I took my time with the skinning. You can ruin the taste of meat if you get a lot of hair on it. It’s important to keep it clean and get the carcass cooled down as soon as possible after the kill. Head shots made this a lot easier, since you didn’t have a big, gaping hole full of bloodshot meat and bone fragments to deal with. I never shot at running game. I wasn’t that good a shot from the off-hand position and, as a young man I had to follow too many wounded deer through miles of briars and thickets or poison oak because I, or one of my hunting companions, had taken a hasty shot. Now, I didn’t shoot unless I could take a leaner or rest my rifle on a stump or something equally solid and stable. I also didn’t shoot until the game was standing still. Then I’d go for the head. If I hit, the animal died instantly and dropped where it stood, and I didn’t have to go chasing it into the next county. If I missed, I missed. No harm, no foul. Sometimes the animal took off for cover and that was that. Other times, it would simply lift its head and wonder if a high-speed hornet had just buzzed its ear, and I’d get another shot. But, as I said, the best thing about the head shot was you didn’t ruin any meat.
