Quick and simple venison steak marinades

I often have grand culinary plans for the venison in the freezer but in reality those plans are typically thwarted by habit when I rely on old familiar recipes for the frequent ‘friends-over-for-BBQ’ events. Venison Wellington is a firm favourite but when it comes to the BBQ I use an old standby marinade that just seems to work. It’s extremely simple and you can tweak proportions of the ingredients freely.


Marinade 1: Mix equal parts of balsamic vinegar, olive oil and soy sauce. Add chopped fresh garlic to taste and a generous squeeze of honey. The volume I am referring to here results in about 1.5 - 2 cups and can cover at least 4-6 large steaks. You need enough to coat each steak and I normally leave them in a ziplock or well packed non-metallic bowl. In other words you don’t need each steak to be ‘swimming’ in the marinade, just well wetted; olive oil and balsamic are pricy, so no need to be excessive. I have had venison steaks marinating in this for as little as 2 hours but my preference is for at least an 8 hour treatment, typically overnight if I plan properly. Rotate the steaks in the bowl or flip the bag once or twice during the marinating process to ensure thorough exposure.

Marinade 2: My latest favourite is even easier and preparation time is about 10 minutes. I give full credit for this simple recipe to my friend John, who served us ‘Cilantro Moose’ a week ago. I cut some inside-round Elk steaks today and gave them the same treatment.

Robin Hood

It was bound to happen at some time. I shot the last 3D target on the course (at about 30-ish meters) a little low, so decided to take a ‘redemption shot’. Well I clearly shot too low again... The nock on the first arrow was cleanly split in half, the second arrow drove neatly down the shaft!

Destroying arrows is expensive but being able to gloat over consistency, while conveniently ignoring the element of luck and very low probabilities, is very satisfying ;-)

May I wear green tights now?

© Brian Joubert

On measuring success

The satisfaction of participating.

Bear camp this spring was a success. I didn’t get a bear. I was however part of a successful hunt where my friend took his first (he is an otherwise very experienced hunter, just not with black bears). My proposal for the hunt was that seeing as he had never hunted bear and I had taken one in the same area last year, he should have the first opportunity. I was happy to attempt any subsequent opportunities and was keen to attempt it with archery gear (perhaps with some temerity!).

The joy of being in camp.

After our success on the first evening I was thoroughly enjoying being out and being a part of the bear success. The camp was great, we were shooting our bows, my partner was having her first big game hunting experience, we were philosophising in camp chairs and skinning/butchering a bear over cups of tea – damn grand if you ask me.


 After my friend’s bear was tagged I had this feeling that the trip was a great success and began to feel that it no longer mattered as much if I got one or not. I have had similar experiences while fishing my favourite runs for Yellowfish, on the Vaal River in South Africa. At times, after making a number of successful pocket casts and getting into a few fish in a rapid, I have felt like I have been granted my fair share of success and harassed the fish enough. I have then retreated to watch birds and Monitor Lizards and laze on rocks – often even in the face of a likely looking eddy imploring me to try and cast a Gold Ribbed Hares Ear into it!