I am ashamed, disgusted, and embarrassed to share these events, but my therapist says it will help my pain to get it off my chest.
I got home Monday, May 23rd, from a great hunt with a good friend in Nebraska and Kansas. We were each fortunate to take three nice longbeards in Nebraska and two nice longbeards in Kansas in three days of hunting. We had four doubles, one where I shot mine with a bow and he then killed his flogging my downed bird. Awesome stuff and I'm very grateful to have experienced it.
When I got home about dark, I repacked the meat cooler with ice and also repacked the big cooler I had two whole birds packed in to take to the taxidermist. I was going to do a little better job cleaning up the turkey breasts and wrap them and freeze them the next day.
I took the birds to the taxidermist the next day as planned. I got busy catching up at work and at home with my toddler, infant, wife, and the chores that had suffered during turkey season, and did not think of the meat again until Sunday.
The ice was long melted and the meat was ruined. I had 5.5 breasts from these grain raised birds, two of which were 24+ lbs and half a breast filled a gallon freezer bag. I am disgusted and angry with myself for losing this great table fare and not being able to enjoy the good fortune over the next several months with family and friends.
I had also neglected the turkey legs and they were still in a ziploc bag in the garage. I spent some disgusting time cutting the spurs off of the legs with a cordless sawzall. I say disgusting because there were already maggots on the legs and the smell was ripe. I then pushed the marrow out with a q-tip and pulled the skin off with a pocket knife on the three best sets first. I put one 1-3/8" and two 1-1/4" pairs of very sharp spurs in a pan of boiling water while I dealt with the lesser pairs. In a few minutes I smelled something and quickly figured out I had boiled all of the water off of the spurs and melted the sharp curved ends off of all three pair!
I was kidding about the therapist, but I did learn this week at work through some personality profile training that I tend to have to many projects going on and sometimes struggle to complete things I start and don't always pay enough attention to details.
One day I think I might be able to laugh about the spurs, but I will never laugh about the wasted meat. Maybe I should just be a camera man and caller?
