Early season hunting is a time of comfort, when a long sleeve shirt is often sufficient to ward off the chill and keep bugs at bay. Deer tend to move later in the day during warm weather, often leading to after-dark trailing sessions and the potential of recovering the animal the following morning. Unfortunately, warm temperatures create an urgency to properly handle venison as soon as possible, as bacteria growth in the carcass is a directly related to temperature. Lindsay Thomas, Jr., shares the results of a warm-weather recovery and the research behind the issue in this must-read post from QDMA.
The doe kicked and ran out of the food plot like a hard-hit deer, hunched with its tail tucked, and I heard loud crashing sounds not far into the thicket. Confident I had venison on the ground within easy reach, I watched the remaining light fade from the woods and waited on my hunting partner to join me. Yet, once we started tracking, neither my hunting partner nor I could find any blood with our flashlight beams, and acres of barely penetrable briars in the surrounding cutover did not help. After a restless night, I returned at daylight and was relieved to find the doe within minutes, piled up just 10 yards off a trail I had crawled along the night before. Nearly 14 hours had passed since I shot, and though it was January 2, the overnight low in South Georgia was only 46 degrees. I wondered, was it safe for me to eat this deer? … [continued]
