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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Cooking your game: Cabin fever venison roast stew

John Hennessy The Spokesman-Review

What happens when you put three professional cooks and one successful deer hunter in a cabin for three days? No one goes hungry, and we may use ‘F’ and ‘D’ words consecutively – fine dining.

Last year, just before Thanksgiving, Kevin Russell, kitchen manager of the Elk Public House, and Mike Bonnes, co-owner of Brooklyn Deli & Brooklyn Nights Lounge, joined Kieran “Ruk” Kuchenbecker and me for a three-day marathon of fishing and bird hunting near Kettle Falls.

A month and a half earlier, just after sunrise during Muzzloader season on Oct. 4, Ruk was glassing a group of whitetails over two hundred yards away, strategizing how to advance through a long stretch of coverless, dry Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land and sagebrush.

Approximately 15 minutes after Ruk spotted the whitetails, they began to head north, even farther away. However, about the same time, two muley bucks were trotting into the CRP.

Ruk raised his binoculars one more time to count the tines on their antlers – one 3-pointer and one 4-pointer. Ruk knew he would have to get closer for a clean shot, so that left only one option: The belly crawl.

He crawled for about 50 yards in order to get within range of the 4-pointer.

From the prone position, he aimed for the vitals with his Winchester X-150 and squeezed the trigger. He quickly glassed the bucks and saw he had made a clean shot. Both bucks ran for a few yards, then the 4-pointer dropped to the ground.

Ruk field-dressed the deer and took it to his butcher – 150 pounds of meat.

For our pre-Thanksgiving trip, he brought along a roast. Since we were staying at North Lake RV Park and Campground, which sits along Northern Lake Roosevelt, a couple of us spent our early mornings waterfowl hunting while the other guys (those without a waterfowl endorsement) cooked breakfast.

After a breakfast of bacon and eggs, we took excess bacon grease and spread it across a flat, cast-iron skillet and placed that skillet atop our piping-hot cast-iron wood stove. We cut the venison roast into chunks and set them to sear in bacon grease.

While the roast chunks were searing, we diced one yellow onion and three large baking potatoes. We also sliced four carrots and one celery stalk then dropped all our vegetables into the crockpot and sprinkled over a tablespoon each of salt and pepper.

Once the venison had seared, we dropped the chucks into the crockpot and took our bag of pre-made demi-glace (approximately two cups) and poured it in. We set the crockpot to “low” heat and headed off to hunt Sherman Creek and up Bisbee Mountain.

For the next 7-8 hours, while our venison roast stew simmered, we spent our time trudging up Bisbee in search of grouse.

Afterward, we came home to the sweet smells of a wood stove and venison stew. We threw another log on the fire, added salt to taste to the stew and ladled out what we considered the best campfire dinner we had ever tasted.

The entire trip was nothing less than five stars.