We are almost to the halfway point of fall 2024, and oh baby, has it been a good one! Fall is my favorite season, largely due to the incredible variety and quantity of opportunities to harvest wonderful food from the land through fishing, hunting, and foraging.
The blog post covers some of my recent highlights fishing, hunting, and foraging, and tries to point you in the right direction if you want to pursue some of these same opportunities.
Let’s get to it!
As most big game hunters know, you get far more “usable” meat from the hindquarters of a deer than the front quarters.
The front quarters are often tougher to deal with and contain far more sinew and ligaments that are difficult to work with for creating nice venison roasts.
The solution is to cook/smoke the front quarters whole!
This blog post will explain exactly how to make perfect smoked whole deer leg with those front quarters that will be the envy of everyone who gets a taste!
2022 was an incredible year of new hunting experiences and also some challenges and missed opportunities. I want to share what went well, what didn’t and what I’ve learned from it in a way that will hopefully help you on your learning journey as well.
With my 2021 elk hunting season now being over, I get to write about and share some of the many lessons learned and stories from the woods. I know I basically didn’t touch the blog or YouTube channel during this period as I was trying to balance being in the woods, family obligations and joys of having a new puppy in the house.
I did keep my IG/FB followers mostly informed of how things were going though (pacificnwbestlife on IG and facebook.com/pnwbestlife on FB). Read on if you wish to learn about the shot I took on an elk during the season.
The very first fishing trip I remember was an amazing and epic trip to Lake Curlew in north eastern Washington.
We caught rainbow trout to our heart’s content. As many fish as we hooked, I think I was the one who ultimately was hooked, as I’ve not been able to go very long without thinking about fishing after that trip.
We went back to Curlew a few more times and the drive up would always be one of the best parts. The beauty of the hills, mountains, and woods of northeastern Washington was truly enchanting to me.
Returning to this area for the first deer hunt of my lifetime seemed fitting and driving past the lake filled my mind with these memories.