Hell of a weekend!!! Stopped by Scott's house Friday afternoon to load up my gaited mule and his TWH we use for quail hunting to carry over to the Kudzu-- Corriente place, where we park hunters and do all of the cooking. His 90 yr old mom came riding up on her 4 wheeler. This woman can still ride a horse, wears everyone out in bass tournaments, and gets her limit of doves every time she shoots! I hadn't seen her in a couple of years, and Scott's wife said she told them to call her when I pulled up. Love her to death. I have a 14 hd SSH that I used for CMS and bird hunting on (well, for smaller people to do these on) that I left down there for her several years ago. because he is easier for her to saddle and get on by herself. she asked me " Warren, how much would you charge me to make 5 gallons of your chilli for me while you are down here. Tell me the ingredients and I will get my daughter to go get them and bring them over to you". I said " Ms. Edna, there is no way on God's green earth I would EVER let you pay me to do that. Trade me a couple of quarts of your vegetable soup and we will call it even!: I gave Scott's wife a list of things we wouldn't already have over there, and told her to bring me the receipt and I wanted to pay for it.
Put the 100 gallon pot on, full of the game we use in lieu of chickens for the Brunswick stew, to start boiling around 7. Rabbit, squirrel, quail, dove, duck, wild turkey, and a critter or two I didn't recognize and decided not to even ask. About 11, we sat the pot off the fire to cool to where we could de-bone it before making the stew. The, we got the fire going in the big smoker. This year we just did 3 whole hogs and some chickens for the Saturday supper. Put the hogs on about midnight or 1 AM, then rested til 5 AM when it was time to de-bone the broth and start making the stew. You do NOT want to witness how traditional stew is deboned!!
After it is de-boned, you set the pot back on the fire and add the corn, tomatoes, ground venison, the wild-hog sausage and this year added about 30 lbs of ground beef from our Correinte cow the poachers shot. Used this beef for Ms. Edna's chilli as well. Had some of the high school kid helpers again this year that we assigned to stew-stirring detail. Of course a couple boys didnt listen, and showed up in shorts. after stirring the stew for a few minutes, they had to go home and get their long pants! I cooked everyone breakfast: bacon, sausage, ham, tenderloin and baloney, and Scotts wife brought over the biscuits. after breakfast, I put on Ms. Edna's chilli, and got ready to start frying the fish by 11. This year we did 100 lbs of catfish and about 30 lbs of gator tail , plus all the fixings. We planned on serving about 7, so I put the chickens on the grill about 3 PM. And we took the stew off the fire at 6. Started pulling and chopping the hogs about 6 as well.
The field had sold out at 200 hunters as usual, and we fed probably 350-400 people. Had several gallons of stew left that we sold for $40 a gallon, and nearly a half a hog of BBQ left that we sold for $20 a lb. I told Scott that we should have just made 100gallons of stew and would have made $4k just selling it, and not fool with a dove shoot. 200 hunters at $250 each was just $5k, but you got to take the labor, seed, and fertilizer out of that for the dove fields! And we still buy all of that food and spend 2 days cooking it as part of that $250 to shoot.
Sunday, Scott and I rode all over the 200 acre Kudzu pasture which has only had the 4 Corriente heifers from last year, my 5 plummer cows, and the Brahma x Chianina nd Br x Chiangus heifers I bought end of spring. And our Corr bull. You could not tell cattle were on it unless you found one of their trails. But looks like we gonna be absolutely EAT UP with rabbit and quail this year! And deer. The 450 acres across the road, which he plants about 50 for the dove field, and normally does corn, beans, peanuts and cotton..he put all in cotton except for the dove field. We saw a lot of sign that these 200 acres were pretty thick in deer this year because of that. They did a number on some of the food plots, and looks like a bumper acorn crop this year. Deer season starts soon, and we decided to hunt it this year til quail and rabbit season opens in November.
After we sold the Corriente herd and my 12 Fla scrubs and Piney woods cows end of April, he put the corr bull in with the 4 corr heifers and my 5 pluumers, and my 2 hiefers. They were 14-15 mos old when I got them, and I didn't want to breed them just yet, but I guess they are bred now. I was gonna breed those plummers and the BR x Chiangus to an Ultrablack, and the BR x Chianina to a Charlolais. But, with me being in and out of the hospital from May 5th through end of July with my heart stuff, I just didn't get a chance to get them out of there.
Found a guy that is interested in getting all 7 to breed to Charolais. He wants to know when they are due, but I don't know for sure. Just gonna tell him they been with a Corrinte bull from May til now, and I don't have the time to fool with vet checking them. Those calves won;t be worth much, so just gonna price em to him as open cows, and the calves will just be a bonus .
Monday is when we and friends and family shoot, and I had a ball. Left out Monday night with 36 doves in the cooler and 2 quarts of Ms. Edna's soup, and a sore shoulder from a case of shells! LOL. I wasn't as tired as I was last year, because I mostly just supervised and advised on all of the cooking. Plus, I had this condition last year....I just didn't know it. I thought I was just wore out and ;losing weight because I was getting old!
