I'm planning on going out hunting whitetail deer this fall. I'm planning on doing this strictly for food, my family isn't doing that great financially and I thought a single deer could bring a lot of food home. So I do not want to have any decorations or head mounts hanging up, that's not something i'm interested in. But Just taking the meat and leaving the rest out there seems like a bit of a waste. So, are there any uses for any other parts of the deer besides decorations? I was reading about it a little and found you can use fat to make soap, sinew to make sort of like a rope or twine like material, and some people said you can sell the hide some people said that's illegal. So what are some uses for parts like the fat, sinew, hide, antler, etc besides using them as decorations?
falconry22014-05-12T11:01:32Z
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Not a lot of meat on a deer compared to some other animals-just a lean animal (see link). There are some great YouTube posts for field dressing,skinning,butchering and tanning. Some places do take deer hides for leather use-local place use to give a pair of gloves for the hide so they really aren't worth a lot raw. You can tan the hide yourself with the hair retained.put a backer on it and make a bedspread or cover. I know there is a small market for elk Ivory (teeth) for jewelry;not sure for deer,a really good antler set can bring good money (yes you can sell antler) and many people use less impressive antlers for knife handles.Depending on your location there could be local wild pigs that are just begging to get harvested-they cause lots of damage. http://www.alfredny.biz/sportsmen/Whitetail-yield-chart.htm
A $500 rifle should last you 100 years, which pans out to $5 a year, but it is expensive getting into it in the first place. There is also a big time investment in learning how to hunt, learning where you can hunt, learning how the individual animals in that area move etc. An experienced hunter can do a few days of scouting good hunting ground and then hunt with a 75% chance of success. A novice hunter would take weeks to gain the same info prior to the hunt, and would have a 10% chance of success.
While attempting to 'use' every portion of the animal is noble, it isn't very realistic. For starters, are you ready to really eat everything on a deer that is edible? Liver? Heart? Lungs? Tongue? Kidneys? Eyeballs? Make sausage or deer trype from the intestines? Do you eat any of that stuff now?
Remember, other animals have to eat too. It's nature's way for the wolf or mountain lion to eat the meat and organs and then the crows and other carrion eaters come and eat what is left, and then the insects and worms eat more, and eventually the plants eat what is left. Nature is the ultimate recycler and you'd probably be more disruptive and damaging in the long run trying to make your soap and rope than leaving the non-meat remains for mother nature to dispose of.
Sounds like an awfully expensive way to try and feed a family. As stated cheaper by far to buy food at the market if feeding a family is your real reason for this!
you could probably sell the deer head if your doing badly financially or even better sell the deer to a taxidermest but as an animal rights activist i wouldn't condone it only if as you say you financially struggling