Well, what with the Brexit thing being quite such a train crash in slow motion, the Lovely Wife and I took to the woods this weekend and butchered a deer.

We all need to get into practice, after all.

Of course, the current farce that is British ‘politics’ at the moment is completely coincidental to taking a (very) sharp knife to an ex Fallow Deer.

This was a day course on deer butchery with a group of pleasant lunatics that run a business in a tree house in a wood in Sussex getting involved with the joys of foraging and sustainable eating. Fifteen of us had paid to spend the day with a couple of fresh carcases, learning how to skin, dismember, joint and prepare venison – and then eating a fair amount of it afterwards. Not, as they were keen to point out, a course for vegetarians, although they were at pains to point of out the providence of the deer that are legally and carefully culled – a point a lot of people seem to miss as they moan about ow cruel it is to knock off a few Bambi. We killed off all their natural predators so not to carefully cull is not an option. And it is meat that is lean, healthy and actually very cheap, if you know where to get it from. I was quite shocked to be told that, Waitrose aside, most venison sold in UK supermarkets has until recently come from New Zealand, which is almost shameful.

As an aside, on the subject of Bambi (and Thumper as well, I love a good piece of local bunny) it reminds me of an anecdote that a few of us shared some years ago when on a long weekend in Gravelines in Northern France. Eating in a group at the hotel, we were managing perfectly well to negotiate the (not entirely unfairly) entire in French menu but became stuck on one particular dish. The helpful waitress thought for a moment and then, with a look of triumph, cheerfully explained that the meat dish concerned was ‘Bambi!’. Needless to say, for this alone, several of us felt committed to order our dishes of ‘Bambi!’ that evening. And very nice it was too, as I recall.

As was our more recent Sussex venison, although I am not sure I will ever forget just how wonderful was the wild garlic pesto that compromised one of the trimmings.

So, what did I learn? Mainly, a reminder that patience and taking care to know what the crucial parts of the operation are is the key to success. If I was honest, the skinning, dismembering and jointing is a relatively straightforward process, but like so many things there are certain areas where the amount of care taken becomes crucial in the gap between success and a botched job. Needless to say, myself and my fellow rabid carnivores paid strict attention to where and where not to put the knife it order not to embarrass ourselves – and as a result I think we all did a pretty good job, and left clutching various parts of the animal to supplement freezers, including a large amount of venison mince, as aside from the various cuts we had extracted, pretty much everything else goes into the mincer. This, you see, is something that is very much driven by the ‘you make use of it all’ philosophy, and in these days where we still waste so much (and I am as guilty as any of falling short of my own ideals in this area) it was fun to take part in an activity that extolled that and left you with a number of delicious dinners to look forward to.