Deer me!!!!

 My earliest memories of a deer, outside of Bambi, would be from my maternal grandfather, Hugh Fillingim.  My cousin and I were spending the day with him and we happened upon the poor beast hanging upside down in our grandfather's laundry room. Not the best way to introduce a little 5 year old city girl to rustic life.
  My next memory is when I was a bit older, maybe 7 or 8. I was spending some time during the summer with my aunt and uncle. My aunt had made us what I thought was turkey sausage from the local grocers. Boy, was it good!! After I had finished eating my lunch I was asked what I thought about it. You can only imagine my surprise when I found out that it was deer meat.
  Fast forward a few years to age 10. I am getting something out of the refrigerator and see this funny looking package. You guessed it, deer meat. I remember my dad cooking it and thinking it stinks...REAL bad. My mother said it was because it went bad (ya right!!)
 I was born and raised in the city. I was not familiar with ANY thing country. I vaguely remember my grandfather and my great grandmother gardening but it was not a way of our life.
  Somewhere along the way of getting to know my husband (while we were dating) he had mentioned hunting. But it never fazed me and I just listened never thinking that it might possibly be something that I would become more familiar with down the road.
  Fast forward again, and I am now 23. We have a 7 month old and I am expecting another baby. We now live in South Dakota. Good bye city, hello prairie. It is hunting season and my husband's cousins and some of his friends are going stir crazy over deer season. You would think they were taking steroids or something. My husband, who did hunt while a teenager, is caught up in the excitement.  I am about to get the experience of a life time! We wait the magic 3 days (which is a bunch of hooey if you ask me!) until it is time to butcher and I mean butcher the poor thing.
 We go to his cousin's house, who claims to be an expert at all things deer, and I am in for the shock of my life. His wife goes and gets a shower curtain, they move all the chairs away from the kitchen table and then in comes my husband and his cousin with not just a deer but one that has been skinned! I just about fell over! There is NO way I'm touching that thing!!! But touch I did! Thankfully my job was to rinse and package the meat. But I was taking too long for his cousin. He just didn't understand! There was a weird, slimy substance covering the meat and ALL of it was coming off before I packaged it. Well, that didn't last long because I was being too picky. How in the world can you be too picky over raw meat?!
  The only meat I ate from that deer were the 'steaks' and I fried mine to a crisp and drenched them in ketchup! After that experience I could always tell when one of our acquaintances had been cooking deer meat. It had a stench to it that is worse than fish!!!!
  My husband respected the fact that I did not care for deer meat and for that I am ever so grateful! Funny thing is our children absolutely love it! I always tried to hide my distaste for it because I did not want influence them concerning this. About 2 years before we left South Dakota another cousin of my husbands moved out there. Now he could cook, grill, BBQ, jerky, etc deer meat! It didn't smell or taste like what everyone elses smelled or tasted like. It wasn't too bad after all! The sad thing is my husband wasn't drawn in the 'lottery' (the way they choose who gets to hunt in SD) and I never was able to cook deer the way his cousin did.
 But don't fret, I don't loose any sleep over it. Being born in Texas, I grew up on steak. And that is what I prefer to eat, well, that and Mexican food, until the day I die!