I collected my two deer and while skinning saw quite a contrast between the two. Both does, I got 2 full 5 quart ice cream pails of fat off one, and not enough to sneeze at from the other. Now if both deer were as fat as the first I’d be getting worried about the up coming winter. But does the lack of body fat on the other mean we’re going to have a mild winter?
I’ll also mention that the fat deer had more fat on it than I have seen on a deer in years.
And the fat itself, I chop it up and heat it in a pan to allow it to melt down slowly, then I strain out the chunks of meat or fat that doesn’t render. When strained I add some generic bird seed to it and pour it into suet cake trays saved from store bought suet. Late winter this stuff goes out when the birds seriously need the fat to tolerate winter at its worse. A suet block from a store will last about 5, maybe 7 days here in February. The real suet will last about two days. The birds know. Now if only those birds could tell me what this winter holds in store for us.
