Realm of the Shadow Redux

Had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year with Mike, Nikki, Tim, Grandma Dar, Derrell, Emma, Jean and myself in attendance. Jean decided she wanted me to smoke the turkey this year (which I have not done in MANY years) and as such we needed to downsize our bird selection. The experts state that you need to use a 10 to 14 lb. bird to smoke in order to prevent possible salmonella contamination since the cooking process is slow and low (low temperatures at a very slow pace). So, with that in mind we were off last Saturday to Jewel/Osco to pick up a properly sized bird since they had them on sale for .89 per lb. with a $10 off coupon on birds between 14 and 24 lbs. Of course we were unable to find a 14 lb. bird so we had to ask my buddy Chris to help us out. He found a 15.3 lb. bird for us and we decided that would be close enough so we purchased it (thanks for the help Chris!). So we brought it home and on Monday evening I moved it from the freezer to the refrigerator to start the thawing out process. We also went to Sam’s Club to pick up a spiral cut ham for those who do not care for smoked turkey. I also got a 5+ pound roasting chicken out as I hate to smoke just one item at a time (since it uses so much charcoal you really need to consolidate as much smoked meats as possible). After two days of thawing out I made my brine on Wednessday night for both birds. In case you don’t remember the basic brine process here is the recipe for that:
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Title: Thanksgiving
Date: 2009-11-26

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Been hitting the same hunting grounds this year pretty hard since I’ve been off of work so much. The good thing about that is that I have lots of opportunity to harvest a deer early and put some meat in the freezer, the bad thing about that is that I have lots of opportunity to get frustrated by not seeing or not getting the whitetail deer close enough to shoot. Kind of a double edged sword there. As I put in an earlier post my deer blind was basically under water for a week or so while we were in flood stage along the creek bed. During this time I moved my stand to another piece of land that I happened to acquire while asking the landowner for permission to harvest any deer that I shoot if they ran onto his land. He stated that he had given some others permission to hunt his land but no one had taken him up on his offer. Well I decided to a quick scout and found an oak grove at the top of the hill that looked like it had a LOT of activity in it. Basically this oak grove (about a dozen mature white oaks overlooking a nice glade) is between 3 corn fields and the landowner has seen lot’s of deer running the area. The bad part is that the trees are so mature that my tree stand will just barely fit onto the tree. It’s up now and I won’t be moving it again until after season when I can get an actual ladder there to help me take it down (not as young as I used to be). I had some other matters to attend to for the next 2 days and did not get back to my stand until the 3rd day. No sighting at that time but I have hopes for this spot.
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