As I’ve tried to expand my sustainability horizons over the past 4 years, I discovered hunting.  I’d always been interested in hunting and curious (as well as unsure) about wether or not I could ever participate.  Hunters often get a bad rap, but it’s not wholly undeserved.  I hunt so that I can get a sustainable, organic source of meat  for the winter and summer months in the fall.  The places where I typically hunt I get tags that are designed to control the local population of the animal I’m out hunting, so not only am I getting some stuff for the freezer, but I’m also doing the land a favor by slowing down the heavy grazing going on.

I’ve written about this multiple times before, talking about the total cost of my Halibut fishing, my Elk Hunt, my duck hunt, and my blue grouse hunt.  Oddly enough, the first hunt that I ever went on for antelope has not gotten a cost analysis yet.  I didnt get to go this year, and I didnt buy a tag in time last year.  I always like to see the cost breakdown and figure out how much meat I got per pound.  For just about every hunt, I seem to be landing all over the map as far as cost goes, coming in near $5 per pound on the elk side, and upwards of $28 dollars per pound for duck.  Of course, this is slightly skewed, because it’s not all lower quality meats like ground elk or elk sausage, there’s also steak cuts and tenderloin cuts.

Next on the list for this time is deer.  I’ve been wanting to go hunt deer for a while, and there is a huge deer population in northern wyoming (both white tail deer and mule deer).  So much so that the landowners in the area where we hunt (Ucross, WY) call the game warden to send hunters to their place so they can thin the herd a bit.  The deer eat all the hay that the landowners have stored for the winter for their sheep or cattle, which annoys the landowners.

For this deer hunting trip, it was me, my father in law, the friend that took me duck hunting a while back.

Here are the costs of my deer hunting trip:

• Deer tags $60.  This year, I got two deer tags.  I had initially only planned on buying one, but after talking to the landowners when we got there, I decided that if I harvested one early enough I’d go into town and buy another one.  My other buddy decided the same thing, and that’s what we ended up doing
• Gas/Lodging $68.  This trip basically required a 1 night stay, and 2 tanks of gas.  My father in law paid for the room, and I bought one of the tanks of gas and my buddy bought the other.  The cost of all three was roughly equal
• Food/drinks $30.  Though I brought snacks with me for in the car on the way up and back, I still paid for a fair amount of meals (3).  The food situation was a bit thin at the house before I left, so I couldnt really pack as much of my own food as I wanted.

Unlike all of my other hunts, I was able to offset the costs of this hunt.  After talking to the rancher about the number of deer and a friend, I offered to “sell” my second deer to my friend for $25 (basically the cost of the tag).  He agreed (I’m not sure if he thought I was joking or not), and this was the main reason I got the second tag.  Since I knew I could most likely get one and I had something to do with the meat, it didnt seem like that much of a risk.  I texted my friend when we left and told him to find a processor for the animal and that he could come pick it up the next day and he was shocked.  He ended up giving me $30, which I wasnt going to complain about.

The total cost for the trip was $128, and I ended up with 1 white tail deer. I process the meat myself, and though I’m not finished with it yet, I’ll end up with about 25 lbs of meat when everything is said and done.  This puts the cost per pound of meat at about $5.12, which is slightly less than what I paid for elk (though it would have been higher had I not had to go out for elk like 9 times).  Of course, this is not all steak quality meat, but I would say about 33% of it is.  This will be a nice addition to the winter rotation, and I’ll probably end up giving some away as well.

Readers: Do you think the price for game meat is reasonable?  Do you know someone that hunts, or are you involved in a roadkill program in your state (where they take animals that got hit and give away the meat)?  

Right before I signed us up for our 2012 CSA, I was thinking about the amount of food H and I are currently in possession of, our current eating habits and a few other things and I came across kind of a startling realization.  All of that elk that I went out and got will probably be there for a while based on our current patterns, so I created a Meat Challenge.  After purchasing shares from the CSA for H and I, I realized that we didnt need to stop challenging with meat (though this one is just for me, because we’re a split food household).  After thinking about the amount of food that we ordered and what we eat (again), I figured we can essentially make that our food spending for July – December.

Since we basically only eat fruits and veggies and we’ve got enough meat to last us till the fall (most likely) we are going to try and drastically cut back on the food that we purchase for the latter half of 2012 while we are getting our CSA’s.  We will be needing minimal amounts of vegetables and fruits, and our only needs will be in the dairy and grains area.  Right now, we dont eat a whole lot of rice (I think we go through a 5lb bag in 3 months), but I’d like to change that a bit.  In addition to rice, we also eat quite a bit of dried beans, and I’m not sure we will be getting those with our CSA, so we will need to purchase that at the store as well.

One of the other things we will continue to need to purchase is dairy products, such as milk and cheese (I’ll probably start making my own yogurt again) and do a few other things to keep the buying down to a minimum as well.  I typically look to food to reduce costs in my monthly budget (sometimes correctly, sometimes not) and this is one of those times.  If we can pull this off, there will of course have to be some rules, so I think these will do just fine:

1. Use all food we get from the CSA on a weekly basis.  This shouldn’t be too difficult – we will most likely get our shares on friday and I usually menu plan on saturday and shop on sunday.  I can assure that the foods that will not get put in a recipe can get turned into snack food.  One caveat to this is food that will be preserved – Some things I may need to get from the store for the recipes (including spices) will be allowed if I cant complete the recipe.
2. Use things from pantry and freezer before purchasing new food.
3. I can use additional veggies and herbs that H and I are able to grow ourselves
4. I will try to make as many things at home as possible, but will consider time constraints (ie I probably wont be making bread)
5. Obviously, none of this will count during the wedding/honeymoon time as we will be out of town!

Hopefully going after these few rules H and I will be able to ensure that we dont waste anything that we get from the CSA (I do believe we had to toss out a very, very small amount of fruit that had gone bad) and we will maximize the value that we get from the CSA.  In doing so, I believe we will be able to save quite a bit of money at the grocery store during July – December (as we’ve already paid for the shares).

Readers:  Have you tried to put a limit on some of the things that you’ve bought from the grocery store? What did you try to cut out and why?  How did it work?  Do you have any rules to suggest for H and I during this challenge, or think that I may be missing something?

One big part of sustainability (to me) is food.  What you eat, how often you eat it, what your food eats, where it comes from, how it gets to your fridge and so on.  There are so many variables to how your food comes to your plate that affect all of my favorite topics: finances (cost), sustainability (transportation/”food miles”, growing practices/feeding, inputs/fertilizers/hormones/etc) and health (what you eat/how much/how often).  In an effort to lower my own impact, I’ve been focusing on getting my own food – mostly meat, but hopefully next summer I can try my hand at gardening.  When I do go out and get my own food, I like to do a bit of cost/benefit analysis.  Was it worth it for me to get it, or should I just save the time/money and buy it at the store?  If you’re curious you can find part one (halibut) and part two (duck) on the site.

This time, the hunt was for elk.  Here’s what it cost:

• Elk Tag: $52
• Conservation Stamp for 2011:  $12.50  - This is something anyone in wyoming who is hunting or fishing has to purchase.  Usually they use the money for land conservation.  The stamp is good for 1 calendar year.
• Conservation Stamp for 2012: $12.50 – Unfortunately, these stamps are good for a calendar year, not from year to date purchase.  Since I didnt get an elk in 2011, I had to buy a new one.  Feeling like I was buying these things all the time annoyed me (and I didnt want to forget), so I bought a lifetime conservation stamp for $180.50.  I just used the yearly cost here though.  If the price stays the same, I’ll be money ahead in 15 years, and sooner if the price goes up.
• Gun/Ammo: Borrowed/given to me – but this will be an expense in the future.  Obviously the gun will be a 1 time expense, but not the ammo.
• Gas: $200 – This area isn’t really close to my house at all and I’d guesstimate I used 3 tanks of gas I wouldn’t have used otherwise.  I went up a total of 5 times and I took my truck 2 of those times, using a full tank both times.  The third was for meeting the rest of my group.
• Foil/Saran Wrap: $8 – Yes, even though I bought some in Alaska, I needed more to process my elk meat.
• 750 mL of whiskey: $11 – Needed.
• Grinding: Free – Usually I pay to have the tougher cuts ground into burger meat, but a co-worker has a grinder that she is willing to let me use, which is a huge score!

Obviously, that’s quite a long list, and the total is $297, which is about what I spent on the halibut (go figure) but  is still a whole slew of money.

Before I went out last Saturday, I was pretty pessimistic about the whole thing, figuring that I’d thrown all that cash down the drain and not gotten anything from it (for the second year in a row)!  Even after I ate my lunch on Saturday, and we had finished our loop and were headed back to the truck, I was ready to go home and had made the decision to give it up for the season.  Thankfully, we stumbled upon some tracks and I was able to bring one down after some stalking.  So once I drug the thing back to the truck (2 miles!) and went home, I had to get to work processing and weighing. After everything was deboned, I had 58 lbs of meat.  This is meat of all different grades and qualities, from things that need to be slow cooked or ground because they aren’t tender to things that are very, very tender and tasty.  (Pictures: Pre deboned meat from 1 rear leg, and a de-boned rear leg [pic1, pic2]).  I basically spent most everyday from Saturday to Thursday trimming the silver off, and spent about 3 hours last this Saturday wrapping everything up.  Obviously, it doesn’t end once you’re out of the field.

I had to cut all of the silver off so the meat wouldnt taste gamey, and I’m guessing that was about 5 pounds, leaving me with about 53 pounds of useable meat.  This puts my total cost per pound at $5.12, which I think is pretty good.  While not all of what I got is “steak” quality, it is all organic, grass fed, pasture raised, etc.  Overall, that’s a pretty cheap price per pound for meat like that – I’ve done the math on buying a side of beef and it comes out somewhere between 6 and 7 bucks a pound (at least around here).  I figure this is a pretty good comparison, so I’m happy with the results.

I also don’t think I’ll need to do this again next year.  H is a vegetarian, so I’ve got all of this to eat myself or give away.  I’ve already given some away  and will probably give away more. I’ll save the ground elk meat for my bachelor party this summer and probably keep the rest and hopefully find some good elk sausage recipes or elk chili recipes (shockingly, I had enough freezer room after my quest to eat freezer stuff).  The unfortunate thing about this is that I could have spent all of that money and came up with nothing, but that is just how it all works.  Buying a tag isnt like buying the meat off the carcass – it does take a considerable amount of time and effort, but to me it’s worth it.

Some thoughts on the cost: I try not to put a price on the time I spend outdoors in some gorgeous country (if you want to know what the area looks like, check my facebook picture) because that is subjective, and I could derive more value from it than others (or less).  I also don’t count the benefit of the workout I get, but I do count it towards my workout total for the month – it’s a lot of walking.

Readers: Do you hunt, or are you interested in it?  Are you lucky enough to have a friend that just gives you meat instead of you having to go get it yourself?  Have you ever considered hunting as a (long-term) strategy to save money and increase the quality of your food?