Dinner ready; enjoy

Michael A. Sawyers
Cumberland Times-News

April 20, 2008 01:16 am

— The only place my deer tenderloin is going is into a marinade and then onto the grill.
You do what you want, but I’m not about to throw out the few remaining pieces of backstrap in my freezer just because somebody in North Dakota said they found lead in deer meet that came from the bullet that turned the animal into dinner.
I’ve been eating deer meat for a lot of years and the bulk of it has become mine with help from Mr. Remington, Mr. Federal and Mr. Winchester. I don’t have fangs and claws or paws. I can’t run faster than a deer so I have to depend upon ballistics and my trigger finger to acquire what wild predators gain via speed, strength and cunning or simplly by discovery.
Anyway, in case you missed it, folks in North Dakota and some other states are bent out of shape because of these findings and have ordered their venison donation programs to discard the nutritious meat.
I do all my own butchering and it doesn’t take a brain doctor to realize that you do not keep the bloodied portion of muscle that has been made inedible because of the impact of a whistling projectile.
Not enough about this scare has been explained to me. Can miniscule portions of the lead bullet somehow travel through the flesh of the animal, past the bruised portion that one would typically throw away and into the apparently good meat that becomes steaks, roasts and burgers?
Whenever my teeth have run into lead it has been when they were chewing a pheasant or duck or squirrel or rabbit that stopped some of the pellets sent their way from the end of my 12 gauge.
If I for a second thought that there was danger lurking in the deer jerky I make, I would never send it through the U.S. Postal Service to my best fishing buddy, Brady Sawyers, in Garden City, Kansas, where he sinks his 3-year-old teeth into it and says “Mmmmmm.”
The newest addition to that family is Brady’s sister, Chelsea, and, because she was just born on April 10 she doesn’t have teeth and deer jerky will have to wait.
Chelsea may never be called by her given name because while she was waiting to be born Brady began calling her Baby Flower and then all of us, including Flower’s dad, Ryan, and her mom, Jaime, started referring to her that way.
Is this doting on my part? Of course.
I dote, however, to prove a point. Doting grandfathers, or pappies in this case, don’t give things to their progeny or their progeny’s progeny that would harm them.
I have heard a lot of speculation about this lead-in-meat phenomenon.
One level of thought is that this is a ploy of those who oppose hunting and believe it will keep more bullets encased and allow more deer to survive.
Another speculation is that the person who announced these findings is a bowhunter and would prefer that only that kind of hunting take place.
Whatever.
My best guess is that the deer meat you acquired this past season with the help of your .30-06 or .270 is perfectly fit to eat.
Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.