Roasting a Deer Head

Faced with butchering the whitetail buck that my wife, Nancy, recently shot with her bow, she declared, “We should eat the head.”

Now this is from the same woman who called me earlier in the day and told me that she had just gutted the buck and that the liver, heart and kidneys were in the fridge cooling down. And the buck wasn’t even out of our woods yet.

Nancy also holds a black belt in bold and experimental eating. And she is an ardent disciple of the school where you eat, “everything but the squeal of the hog and the bellow of a steer.”

While traveling in Barcelona, Spain and in Cusco, Peru we had found ourselves both intrigued and repulsed with the collection of sheep and goat heads hanging for sale in the open-air markets.

We take pride in butchering our own venison. By the time we are done boning out the deer the neck, rib cage, spine, and pelvic girdle are pretty much cleaned of flesh. Usually the carcass goes into the lower branches of a burr oak where the woodpeckers, chickadees and nuthatches will clean it by spring.

This year however, Nancy boiled down almost all the deer bones into ten gallons of rich bone broth.

Traditionally we eat the heart for our first meal after a kill. And so it was with this buck. But when she suggested that we roast the head, I only hesitated for a moment. Why not?

This past August I hosted my great grandnephew for two days of chasing butterflies and other hopping, crawling and slithering creatures. He caught a mess of grasshoppers so I suggested a grasshopper pizza. He smiled, albeit a little nervously, and said okay. I might add there wasn’t a single piece left.

So why not a roasted deer head? In many places such as Morocco, Italy and Greece, a roasted livestock head is a prize and delicacy. Serving the beast’s slow-cooked head combined with spices and vegetables is a tradition at celebratory feasts.

Native Americans who lived in buffalo country depended on these animals for food, clothing, shelter, tools and more. While they dined on much of the buffalo, a roasted calf head was considered worthy of a feast celebrating the hunt. The head was wrapped in a hide and buried in red-hot rocks and surrounded with coals. Atop the head, a fire was burned all night. The following is a quote taken from a native who had participated in such celebrations. “Next morning when we opened the hole to feast, even the birds of the plain were made hungry by the smell of the cooked meat.”

Nancy pulled out a clipping from a Montana outdoors magazine where a game chef shared his big game head recipe.

Here’s how to do it:

• Build a hardwood fire and let it burn down to a bed of coals.
• Skin the head. Cut off antlers if it is a buck.
• Rinse the head in cold water.
• Season with salt and pepper.
• Wrap the head in three layers of aluminum foil.
• Wrap the foiled head in a water-soaked burlap.
• Dig a slight trench and set the head in the coals.
• Cover the head and coals with three inches of dirt.
• Build another hardwood fire on top of the dirt.
• Let it roast for 3-4 hours.

Like two kids on Christmas morning we carefully peeled away the burlap and foil. The steamy smells that wafted out inspired a saliva release. Seriously.

Some folks might find it distressing to face a roasted deer head perched on a platter. But with candlelight and two flanking glasses of a good red wine, it looked exotically delicious. And it was. The meat was moist and sweet with a slightly carmelized flavor.

The two of us could not finish the meat on one head. While the top and front of the skull have little meat there was a good amount on the upper neck next to the head. The cheek muscles were also excellent. If the idea of eating its jaw muscles makes you queasy consider the prized delicacy of walleye cheeks.

The other bonus was the roasted tongue. We cut the tongue into medallions and they were outstanding. Some folks prefer saving the tongue for sandwich meat. We could not restrain ourselves from feasting to celebrate the hunt.

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