I’ve never lived anywhere where butchers didn’t process wild game in addition to cows/sheep/pigs. Of course, I live out west in the most rural state there is, so…
A well-dressed(heh) carcass is a boon to the butcher.
If it’s gutted and skinned properly it makes their job so much easier.
Field dressed is less likely to be as clean. I hated those.
Mr.Wrekker and his bunch do their stuff at the camp now. So if we get any here at the house, we just have to wrap properly and put in the freezer.
I still hate it. I was done with it a few years ago. When I ran the hunters off, away from the house, to build the deer camp I said then “keep your deer kills there” I didn’t need to see it anymore.
My life got a lot easier after that.
Mr.Wrekker has some poor venison lovers he gives meat away to, every year.
He doesn’t waste it.
Gets all pissed when he sees nearly whole carcasses, headless of course, dumped.
Antler hunters are the worst
I not too long ago rewatched the 1965 version of That Darn Cat. A plot point of the movie was that a neighbor wanted to kill DC for stealing a duck that he had killed while hunting and was hanging on his porch for 48 hours before it was cooked.
And I think of every movie that has a scene passing through a Chinatown and there are always dressed birds hanging up.
And then there’s the end of Dickens’s Christmas Carol where he sends the kid to buy the prize turkey that has been hanging in the store for an unknown period of time.
Then we learned bad poultry can kill you.
All good points.
All I can say is that the poultry I’ve bought from neighboring farms was cleaned, defeathered, and sold to me the same day it was killed; and most of it went into the freezer the same day. (One goes into the oven for dinner.) Whereas the beef and lamb went to the slaughterhouse one day, but wasn’t ready to pick up until several days later, because it had to hang for a while first. (Lamb not as long as beef.) Pork I think only waited one day, though I haven’t bought that in that fashion as often.
– I’m not sure that the Dickens bird was being hung to improve the meat; I think it was just being hung on display. Admittedly under the conditions of the time hanging for display probably amounted to the same thing.
A photo from 2019.
A local farm harvests pastured chicken every two or three weeks during the summer. It’s so much fresher than what i can get at the supermarket. They freeze everything they don’t expect to sell in 3 days.
what about bad bad bad poultry?
so, 5 years have come and gone … what happened … don’t make this such a cliffhanger - I am truly getting goosebumps
Once upon a time, my father and I were going to visit his aunt. We drove past a pile of offal, where some hunter had dressed a deer. Dad said “We probably shouldn’t tell Aunt [Name] about that. She will tell us to come back and get her the liver and kidneys.”
She did. (We declined the request.)
On the subject of poultry, I have heard it claimed that wild game birds, which often have a stronger flavor than domesticated fowl, can benefit from hanging.
And you didn’t listen did you?
Does nobody make deer tripe?
When there was a car accident involving a deer that the town PD were dispatched to they wouldn’t call the carcass hauling service, they’d make a discreet call to one of the paramedics I used to work with. What’d they get out of that call? Some good venison chili 'cause he always seemed to have waaay too much given how many deer he got.
I once found a dead deer under my car which was parked in my driveway. It was really puzzling. I was trying to figure out if I could have unwittingly hit it while pulling in to the driveway, but it just wasn’t possible. As far as I could tell, it just somehow crawled under my car (not an easy task for a deer, and why would it do such a thing?) and died there. It took some work to find someone who would come remove the carcass. I don’t know what they did with it. I didn’t ask for any of the meat.
I’ve had friends who love hunting, get licenses in multiple states, but do not eat venison. I’m always happy to take it!
Sadly, these friends have gotten older and go hunting far less frequently.
At least in the state of Oregon, that’d get someone fined for wanton waste, if they could identify the perpetrator.
Some consider hanging game birds, at least, to be essential.
Hank Shaw’s Guide to Hanging Pheasants and Game Birds
Hanging Game Birds
Oh, yeah it’s an finable offense, here too.
Unless you catch them red-handed, it’s not an easy thing to pin on some person.
Speaking of random dead deer, we had one floating in the pond once. Was not pleasant getting it out. Already bloated. Gross.
There’s a problem with cars hitting feral hogs around here. Nobody wants those. They lay on road shoulders everywhere.
My one deer encounter was one running into the side of my truck as I was driving past. Which I thought demonstrated an impressive degree of self-destructive desire on the part of the stupid deer. It my case all it lost was some fur and a bit of skin, but it was probably woozy for awhile. Last I saw it was scampering vigorously off into the woods from whence it came.
But one committing suicide by diving under a parked car? Now that takes the cake. I hope, ref Tom Lehrer, that you were awarded both ears and the tail. 
A good friend of mine bought a brand new car that she picked up a 4 hour drive away after purchasing it locally. I dropped her off at the distant dealership then headed home once she was in the vehicle ready to go.
I drove straight home. She stopped for dinner. Driving home from the restaurant she hit a deer. The car was totaled.
Plot twist: the place where she picked the car up never checked her insurance. They shouldn’t have allowed her off their lot. She’d cancelled hers when she dropped off her trade in car at the local dealership , and figured she’d get a new policy when she got her new car.
No idea the end result, but I know she and the dealership were both freaking out.
This very thing happened to Son-of-a-wrek. He did have some kind of coverage, an interim policy of some sort.
Lucky he called the insurance guy ahead of time and got a new truck.
But yeah, they were all freaking out for awhile.
He never was happy with that truck after that. He said it a stain on it’s reputation. He traded it in as soon as he could.
Last time we bought a car that we financed, the dealership insisted that we contact our insurance company, put the car on our policy, and have them send proof to the dealership before we were given the keys to drive it away.
Most recent car purchase, we were able to pay for outright (thanks to recent windfall). CarMax didn’t inquire about insurance. Our policy will cover either of us whatever we’re driving at the time, and we did contact our insurance carrier very soon after to take care of that formality.