The Perfect Wife (Blog 312)

Wednesday afternoon, a landowner on whose property I hunted on contacted me and told me that the deer were streaming onto her property the past few evenings and that I ought to come over and bowhunt. The day before, Elaine and I had gathered wild summer grapes, and I had planned to help her remove the grapes from the stems Wednesday after I finished teaching school for the day.

But the temptation of bowhunting for deer consumed me, so as soon I arrived home I took off to a treestand.  Earlier I had told Elaine that I "might" go deer hunting but that I probably wouldn't.

The landowner's description of the deer movement was accurate and about 45 minutes after I climbed into my stand, I arrowed a whitetail.  The blood trail was short, and soon I was on the way home where I found that Elaine had already done the grape work, and now I was presenting her with another task... our butchering a deer.

We have our butchering routine fairly well set.  Basically, I quarter the animal while upstairs, Elaine does the "fine" work and wraps the bottom and top loins to freeze and cleans the heart and tongue to freeze. The four quarters are put on ice for us to labor on the next day as Elaine feels that that meat works up better after it is chilled.

Through all the butchering Wednesday evening, Elaine never complained even though she had already worked quite long

on the grapes, which today she will turn into jelly... when she has finished working on the quarters.

Yet another reason why Elaine is the perfect wife. The picture above shows her during our summer grape foray.