Before you go

• Licenses and education: nearly every state requires a hunting or fishing license, and most require a hunter education course for hunters born after a set year. Your state wildlife agency’s website lists seasons, limits, tags and reporting rules each year.
• Check in your game: many states require deer, turkey and some other game to be reported (telechecked) within a set time. Keep your confirmation number with the meat.
• Private land: get written permission, and know where the property lines are.

Safe hunting

• Treat every gun as if it were loaded; point the muzzle in a safe direction; keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot; be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
• Wear blaze orange where your state requires it — and it is wise even where it doesn’t.
• In a tree stand, wear a full-body harness and stay tied in from the time you leave the ground until you are back down.
• Tell someone where you are going and when you’ll be back.

Caring for the meat

• Field dress quickly and cool the carcass below 40°F as soon as you can; in warm weather, quarter it and ice it.
• Keep it clean and dry, and wear gloves. Where chronic wasting disease is found, follow your state’s testing and carcass-movement rules.
• Fish: keep them alive or on ice, and clean them the same day.

Fishing and trapping

• Know the size and creel limits for each water; some waters have their own rules.
• Check traps at least as often as your state requires (often every 24 hours), use the trap types allowed, and tag them if required. Release non-target animals.

“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” — Genesis 9:3. A good steward takes only what is lawful and needed, and wastes nothing.