Venison preferred holiday fare on many tables

Turkey isn’t always king of the table for Thanksgiving in Avoyelles Parish homes. A deer roast can be found at the top of the menu as well.
Deer season has been open for well over a month and bagging one is just the beginning of the adventure. It’s the processing that’s just as important.
Cookie Kelly of Moncla has been in that end of hunting since he was in high school. Since his real name is Ronald Kelly Jr., Cookie learned from one of the best.
His father, “Red” Kelly, worked 35 years in the meat processing plants located at the schools in Fifth Ward and Plaucheville. After they closed and he retired, Red still stayed close to the business. Cookie stayed close, too.
“I wanted to learn a different trade and one that was going out of business,” he said. He started when he was in high school and today runs his own meat processing business in Moncla. Together with his wife, Rachel, Cookie “cuts and she wraps.”
By trade Cookie works in the logging industry, but when rain dictates you can find him cutting meat. During deer season he can be found doing both because the demand is great.
“I can process as many as 1000 deer a season,” he said. “There can be 30 deer hanging in the cooler and ice chests,” he added. Some hunters field dress their kill. Some go even farther and bring Cookie ice chests full of meat they are soaking in ice water, it draws the blood and takes the wild taste out.
“This year has started off good,” Cookie said, “and it’s still going good.”
Some days he can be in his meat plant from daylight to 3 p.m.
“A customer can get their meat the next day,” he said. “They don’t always come next day, but it’s hard frozen in the freezer.” Cookie can process a 120-pound deer in 30 minutes. “If they want it tenderized, it’ll take more time,” he pointed out. And, of course, a lot of people want some of the meat tenderized.
Another way Cookie will process deer is to make sausage out of it, mixed with pork. According to Rachel, this is another menu item customers want for their Thanksgiving menu.
“They want it to make their dressing,” she said. Although most deer are field dressed and skinned, Cookie does get some he has to skin. “I collect the hides and hang them on the fence to dry.”
Depending on where the deer was shot, the meat can be bloody. “I tell them I’ll cut off the bad meat and keep what’s good,” he said. It’s not just deer that end up at his place. Cookie also processes hogs, wild and domestic, as well as beef.
He has done about 20 wild hogs this season, ranging from 40 to 120 pounds. “Wild hog meat is good,” he said, “as long as it isn’t a boar.” A hog only takes Cookie 30 minutes to process. The cuts include pork chops, pork steaks and shoulder steaks.
Going back to the deer, Cookie said the back strap is the most coveted cut. In a hog, it’s the tenderloin.
A beef calf takes a lot longer, “three to four hours, cut, wrapped and in the freezer.”
Cookie’s equipment includes a meat saw, grinder and lots of knives.
“I have Daddy’s knife sharpener, a flat steel,” he said. Then showed me Red’s steel that was well used and even shortened. Besides cutting meat and the cuts of meat, Ronald also taught Cookie how to sharpen knives.
“I rarely cut myself,” he said, “maybe a nick or two."
It’s dull knives that cut fingers, not sharp ones.
Another important piece of equipment is his tractor rigged with a chain so he can hang the animal and work on it.
What does he do with all the “stuff” left over from processing meat? Well, somewhere in the area there’s a lady who raises coyotes. They get the “stuff” and probably enjoy it.
Like his father who taught him, Cookie has taught all his children the art of cutting meat. Of the six he and Rachel share, only two are now at home. Emily and Heather work with their parents, cutting meat and “enjoy doing it.”
Another important lesson of life Ronald taught Cookie was not to work on a Sunday. “He’d tell me, ‘It’s the Lord’s day.’”
Rachel said, “I was telling Cookie the other day I wanted a deer roast for Thanksgiving, so far it didn’t look like we were going to have one. “Yesterday Cookie went deer hunting and called me to say, ‘I have your deer roast.” So it looks like the family who processes so much venison for others will be enjoying their own Thanksgiving deer roast, and that pleases Rachel to no end.