Dutch on deer

Oct 30, 2026 By Ben Moyer 5 min read

Everyone can cite times when conditions wrecked their outdoor plans. Thunderstorms have cut short countless hikes, and fishing for trout in muddy flood water is a low-percentage game. The big snowstorm of late-November 1974 kept thousands of area hunters from getting to the woods on opening day of deer season.

Conditions side-tracked friends’ and my outdoor plan last weekend, but in a different way. The blue-sky autumn weather was so “perfect,” (not for hunting) and being immersed in the last persistent sunshine was such a pleasure that we abandoned our designs to hunt deer.

There was a practical side to the disruption. Temperatures last weekend neared 70 degrees, which presents an immediate mandate should you kill a deer. Your imperative is to get the carcass to a processor, into a cooler for temporary storage, or butcher it yourself, quickly.

But we weren’t into “quick.” We’d camped out in the woods, with the professed intent to hunt what we’ve come to call the “Geezer Season.” During four days of mid-October, senior hunters are permitted by Game Commission rules to hunt antlerless (doe) deer with “regular firearms,” meaning older hunters don’t need to use a more-complicated muzzleloader as required for younger participants.

Antlered bucks are not legal during this season, so it’s essentially a hunt for venison, of which some remainder from last year was still in our freezers. So, there was no pressure, only an opportunity to enjoy being outdoors in the fall to the fullest.

As anyone who has ever camped knows, a huge part of the camping experience is food-thinking about it, cooking it, and sharing it around the fire. It’s one of the oldest of all human endeavors and has lost none of its ancient appeal over thousands of years.

We’d come prepared. Our coolers held options in food and beverage, and we’d brought the tools to prepare meals in novel ways. That bounty, combined with the balmy fall weather, compelled us to relax in camp and forsake any sort of intensity, hunting included.

Afternoons were warm, but the nights were icy. Waking up to frost on the tent-fly, you crave two things-fire and coffee. The first was easy enough to revive from last evening’s ashes, and we brewed stout “cowboy coffee” to enliven the senses. Few aromas can equal the tannic fragrance of coffee boiling at sunrise.

Making cowboy coffee is a simple process but has its fine points that can’t be dismissed. Just boil water, dump in the appropriate measure of coffee and boil hard, but not too long. Remove from the fire, pour in a trickle of cold water which settles the free-floating grounds, then pour and savor. Once you have your hands around that mug, and yourselves around that fire, it’s tough to pry away for a motive as shaky as shooting a deer you don’t yet need.

We did, though, “harvest” from the wild. We’d taken a canoe and fishing tackle, which yielded friend Duayne a fine string of bluegills and crappies from a nearby lake. These we filleted, rolled them in Cajun-spiced cornmeal and fried golden brown. The exclamations were constant, all of which can be summarized as something like: “You can’t get this kind of seafood in any restaurant.”

My camp gear boasts a 22-inch “Lumberjack” skillet, that I won at a Trout Unlimited banquet and enjoy hauling out for special occasions, which a campout always is. One evening, we rigged a rack over the fire, got the skillet screaming-hot, tossed in butter, and pan-seared three steaks, medium-rare, teamed with whole potatoes baked in a Dutch oven. Memorable fare.

For one of our lunches, friend Ron provided a break from cooking with Italian sausages, peppers, onions and sauce he’d brought from Jerry’s Catering in Republic, the best I’ve ever sampled.

But the weekend’s culinary highlight was a nearly daylong procedure on Sunday to prep and slow-cook a full rack of ribs in one of the Dutch ovens, accompanied by scratch macaroni and cheese baked in the other, smaller such appliance.

Dutch ovens are wonderful devices. Their heavy cast iron absorbs and radiates heat to the food in a steady, moderate process. The results can be unsurpassed. The trick is to bed the oven down on the right amount of hot coals and array an equally appropriate batch of coals atop the lid. If you get this right, you can relax at the fire while your creation perks happily toward doneness just like your plug-in crockpot at home.

Both the ribs and the macaroni came out as perfection. The only slight downside to the meal was that darkness fell by the time it was done, and you couldn’t fully enjoy the food’s appetizing appearance. This “tragedy” was overcome by the meat’s unctuous flavor and tender readiness to “fall off the bone.”

Clearly, our weekend’s menu was no healthful regimen. But we only indulge thusly on rare occasions. We finally got out and hunted on Sunday evening. We saw three deer that offered shots. All were bucks, not legal to take. It was the perfect ending.