I'll get that book. Again thanks for more great things to think about!

Started reading Steve's book. It is good so far, except you'd think that you needed 10gs worth of gear... nevertheless, said am enjoying it so far. Thanks for the recommendation.

10 ggggggggggersh thats alot of doe for your bang...

then again ta hunt privet land in they want ya ta pay their taxes...

I agree.

I would also suggest recognizing that hunting requires knowledge and skill in multiple areas, and you want to be strong and proficient in each of them. These include:

1. Animal Behavior- If you're interested in truly hunting an animal, you need to know a lot about them so that you can best determine when and where to be in order to get a shot at one. Even if your strategy is only to throw up a feeder and wait for something to show up and eat, your knowledge of the animal's behavior will help in your success.

2. Firearms and Marksmanship: You'll never harvest anything unless you can put a hot bullet where you want it to go with great consistency. The best hunters know as much about firearms and shooting as they do the animals they're after.

3. Archery - Everything that applies to Firearms and Marksmanship applies equally here. It's just a matter of applying them to a different set of tools and projectiles.

4. General Woodsmanship: Unless your strategy is to follow a well-marked trail on your ATV that you park next to your heated box stand, you need to know all that it takes to feel safe and confident in the woods at any time of the night or day, in any kind of weather. And this is especially true when you find yourself in woods that are new to you. With the tools that are available to us today, you can easily navigate any area on land or water to anywhere you need to go, safely and securely.

5. How to properly clean and prepare wild game for the table - The origin of our sport rests with the means of providing a meal. Otherwise, you're just out there trying to satisfy your ego. I have known men who would run you out of camp for wasting good venison.

6. Last but not least, Game Laws - Being ignorant of what is and isn't legal is not an excuse for having to pay a fine.

Thanks Dan. I am beginning to form some ideas about your points and Steve's book was helpful. I have a couple of questions about your last 2 points on cleaning and legality. Steve's book has great instructions on how to clean game and butcher the meat, however it kind of runs together. Let me propose a scenario: say I shoot a deer several hours hike from my truck. I think I have the rudimentary knowledge of how to gut the animal. Then the book goes on about quartering and butchering. However, I am not sure if I want to do that in this scenario. Is it easier just to drag out a gutted carcass and bring that to a meat processor (I am going to start with baby steps here. I don't think I will process my first few if I ever get one. I will learn that once I have the basics down.) Or is it better to quarter the meat and put it in game bags for the hike out, whereupon would put the quarters in a cooler for transport? Also after quartering, you are left with 4 legs and the spine/head (with tenderloins and backstraps attached). When do you separate these, and for legality do you need to leave the head attached as proof of sex or can you separate it for transport and present it at a check station as proof? Thanks for all the patience with the dumb questions.

where will you be hunting that will be several hours hike to the truck? I have drug (dragged?) many a deer a pretty good ways but only quartered when the animal was too large to drag (elk, mule deer) but those weren't in Texas. I guess it also depends on how big/strong you are??? I typically will field dress (gut) and drag to where where I can drive, could be a short distance up to several hundred yards.

What matters most from a legal perspective is keeping proof of the sex of the animal. No matter how you choose to clean and butcher it, a game warden will want you to have evidence to prove it was a buck or a doe, with the head being to most obvious and common evidence for that purpose. Proof of sex is to remain with the meat until "final disposition", that being most often your home or where you take the deer for processing.

However, you can give meat from your harvest to someone so long as you give them a completed Wildlife Resource Document that you can download and print from the TPWD website. Since you will be keeping the head of the deer with the meat you're keeping for yourself, the other person must have the Resource document to prove it was a legal harvest until they reach their home or processor.

I'm sure others here will share their thoughts on how best to field dress and transport your harvest to the meat pole. Just keep in mind that opinions often differ on the subject as they often do with some many hunting-related topics.