Recipe: Roasted Leg of Venison with Root Vegtables

Roasted Leg of Venison

-team GTO 

Ingredients: 1 leg of venison trimmed up

1/2 cup of olive oil

Salt and pepper

3 tbsp garlic powder

1 tbsp onion powder

3 sprigs of thyme

5 carrots

5 potatoes

2 turnips

3 onions

1 cup beef stock

1 1/2 cups good red wine

1. Peel and rough chop vegetables 

2. Rub leg of venison with half the oil and generously season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and thyme

3. Place a roaster pan on med high heat and heat remaining olive oil

4. Sauté vegtables with some salt and pepper and a sprig of thyme until vegetables are nicely  colored 

5. Deglaze pan with stock and wine

6. Place leg of venison on top of vegtables, cover with foil, and place in the oven at 425 degrees

7. After 3 hours remove foil and finish of in the oven uncovered for 30-45 minutes. Take out when meat tenderly falls from the bone and has good color

8. Let leg rest for 15-25 minutes before carving. 

This is a great recipe for the holidays. From our GTO family to yours have a great safe holiday season

Billy

Gun Season

Well the annual whitetail deer gun season is upon us here in WNY. A time we look forward too for the entire off season.  This year was no exception.  For a week before opening day I anxiously awaited departure for our southern tier hunting and fishing camp, Plumbottom.  Gear packed, food and drink purchased, tree stands in tow we were ready to harvest an Alleghany County monster and start the season off with a bang.  How appropriate cuz that's how the season would kick off, with a bang.  A bang. A bang at one of those times when you are no where near prepared to harvest a huge mature whitetail. At about 11:45am the second day of the season I was sitting in a rocking tree stand as there was a good amount of wind when there was what sounded like a bulldozer coming through the woods behind me.  I stood and turned slightly to see what the commotion was about and two doe were standing looking behind them when a huge 8 point buck all of 140" stepped from the scrub brush at 75 yards. Bringing the gun up and focusing on the stud buck the prize does trotted to a patch of pines and the buck started after them. Safety off, trigger pulled and into the pines the buck followed his girls. Down the pines they scooted and out of site for the Rest of the trip.  The largest buck I had ever had the chance of harvesting and off he trotted with one thing on his mind and it wasn't my horrible luck.  Shortly after just for me I was kept company by a small doe who took up bedding fifteen feet from the bottom of my stand for three hours. Not having dmp's for the area I was stuck hanging with the young lady for the afternoon.  

Now Mike Baehr, Gary's brother, had no problem with his four year old stud opening day. Harvesting a score able  11point opening morning just after sunrise.  This is a beautiful buck that we've seen on the Beahr Farms for a couple seasons and have plenty of pictures of him on trail cameras.  

Also on the Beahr Farms GTO Outdoors jr member Trevor got the job done with his first ever deer putting this nice list swamp donkey on the ground around the same time I was missing the buck of my career done in the southern tier.   Great job Trevor. Trevor's dad team gto member Gary Beahr has had a great season so far filling all his doe tags, but has not had the chance to fulfill that buck tag. Gary is looking to tag out with something that puts his little brother's monster to shame. Good luck with that brother.

We will continue to keep on these whitetails while we fit some late season ducks and steelhead into the equation as well. Stay tuned for more GTO whitetail updates from the 2013 season. 

Thanks 

 Billy

Venison tenderloin on an open flame

Tonight's dinner in the woods

Recipe:Butterflied Venison Tenderloin Steaks

Here's one that team GTO will definitely be making this week at camp. A simple yet tasty way to prepare your harvest this fall.

Ingredients

1 venison tenderloin cut into 3/4 inch butterfly steaks
1 cup Speide Sauce (check your grocery store's marinade aisle)
2 tbsp sea salt and pepper

Cut your tenderloin into 3/4-1 inch venison steaks and place into a sealable freezer bag with 1 cup of Speide Sauce marinade. Seal bag and make sure sauce in liberally applied to all the steaks. If more is needed add more sauce. Place steaks into the refrigerator for 2-3 hours. Light your charcoal or propane grill, preferably hardwood charcoal. When grill is ready take out your steaks and liberally apply sea salt and fresh cracked pepper to all the steaks. 4-5 minutes on each side until your reach a nice medium/medium rare and pull off the heat immediately. Serve right away either naked or with your favorite sauce. A nice chimichurri would be wonderful over the platter of steaks.

The next time you harvest a beautiful white tail or elk try this one out

Cheers

Billy

Overtime

Tis the season. The season I wish there were thirty hours in a day and nine days in a week. The salmon run is in full effect out of Lake Ontario, bow season is starting to get good, and duck hunting opens in a week. From stream to stand as much as I can leaves little time for blogs to be written, face books to be posted, or twitters to tweet. I love October and everything that goes along with it. I love fly fishing for huge salmon and steelhead. It's a treat to grab a huge brown trout while drifting for these awesome fish. When not wading the tribs of the Great Lakes I sit in a tree stand admiring the changing of the leaves. The beautiful transformation passes the time as I sit in stealth and await a trophy whitetail. As the days pass and the weather changes those same whitetail begin to change their behavior patterns as well. Do they know why this happens? Do we know why? Mother Nature changing the environment right in front of our eyes.

In the coming week we will be going to our southern tier operation for four days of bow hunting and fall brown trout fishing. We will prepare the camp for weeks and weeks of debauchery, camaraderie, and hopefully a productive whitetail season. The whole idea of a hunting camp is what drew me to the sport. An escape, a place we gather to de-stress and fulfill our primal urge to harvest and provide. It might just be an outhouse and trailer from 1984 but it is a sanctuary that I look forward to coming back to every time we leave.

October, a time of change, a time of harvest. The month of Halloween, the month of hunting, fishing, and cooking. Huge salmon, nice big browns, bucks and does preparing for the upcoming rut, and flocks of migrating ducks and geese. I might complain about my lack of time or how busy I am, but I truly do love putting in the overtime in the field, in the woods, or waist deep in a Great Lakes tributary. Stay tuned for reports from the many adventures coming up throughout the next couple of months as we hunt, fish, and grill the WNY area.

Cheers,

Billy