In times past, I have regaled you readers of SBCVoices with tales of the woods and the lovely woodland creatures. Well, and then how I took the lovely woodland creatures and turned them into dinner, but they are lovely on the plate as well. In fact, the only thing that leans me toward a post-millennial view are Genesis 9:3 and Acts 10:13. That God has progressed the world from the vegetarian garden to our modern bacon cheeseburger days is the only sign of sustained progress I can find.
I have decided, however, to give up deer hunting. On average, I get 40 pounds of usable meat from a whitetail deer. The hides aren’t really big enough to make new blankets, and there’s not really a use for the parts created for less honour. It just seems like I’m not getting much for an afternoon in cold weather hunting boots and a single cartridge.
Especially when you compare the potential meat I would receive from a buffalo (or bison, for the perfectionists.) The average buffalo produces somewhere above a half-ton of meat, and you can make a huge blanket out of its hide. Overall, the meat-to-offal ration is better than the whitetail deer, and it still can just take a single, well-placed shot. Plus, Dave always calls me names when I shoot deer, and fewer people think of buffalo as “cute,” so it’ll be less emotional hassle to switch to buffalo hunting.
Now, for those of you still with me, there’s a minor problem with this, isn’t there? After the combine efforts of hunters, slaughterers, and railroad tycoons, we nearly obliterated the American buffalo population. The estimates are that the buffalo herds of North America were reduced from tens of millions in the pre-colonial era to less than a thousand when Jonathan Haralson of Alabama was President of the SBC (1890). While there have been some strides made in seeing the wild buffalo roam again, most buffalo are at least semi-domestic and used as alternates to beef. It is possible to find a ranch that allows the occasional buffalo hunt–the cost would be somewhere around $3000, assuming you already own the necessary equipment.
In short, if I switch to buffalo hunting, I’ll starve. Fortunately, I’ve never thought of actually hunting a buffalo, because there are no wild ones around here. My eyes are, truly, fixed on the lower production of hunting deer and, if necessary, squirrels. It costs less to do, though I have to hunt more often. I also have the ability to process a deer at a time, or the occasional squirrel family, and store the meat for proper use. A whole buffalo?
Not a chance. The investment in equipment to hunt, prep, store, and utilize the whole buffalo is beyond my resources. Even if I had the experience and the proper equipment, there is really a dearth of opportunity to just find a buffalo for food. Under certain conditions, in certain circumstances, you can clean up. But if you’re out there, day-to-day, needing to put meat on the table, buffalo must be your back-up hope, not your main plan.
You know that this has a point, somewhere, don’t you? There’s actually more than one.
First: time was, one could pack a church as easily as hunting the plains buffalo in 1845. Interested people were everywhere, and simply popping up among them with a church, a Bible, and a preacher drew a crowd. There was a cultural pressure to be in a church, and we were able to capitalize on that by having churches.
Yet over time, we have exhausted that opportunity. People have come to our churches seeking God and found man; they have come to our gatherings seeking fellowship and found fighting; they have come to our teaching seeking meat and found fluffernutters. We have gone claiming to carry the Gospel but attached agenda, politics, and fund-raising. Those people who are convicted by the Spirit and drawn to the Risen Lord are accustomed to hiding from us because we have been careless in the past.
Further, we must learn to hunt smaller game. Rather than being able to camp at a distance, spot a buffalo herd from afar and go get it, we must relearn how to live closer to the target. Just as a deer hunter moves carefully through the woods, always seeking his game, we must engage closer to our goals. We cannot count on swooping in only at Harvest Crusade time and then retreating. We must go about, every day looking for what that day brings.
Second: for the sake of those already within the faith, we have to reconsider our feed-by-buffalo hunt methods. Consider this: how do we encourage ministers, teachers, pastors within the Southern Baptist Convention? With an annual buffalo hunt called the Pastor’s Conference. Is this really wise? We do it at the state level, too, here in the South. Woe be unto the pastor that can’t make the Monday before a Convention, because now you’re on your own for another year.
I think we would be wise to acknowledge that, while the buffalo fest that is hearing all of those preachers is nice, we are going to continued to starve the front-line of people in ministry unless we can find some ways to do regional, multi-season opportunities for fellowship and training. It is the ounce of prevention that could save a pound of cure–or the $100 for church fitness that saves the $10000 for church resuscitation or $100000 for church planting.
I am uncertain exactly what to suggest, but we need to start thinking about regular feeding instead of occasional feeding.
Third: for the sake of your own life, do you try to live by the buffalo hunt?
You know what I mean: binge-reading of Scripture. Heavy-duty weekends of cleaning and self-discipline in exercise. A massive budgeting effort, right before a special time. We save our discipleship for conferences and our evangelism for revivals.
And we’re starving ourselves. Our churches show that: we are full of people and pastors that are starved for the day-to-day life of walking with Jesus. Rather than practicing and teaching the skills to make the small steps necessary for survival and health, we push toward the big moments. We highlight the soul-winner who led a thousand in a day without noticing the soul-winner who faithfully prepared small children to receive the Gospel. We focus on the person delivered instantly from temptations and neglect the one who fights them daily.
Along the way of history, most people who depended on buffalo hunting adapted and found other ways.
Will we?
Or will we starve to death while celebrating buffalo gone by?
Our Sunday School’s would do better without announcements and prayer request. I made an oversized calendar and posted events, then, during opening prayer, those with prayer request were encouraged to pray for the person they want to acknowledge. Sunday School is one hour long. Announcements and prayer request take up the first 20 minutes and the choir has to leave 15 minutes before class is to be over. At best, the lesson is just a devotional. In some cases, too much emphasis is put on the services rather than Bible teaching. The services border on Christian entertainment.
Can you post the recipe for fluffernutters?
Imagine a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.
Now, replace the Jelly with Marshmallow Fluff.
There’s a fluffernutter.
Doug,
A timely word. Challenging, encouraging & convicting. Informative too. Thanks.
Thank you, Bro. Dwight.
Dear Doug: I read with good humor your blog about Buffalo Hunting and starvation. However, I call attention to the one case of down right envy and jealousy that came into my life. It had to do with my sister and her husband, the DOM of an association in Mt. that encompasses the Custer Battle Field and the Crow Indian Reseration (they got the land cause they backed the Americans). Any way in the early 90s, shortly after my brother-in-law became the Dom after appointment by the NAMB (I think it might have been HMB then), they got invited to a church on the reservation and were served buffalo steaks fresh from the Crow Indians own heard. Talk about eat your heart out. I did. I had always wanted to eat Buffalo steaks, since I was a tad with a western novel stuck in my hands by my grandma, when I was barely able to walk (these would have been Zane Grey and Louis L’amour, in that order, with others thrown in for good measure). To make a long story short, Ted Turner opened the Montana Grill which offered Buffalo steaks. Our son and his buddy took me there for a birthday treat. Sigh! Happy Hunting Grounds on earth for a descendant of a Cherokee Indian Lady (our Great great grandmother). In any case, I have eaten there at Ted’s (inspite of his silly attempt to be an Atheist…wonder how he would have done to have met me, when I was one and down right belligerent about it in my teen age years??) a number of times, whenever some extra cash flowed my way (other wise not a place for a poor Baptist preacher).
And why hunt the Buffaloes (I don’t like that term Bison; it is like calling Arkansaw, Ar Kansas, when the Quapaws had a lot more to do with it (Never heard the term Ar Kansas until the 90s. Never. Not Once in all those years), when you can raise them? There is a farm right near by in Person County, NC where they raise Buffalo and sell their meat in the supermarkets.
And sweet and cuddly as those creatures look, and however successful the domestication process is, they are apt to charge you at any time. My sister says the folks who visit Yellowstone, get out of their cars, and go up close to snap pictures, perhaps, even with the idea of a posed picture or to scratch one behind the ears. A real no, no with wild Buffaloes. Americans can be very unmindful about wild animals, sort of like the Chinese reporter who ran up close to a Panda Bear and got mauled for his efforts.
I was doing a little research on buffalo for this, and I found a website for a ranch in Missouri that does guided buffalo hunts.
The opening text went on and on about how majestic the buffalo is, how beautiful, how hard it is to picture the animal without seeing one up close.
And then proceeded to try and sell you on coming to shoot one.
Somehow, that didn’t connect for me. 🙂
I ate a buffalo burger one time.
I have eaten much deer.
David
I bought some farmed ground buffalo, couldn’t tell the difference in the burgers.
I would love to actually go on one of those “guided buffalo hunts,” but the cost for a new freezer to hold all the buffalo is out of the budget, much less the cost of going. It will be cheaper to go to Baltimore for the SBC than it would to hunt a buffalo.
Doug,
Great analogy. Great post.
Talking about the offal rate reminded me of hogs back in the old days of NC where I live. My Father-in-Law’s old rig for slaughtering hogs still stands at the tree line in the back yard. In those days, nothing went to waste on the animal. They would have eaten the oink if they could have figured out how to get it into the pot.
My neighbor, who helped me process deer last year, grew up doing the same type of thing. You used it. There’s no squirrel too small to put in chili, and so forth.
If you have to kill, you better use it.
Now that you mention squirrel, my folks were given squirrel as a welcoming gift when we moved south. My mom grew up on a small Midwest farm where nothing was wasted, but they had never hunted squirrel. She put it in a stew so us kids would eat it without knowing what it was. We thought it was the tastiest stew we had ever eaten and we talked about it for years. And it was only years later that they told us what that famous stew really was. I’d eat it again.
I was in a car with my wife and family in 2011 in Custer State park. A bison attacked our car. Bison 1, Honda Odyssey 0.
Unfortunately we were not magically transported to a State Farm office.
Oh, and good post, Doug.
Honda v. Buffalo? I’d definitely put the money on the buffalo.
I have pictures that demonstrate that the bison won. I was covered in shattered glass (I was driving) and was shaking and terrified.
Dave, have you considered abandoning motor vehicles altogether?
the buffalo probably thought that the Honda was some kind of weird buffalo that needed to be excluded from its territory
Buffalo 1, Honda 0. Well that stands to reason. After all that head of his is tougher than any thing but titanium or some of these new fangled composites that they use in modern air craft..though I would still bet on the hard head. I still can’t get over what my sister told me about vacationers getting out their cars and going up to those Buffaloes in order to get a close up picture. Imagine the disaster in such actions. There ain’t no hope for stupid, though it is probably just being pure dee old thoughtless. Thinking is something not much done or loved these days.
You’re not kidding. American Bison adults range from 1/2 ton to a ton in weight, can jump as high as 6 feet from a still-standing position, and are incredibly nimble when running at a top speed of 35 mph. They can turn on a dime. Yet they often move deceptively slow.
I’d say it’s best to stand back a ways from them.
about a mile should do it, if you have big barrier for protection.
Deer poppers are excellent.
David
What is a deer popper? a small gun for deer hunting?
It’s like a popcorn popper, but bigger.
I won’t pretend to know volfan’s recipe, but around here that would get you a small piece of deer meat, battered and deep-fried. Usually bite-size, or maybe just a tad bigger, typically with some spice to it.
A really good, deer popper…is where you take a little hunk(bite size) of deer meat, or wild turkey meat, or duck, or whatever….and, you marinate it…..then, you take just a little bit of cream cheese, and put it on the meat….then you put a little piece of onion on one side of the meat, and a piece of pepper(green, or hot) on the other side…. then, you wrap bacon around this little bit of Heaven, to hold it all together, as well as add taste….then, you cook it on the grill…
Try it….you’ll thank me later.
David
That sounds good.
First time we had duck around here, I wrapped a few duck breasts in bacon and pan-fried them.
Made pulling those feathers off worth it.
Doug Hibbard,
Wonderful post, the small game is the answer. One can get enough small game to equal a huge Buffalo.
My solution is this, I remember when I went hunting for the first time. I was so excited just to have a 16 Ga. shot gun in my hands. After going hunting three times and coming home with no game, I knew I was doing something wrong.
Just having a gun will not guarantee me game. I had to learn to be quiet and stalk the game. I had to learn their moves, and what the game would do next. So after a while, I shot my first squirrel, I was as proud of that one squirrel as someone with a big buffalo.
I understand what you are saying in your post. I have a great solution.
If we can get the congregation excited about hunting the small game,
even if they bring home just one soul, after a while there will be enough souls to equal one huge buffalo.
We pastors need to stress the great joy in hunting, and what it means to bring home a precious soul. We are to hunt with the congregation, and the entire church can have great joy. A successful hunt means revival.
We need not to find a great evangelist and hope for the best, when God has already given the great evangelists to the church. What does a great evangelist look like? They look like the little silver haired widow who has friends in the community, or the teenage boy with friends, and could it be a young couple with neighbors and friends? These are the ones that need to get excited about hunting.
Exactly.
A multitude of people each bringing a squirrel can provide as much, or more, than one great person dropping a buffalo.
Of course, then there’s a lot of fur to fly.
The last time I went hunting was sometime around 1962-64. A friend came over and spent the night with me (he was descendant of Elder Elijah Craig, the fellow who led the committee in Va. which met with the colonial legislators and made the agreement that in exchange for the freedom to practice their faith, the Baptists would encourage the young men in their communities to enlist in the Patriots Cause). He was born in St. Louis, a city guy who took to the country like a duck to water (I recommended him to his first church, Crossroads, and his people loved him). Any way, I was using his over and under and he was using something else. He went on down the hill, and I spotted two squirrels in a tall tree having quite a fight. I shot five or six times with the 22 and 2 or 4 with 410, and those squirrels were still going at it. I gave up went back home and went to bed (we had argued theology until 2 in the Morning and had gotten up at 5). Don came back a few hours later with 4-5 squirrels, and I was disgusted with myself. And I am a fair shot with weapons. About 25-years or so ago, I put about 5 shots out of a 8 shot revolver that I had at that time in a tree with a fast draw at about 30 paces. I think I hit them squirrels but they were so mad, they ignored the bullets and the shotgun pellets and kept right on fighting. I still cringe, when I think about it.
Doug Hibbard,
Reading your post was a joy. Thank you.
May I make a suggestion that might solve for you and for any of our other pastor brothers in the Baptist Blog World the twin problems of a shortage of meat for the freezer and members for the church.
Steal cattle for the freezer.
Steal sheep for the church.
Do the first in the darkness of early morning.
Do the second on Thursday Night Visitation.
cb scott,
We usually wait for the other churches to steal the sheep and then steal from them. We steal them during the Sunday morning service.
There are to many people home on Sunday evenings and Wednesday’s.