food page: venison...this one was a stretch for me.

Published in The Post-Star (D1) and on poststar.com
11/30/05

A lot of blood drips onto the floor of Frank Hohman's garage at this time of year. He's busy carving up bodies as fast as the locals can drag them in.

"After it's processed, it looks quite edible," Hohman remarked, gesturing at several plastic-wrapped packages of ground venison. The meat looked nearly identical to the hamburger sold in supermarkets -- except that behind the venison trays, a gutted deer hung from its haunches on a hook.

His small business, Frank Hohman & Sons, processes about 100 deer each hunting season, turning freshly killed prey into a freezer full of meat within just a few hours.

"I started doing this around 1971 because I was already a butcher, and the guys in town had nobody to cut for them," said Hohman.

These days, "the sons come once in a while," he added with a laugh. For the last 14 years, he's relied on help from his friend John DeLuca.

The business operates out of Hohman's garage in Fort Ann, but Hohman and DeLuca are no amateur butchers. Both men have worked as meat managers at local Tops supermarkets for years. During hunting season, they spend nearly all their spare time processing deer.

"We work out our frustrations here, more or less," said DeLuca, as he chopped up a deer's hindquarters on a sanitized table.

A single deer can yield as much as 70 pounds of edible meat, depending on the hunter's skill. Each shot that enters the flesh causes damage, so hunters with poor aim end up with less meat on the table.

"We're meat-cutters, not surgeons," DeLuca explained.

Venison can be used in place of veal or beef in most recipes, and it's often healthier. The fat tends to taste like candle wax, so most people remove it before cooking. The hindquarters, and sometimes the shoulders, are the prime cuts used for steaks and roasts. The rest can be ground or turned into sausages, such as the hand-linked Italian sweet sausage that DeLuca makes and sells.

When it's not deer season, Hohman and DeLuca also cut local cattle, moose, pigs, and even some farm-raised emus.

There's only one thing they won't do -- eat their handiwork. Neither one of them likes the taste of venison.

"I had a bad taste once, and I haven't tried it since," said Hohman.
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