Roadkill. It's What's for Dinner

The other night my brother and his friends brought home a deer. It was a pretty little thing and I asked who had shot it. Their answer? They had gotten it on the side of the road.

If you have read my other blogs, you are, at this point, probably wondering what kind of a monster my brother must be. I mean, killing a deer is bad enough, right? And then he also apparently brags about it with his friends? Slaying a raccoon for the sake of some chickens is sort of valiant...I guess... But picking up roadkill? You're probably thinking he crossed a line there.

Allow me to defend him, though. First, the boys didn't just show up and chuck a random deer in their truck. They had seen the animal suffering in the ditch after it was hit and went to its aid, saving it from pain. Then, to avoid other accidents with rodents who came to "clean up" the animal remains, they removed the potential hazard from the road.

Where I come from, it's not a big deal though. Quite frankly, I can't see what the problem is. Piece of free meat? Sure, why not. Of course we take measures to clean and decontaminate the meat, and of course we make sure the animal has died of the impact and not of illness, but honestly, talk about a Black Friday deal! It's a free hundred pounds of meat to the lucky winner. 

Of course, generalizations are merely that: generalizations.  This should be taken with a grain of salt, as I recognize that this is not a universal fact.  It represents my family and my small town experience, but I could never claim to understand all the regions of our country and their traditions. Nor could I even claim that every member of my town would eat something killed by a car, because I have definitely met those that would hesitate. However, if I could make a stab at something that most rural Southerners would be at peace with, this would be my guess.

Size Does Matter

Boy One:  "Y'all hear about my seven pointer? Got him last night."

Boy Two:  "Boy, that ain't nothing. I got an eight last week with a 25 inch spread."

Boy One:  "How much did it weigh?"

Boy Two:  "Had to be dang near a buck fifty."

Translation please?

This is a conversation that my brother and his buddies have just about every waking moment from late autumn through mid-winter. And it probably sounds closer to Greek than English for a person who lives outside of the South.  

What they are talking about is deer hunting, and talk about it they do: all the time. A point is a projecting piece of the deer's antlers that is at least an inch long. The spread is the distance between the two main beams of the antlers (from the inside edges). As for a deer weighing a "buck fifty," I honestly have no idea where that saying comes from, but it just means a hundred and fifty pounds. The wider the spread, the higher the points, and the heavier the buck, the older and more dominant the buck is assumed to be.

So, hunters sit for hours upon hours in the woods, braving the winter elements, for just the chance at bringing down a buck. Even though I was raised in the south, I still have trouble understanding the logic of this. Sure, the meat tastes good, but the time investment way outweighs the results in my opinion. However, from what I can collect from my brother's conversations, the size of the buck a man kills is directly proportionate to his own measure of manliness. You see, the bigger the buck is, the more manly the buck. Therefore, the more manly the buck you kill, the more of a man you are. 

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