Nothing beats a home-cooked fish meal on a cold winter's day. Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind as you "squirrel away" a few meals of fish for this winter.

  The best tasting, highest-quality fish is the one you clean and cook immediately after catching. As time passes after the death of the fish micro-organisms begin to grow and the fish begins to break down. The key to great tasting fish in winter is timely preparation and freezing at the time of the catch.

  Fish baskets, buckets, and live-wells help keep fish alive temporarily and are the first step to great tasting fish later. Depending on the length of your fishing trip or the temperature, you may need to use a cooler of ice to store your fish until time to clean them. A plastic bag for the fish will make cleanup easier.

  Once you've cleaned the fish, packaging becomes the next issue at hand. Air-tight packaging is essential. Many of the undesirable flavor and color changes in fish are caused by oxidation of the unsaturated fats, oils and color pigments. In addition, if the package is not air-tight water evaporates from the fish flesh. The fish becomes dry and tough, or "freezer burned."

  Freezing your fish in water is a great way to keep air away from the flesh. Clean your fillets well, place the amount needed for a meal in a plastic freezer bag, cover the fillets with water, tap the bag to release the air trapped between the fillets, squeeze out all air at the top of the bag, seal, date the bag, then place flat in the freezer until frozen well.

  If you've decided to leave bones in your fish you'll want to use a thick container for freezing. Clean cardboard milk or juice cartons work great to prevent fins and bones from piercing the container, thus allowing air in. Clean your fish well, place the amount needed for a meal in a water-tight container, cover the fish with water, tap the container to release the air trapped between the pieces, seal, date the container and place upright in the freezer until frozen well. (Don't fill the container all the way to the top. You'll need some room for expansion as the water freezes.)

  There is another way to keep your catch fresh until winter. Using a vacuum food sealer is the latest and greatest thing to come along to help keep your food stay fresh longer. They have been around a long time but it only seems until recently that the trend is really catching on. There are several makes and models to choose from. Select one to fit your needs. One handy feature that most have is that the bags once used can be washed and used again. When opening a sealed bag make sure to cut it open as close to the sealed end as possible so you have the biggest bag available for the next use. The bags also come on a roll that is actually one very long bag. You cut the roll to make the size of bag needed. This comes in handy when freezing large pieces of fish like a side of a salmon.

  Dating the bag and carton helps to make sure you don't forget to eat them in a reasonable amount of time. They'll do very well as long as you eat them within one year. Even fish frozen longer in this manner have retained its freshness and great taste.

  Besides the date make a note of where the fish came from, who caught them, who you were with, etc. When you cook them, invite your fishin' buddy over to share the meal, or just take a few minutes to talk about how much fun you had catchin' these fish. Hard to have the winter blah's when you're chewing the fat over a great fishing trip! Maggie B.

  I know I mentioned a few months ago I hoped this was the only time I wrote this article for The Bullet, but I felt like I should catch everyone up on how my rifle season went this year. After the seriously crappy shooting over muzzleloader season I got my Remington 700 7mm Magnum bolt gun out of the safe. This gun is my baby and I have made some excellent shots with it over the years. If faith was solid, this one would be a diamond -- I trust it that much.

  Gun season is a more serious season in a lot of ways than muzzleloader season. We still have a lot of fun, but everyone knows this is the final season of the year and deer season, once again, is winding down. We have a tendency to drink better whiskey and sit closer to the fire during rifle season and we all have opinions as to why deer season has been so successful or less successful for the year. We speak of old friends who are no longer with us and the hell-raisers we all were back in our younger days.

  My buddy Robert Phillips is one of the finest deer hunters I know and I know a lot of them. I think our friend James Burns will definitely agree with that assessment. Robert is a better bow shot than most shooting men are with a rifle and he takes a lot of deer with a bow. So, we were there a couple days early and Robert went out that first evening and harvested a nice buck. I got there late and missed hunting that evening.

  The next day I hunted with my crossbow in my blind, but I never saw a deer morning or evening. My neighbor’s cows had moved in and had been under my feeder several times judging from the pictures on my camera. Friday evening all the other hunters start rolling in. My dad and uncle come in as well as my cousin. All the regulars except my two wildhoghunters.com buddies who wouldn’t be there until Saturday night.

  The first morning I am in my tree before daylight and it feels good. Shortly after daylight I have two fork horn bucks on the food plot and both deer are at my corn feeder. I watched them for over 2 hours. From time to time a couple of small does would come in and I know they were does cause the fork horn bucks kept nosing them around and the little does would run off.

  As I sit watching, I caught movement to my left and a big doe and two fawns started crossing the long part of the plot from the woods on the left. Easing the 7mm Mag up to my shoulder I was going to wait until the doe was smack in the center of the “Bermuda Triangle” of deer shots. I mentioned this bane of my deer hunts in the original story I wrote for The Bullet about muzzleloader season.

  When she reached the middle I did a soft, “mahhh” which stopped her in her tracks. BLAM and she stumbled to the side before turning and running full bore for the end of the mountain. Her two fawns stood there looking around trying to figure out what just happened. I sat there for a few minutes, thinking about the shot and how the deer ran off.

  The two fawns run off when I got out of the tree, but when I looked back to my right those fork horns were still standing there watching the show! Slinging my rifle, I went to the fence, crossing it and finding where the doe had been standing.

  No blood.

  But, there was a double handful of brown hair. I could see the direction she ran but she went through a major briar patch. Swinging around it I found blood on the other side at the edge of the steepest part of the hill. Looking down the hill 75 yards away lay my doe. Yep, she decided if she was going to die she was taking me with her by giving me a cardiac from dragging her back up the hill.

  Once I got her to the top I walked to my 4 wheeler and went to get my father-in-law and his JD Gator which we loaded the deer in. She was a pretty nice doe weighing over 100 lbs.

  When I got to camp Robert was cleaning the big 7 point I had been seeing on my game camera at my blind. The inside spread was over 17 inches and he was a nice mature buck even though he was missing a brow tine. I got my doe cleaned and I told Robert I had shot the doe in the Bermuda Triangle and he could tell I was feeling better about this season.

  There were a few more does taken, but no big bucks that morning. I was eager to get back in my stand that evening. I had a picture of a monster standing in front of my feeder from a few days before and he was showing up in the evenings.

  Well, the wind changed. It was blowing hard to the northeast which is sending my scent right across my feeder. Still I used some serious scent killer and decided to hunt there anyway. Within 30 minutes I had 7 deer feeding. The two fork horns and a 6 point buddy as well as the two orphans from that morning. I think the other two were the does from that morning. All of them were staging around my feeder and eating what corn they could find and the soft wheat of the food plot.

  I watched two more does enter from the right and cross to the feeder. Some of them fed back off the hill, but there were deer in sight for a long time.

  Then I saw him.

  In the dark shadows of the woods I could see a big bodied deer occasionally. I could not see his antlers, but I knew this had to be a buck. I just didn’t know if it was THE buck.

  About thirty minutes before dark the feeder threw and more deer than the ones I had seen had been staging just out of sight. Does and smaller bucks came in quickly to the feeder and there came the big buck.

  In a grand entrance fit for a king, this tall racked 11 point stepped majestically from the forest, facing me directly. The buck I killed the year before was a 140” class buck and this one was slightly bigger. That is a pretty nice buck in the area of Oklahoma we are hunting. I put the crosshairs on his brisket as he is looking out across the field and he turns slightly.

  No, the angle is all wrong. I shoot for the exit and this angle was not good. I lowered the rifle and he melted back into the woods. For the next 20 minutes I could see him moving around in the woods, but he didn’t come back to the clearing.

  As I struggled to see an opening in the trees he moved back out of sight. Well, I was in a near panic! I checked my watch and even though it said only 2 minutes had passed it seemed like 30! The darkness was closing in as the sun sank in the west. Then I saw the big body and the legs moving swiftly towards a small clearing that offered the only clear shot in that direction. As he stopped in the shadows of the clearing my crosshairs settled behind his front leg and the rifle bucked against my shoulder. I did not see him run, but I knew he was dead.

  Getting up from the stand, I lowered my rifle and then climbed down. Once I was down, I ejected the hull and loaded another round. Crossing the fence I walked triumphantly to where I could see the brown body of my buck laying.

  When I walked up on it I felt the wind go out of me. Where did this basket-racked giant come from?!!

  The deer I had just shot was huge bodied, but his rack was barely over 13 inches inside. It was thick at the base but he looked like a young deer except he was too big to be that young! I sat down beside him, touching his neck and lifting his antlers and I started grinning.

  To hell with that trophy crap! This was a good 3 ½ year old buck and I had made a good shot on him.

  I went back to camp and got a couple friends to help me load his big butt on my four wheeler and I took him back to camp to tell my story.

  The reason I know so much about the other buck is my friend, Weston Lovell, took that big sucker a few days later in his stand down the mountain from mine. What a trophy!

  Michael Waddell said it best one time when he said, “The real trophy is getting to hunt.” I believe that and what makes the trophy better is getting to hunt with such great friends and fellow hunters. Deer season is only a few months away and I’ll be getting ready for it with food plots and mineral licks soon. Until next time -- David