THE MIGHTY SPRINGBOK

Stef cranking the machine                                                                                                                                       Charlie

I’m basically one huge fake. I go by the name of The Urban Hunter Gather, but I’m yet to hunt anything. I’m not a massive meat eater. On a day-to-day basis I hardly ever cook meat, but on an occasion, I enjoy cooking and eating it. “I know, I know”, this is gonna sound like a cliché, but I’m one of those ous (dudes), who believes if you chomp meat, you should be prepared to’ finish off’ the living thing. I’ve done a fair amount of fishing, plenty of crayfishing, mussel picking and sporadically, I harvest and cook snails, but never have I hunted with a gun. I have to say, anything to do with guns scares me; they just don’t sit well with me. My friend Alec, on the other hand, is the opposite of me. He is a vegetarian who loves guns and digs to hunt. A few weekends ago he arrived at my spot with two skinned and gutted springbok carcasses. I hung them up outside that night. I had gruesome dreams and when I opened the curtains in the morning, there the scene of violence was staring at me again, they had to be processed and soon. My mates Ian Ian (yes, two Ian’s) and Alec came to my rescue. I wanted to photograph the process and do some educational butchering, but by the time I could set up the camera, our resident vegetarian, with a faraway look in his eyes and a knife in his hands, had just about finished the job. Ian Ian was equally as enthusiastic in the butchering department and as unaccommodating in the patience department. So there we were on a rainy Sunday, butchering, mincing, and making a giant pot a venison stock on the wood-burning stove. Within a few hours this violent scene was packaged away in the freezer and there were a few more empty bottles of red wine in the recycling bin.

Ready for laughing gear treatment                                  Mans

I think burgers are a fine way to deal with dry cuts of venison. So, Stef, my chef mate, from down the road and I hosted a burger evening, to celebrate the conclusion of Anna and my ‘worm race’ epic (that’s a storey for another day). The burgers turned out to be mighty fine. Now, it’s no secret that burgers enjoy the company of a pickle and that red meat loves bonding with hot mustard. It just so happened, that my friend Glenn kindly gave me a bottle of agave buds which he collected and pickled (awesomely yum). Seeing as the agave buds and the springbok came from the same part of the Karoo, there was no contest which pickle went into the burgers. There was also no contest which salad leaf made it into Mr. Burger, coz Alec gifted me a bunch of mustardy mustard lettuce.

THANKS DUDES, FOR ALL THE SUPPORT, GIFTS AND ENTHUSIASM.