There’s a picture of me somewhere on my cousin Dave’s phone. I’m standing next to a campfire, holding a blackened chunk of what used to be a deer backstrap, wearing an expression that can only be described as “I have made a terrible mistake and everyone is watching.”
Dave still sends it to me every year around deer season. Usually with no caption. Just the photo. The man understands psychological warfare.
The backstory is this: I shot my first whitetail buck at 24. Not a monster — a basket-rack eight point that walked out of a cedar thicket twenty minutes before last light. I made a decent shot, found him fifty yards from where he stood, and stood over him feeling like I’d just joined some ancient brotherhood. Then I field dressed him in the dark with a headlamp that kept flickering because I’d forgotten to charge the damn batteries.
That should have been my first clue that I was not, in fact, Daniel Boone.
The Plan Was Stupid From the Start
I got the deer home, butchered it with the help of three YouTube videos and a $30 knife set from the sporting goods store that I’d never sharpened, and ended up with a freezer full of venison that looked like it had been processed by a blind man with a hatchet. Some pieces were steaks. Some were… shapes.
A week later, Dave and a couple other guys from work were coming over to help me split firewood. I decided — and this is the part where you should start judging me — that I was going to cook them fresh venison over the campfire. Not on the grill. Not in a cast iron pan on the stove. No. I was going to do it over open flame, like a pioneer, like a man who knew what he was doing.
I had never cooked venison before in my life.
Everything I Didn’t Know About Venison
Here’s what I knew about cooking venison at the time: nothing. Here’s what I knew about cooking in general: I could make scrambled eggs, spaghetti from a jar, and frozen pizza. That was the full resume.
I also didn’t know that venison is leaner than beef — way leaner. I didn’t know that you can’t just throw it on a grate over fire and expect it to behave like a grocery store ribeye. I didn’t know that there are actual techniques for cooking wild game, honed over centuries, that prevent it from turning into something you’d use to resole a boot.
What I did know was that I had a fire pit, a cheap grate from the hardware store, and confidence. So much confidence. The kind of confidence you only have when you know absolutely nothing.
The Execution (And I Use That Word Intentionally)
I built the fire way too hot because I was showing off. Got it roaring. Threw the grate on, let it heat up. Meanwhile I’d pulled out what I thought was the best-looking piece of backstrap from my freezer. It was frozen solid. I didn’t thaw it. I didn’t season it beyond salt and pepper dumped straight from the shakers with the enthusiasm of a toddler making a sand castle. I didn’t oil the grate.
I put a frozen chunk of venison directly onto a dry, scorching hot grate over flames that were licking up through the gaps.
You can probably guess how this went, but I’ll tell you anyway because the details matter.
The outside of the meat seared almost instantly — burned, actually — while the inside remained frozen. Then the outside started smoking. Not “that smells good” smoking. “Is something on fire” smoking. I flipped it with a fork because I didn’t own tongs. The meat stuck to the grate so hard I had to scrape it off, leaving a layer of venison permanently bonded to the metal. The second side made contact with the grate and immediately carbonized.
Dave walked over from the woodpile. He looked at the fire. He looked at the smoking brick on the grate. He looked at me. He didn’t say a word. He just pulled out his phone and took the picture.
What We Actually Ate
By some miracle, the very center of the backstrap was edible. Barely. It was gray, tough, and tasted like burnt hair and regret, but it wasn’t frozen anymore. We each had about two bites before we gave up. The rest of it looked like a charcoal briquette someone had tried to stab with a fork forty times.
We ended up ordering pizza. Venison backstrap, campfire-cooked by a man who didn’t know you had to thaw the meat, served alongside a large pepperoni from Domino’s. Dave made sure everyone knew which one he preferred.
I threw the rest of that backstrap in the trash. I didn’t know you could save it. I didn’t know that if I’d just thawed it, oiled the grate, and kept the heat medium instead of surface-of-the-sun, it could have been one of the best meals of my life.
What I Eventually Figured Out
It took me a few more screw-ups — and a lot of reading, and one very patient friend who actually knew how to cook — to learn that venison isn’t hard to cook. It’s just different. You treat it with some respect and it rewards you. You treat it like a gas station hot dog and it punishes you.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me before that night:
Thaw your meat. This sounds obvious. It was not obvious to 24-year-old me. Take it out of the freezer the night before, put it in the fridge. If you forget — which happens — put it in a ziplock bag and submerge it in cold water. It takes maybe an hour. Do not, under any circumstances, try to cook frozen venison over a campfire while your friends watch.
Venison is lean. Like, really lean. There’s almost no fat marbling the way there is in beef. This means it dries out fast. You can’t just blast it with heat and expect it to stay juicy. Medium-rare is your friend. Actually, rare to medium-rare. If you cook venison past medium, you may as well be chewing on a wallet.
Oil the damn grate. Or the pan. Or whatever cooking surface you’re using. Venison sticks like it’s got a grudge. A little oil — vegetable, olive, whatever you have — makes the difference between a clean flip and scraping your dinner off the metal with a fork while your cousin photographs your shame.
Salt more than you think. Wild game needs salt. Not so much that it tastes salty, but enough to bring out the flavor. I used to undersalt everything because I was scared of ruining it. Turns out underseasoning is its own kind of ruining.
Let it rest. When it comes off the heat, give it five or ten minutes. Don’t cut into it immediately to “check if it’s done” — you’ll lose all the juice and end up with dry meat. I still struggle with this one because I’m impatient and hungry, but it matters.
The Redemption Cook
A couple years later, I invited Dave over for venison again. Same fire pit. Same grate. Same cousin with the same phone. I think he showed up expecting another photo opportunity.
This time, I’d thawed the backstrap properly. I’d seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a little rosemary. I let the fire burn down to coals instead of cooking over active flame like I was forging a sword. I oiled the grate. I cooked the meat to medium-rare — about three minutes per side, maybe a touch more. I let it rest on a cutting board under foil for ten minutes. I sliced it against the grain, which I now understood was a thing you were supposed to do.
Dave took a bite. He didn’t pull out his phone. He just nodded and said, “Alright. You figured it out.”
That was better than any compliment he could have given me.
The Point, If There Is One
I still think about that first backstrap sometimes. Not because it was a tragedy — it was just a piece of meat. But because it was the first time I really understood that killing the animal is only half the job. Maybe less than half. The real work is what you do after: the field dressing, the butchering, the storage, the cooking. You can make a perfect shot on a beautiful deer and then turn it into something your friends joke about for years.
I’m not a great cook now. I’m adequate. I can make venison that people actually want to eat, which is a significant improvement from “charcoal brick with frozen center.” But every time I mess something up — oversalt a steak, dry out a roast — I think back to that night and remind myself that at least I’m not cooking frozen meat over a roaring fire with a fork and a dream.
Dave still has the photo. I’ve asked him to delete it. He says he’ll consider it when I cook him a meal that makes him forget the first one. That was six years ago and he hasn’t forgotten yet.
Maybe this year.