized if you can talk the processor into doing it.”
I was surprised by the specificity of dad’s order. I guess I had underestimated just how much the old man was craving venison.
“Everything else I want ground. No ribs, no roasts, nothing like that. Have them add ten pounds of high fat hamburger to the ground, if they will, and tell them I want it all packaged in one pound packages.”
I was halfway down the hall when I heard dad clear his throat.
“Oh, and son, I really don’t care what it costs.”
I thought about dad’s order the whole drive down to southwest Oklahoma. I didn’t see a deer worth shooting that first sit and I didn’t see a deer at all the following morning, but when a good buck stepped out from beneath a canopy of live oaks on the last morning of my hunt, I immediately took note of his blocky head and his barrel chest. I counted all twelve of his abnormally short tines, including his split brows. I saw the buck for what he was the second he showed himself. A second later, though, I saw the deer in a completely different light, and that’s when I cocked the hammer on my muzzleloader. Because a second later, I saw the whitetail not as the mature, twelve point buck that he was, but as tenderized steaks cut three quarters of an inch thick and as ground venison packaged in one pound packages. The buck looked to me like every bit of that . . . . . and one happy dad.
Wright Outdoors 