The news spread that the local village store had some estate venison for sale this week, so I hot-footed it over to see what was available.
I picked up a 500g pack of diced venison (no haunch of venison for us as we have no way of roasting it right now 😕) and decided to make a venison ragu for dinner in the slow cooker.
Deer are a problem here on the island. They no longer have any natural predators and as such their numbers are out of control. There is talk of reintroducing lynx to the Highlands after many hundreds of years of extinction through over hunting, but nothing has yet come of it because of farmers concerns for their sheep.
What there is in place is a selective culling programme across most estates, and when that happens Clan Venison appears in the local outlets.
It’s cheaper than Highland beef, totally free range and organic, almost fat-free and very tasty. And every deer we eat is one less to eat our baby trees when we plant them next year. What’s not to love?
I cooked the venison with red wine, red onions, chopped tomatoes, peppers, garlic, juniper berries and a sloosh of balsamic vinegar. Four hours in the slow cooker. I forgot to add the chestnut mushrooms that I’d bought.
Divine.
Ravencroft Skye 
Is the dear cheap?
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I meant is the dear cheep but autocorrect ruined the joke 🤣
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😂😂😂😂
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Just out of curiosity, do you know if they use other parts of the deer too, besides the meat? That would be really fab!
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That’s a good question. I’ve only seen the meat for sale, but they also make burgers and sausages so maybe some of the other parts are used in there
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Yum.
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It’s good that the deer are eaten when culled. Here there are regular horse culls (in the Blue Mountains area, a long way South of us) and the bodies are not used at all. I feel it is a crime to take a life without making use of the body (if I ever becama a serial killer I would be one of those people with skull bowls and skin lamp covers) . I believe that nature intended us to only kill from need, not for pleasure.
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How awesome that you can get venison from culls like that! Out here, we have to hunt it ourselves. 😀 Venison is a wonderful meat.
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We have so many deer here. We’ve literally just got in and as we were pulling up the croft road we startled two young deer in our headlights. I wouldn’t advocate killing them for the sake of it, but if we can use and enjoy the meat it seems fair.
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