We asked a legendary trapper who said, 'You can see the deer's path by looking at the mountains' about the secrets of deer hunting, and we also learned why it is necessary to hunt deer.
Hirotaka Furuta is an expert in capturing and butchering deer, and is an ace in the deer hunting world, with restaurants all over the country requesting his deer meat and appearing on TV many times. When
Mie Prefecture | Gibier: Mie Gibier
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Deer can be captured with a gun or in a box trap (a cage-like trap), but using a gun reduces the amount of edible parts, and using a box trap causes the deer to struggle in the trap, resulting in internal bleeding and lowering the quality of the meat. For this reason, Furuta captures deer using a noose trap that hooks onto the legs. The traps he uses are original designs by Furuta, and their structure is a trade secret so they cannot be photographed. Furthermore, Furuta can even calculate which of the deer's four legs to hook when setting the trap.
Below is a photo of the moment when Furuta kills a deer caught in a trap. While avoiding the deer's antlers, he stabs the knife into the deer's neck toward the heart, precisely cutting the blood vessels in the heart and finishing the deer off by draining the blood. This method of killing allows for proper and quick blood drainage. According to Furuta, he is the only person in the world who practices this method of killing.
The killed deer is brought to the workshop, washed, and butchered that morning. The butchering procedure varies greatly from hunter to hunter, with some even using a procedure that involves 'removing the organs, then hanging the animal for a long time to drain the blood,' but Furuta butchers the deer he kills early in the morning in order to prevent the growth of bacteria and to obtain the highest quality meat possible.
During the butchering process, hygiene is strictly controlled, with separate areas for 'washing the deer and removing the internal organs,' 'cutting the deer in half with an electric saw,' and 'cutting the deer meat.' Hand washing and alcohol disinfection are also performed without fail.
In addition, they thoroughly sterilize tools such as electric saws and knives, and wear new lab coats every time they cut a deer with an electric saw. The photo below shows the electric saw blade being sterilized by soaking it in a pot of 100 degree boiling water.
The detailed steps from cutting the deer to cutting the meat are summarized in the article below.
I got to see up close the legendary trapper's superb technique of dismantling deer meat at breakneck speed - GIGAZINE
After watching the butchering process, we had a chance to hear various stories. The photo below was taken when they were carrying the captured wild boar down the mountain. After the animal died, it was like a 'bag full of water' and the center of gravity was unstable, so even carrying it on one's back was quite a struggle.
This is the tool bag that Furuta carries when he goes into the mountains.
I held it, and it was quite heavy.
Furuta carries it with ease.
The workshop is surrounded by mountains. Furuta says that he can grasp the routes of deer and wild boars just by going into the mountains and looking at the terrain. He can predict not only where the deer will pass, but also 'where and with which leg they will step,' and even control 'which of the four legs to set a trap with.' He also says that he can imagine the paths of animals without going into the mountains, just by looking at a mountain he's never seen before from the highway.
Another surprising thing is that he makes many of his tools himself. This is a knife with a deer antler handle. The blade is carved out of aluminum and shaped to make it easy to work with.
The hanger on which the deer is hung is also homemade.
His shooting skills are also of expert level, hitting the center of a target 100 meters away with two shots.
This target also only hits the center. When going to retrieve a trapped deer, he sometimes finds a deer walking around the trap. Such deer are incapacitated by shooting through the eyes with a hunting rifle, and then killed with a knife. Shooting through the head would result in instant death, making Furuta's unique bleeding technique impossible to use, and shooting the body would reduce the edible parts. For this reason, it is necessary to pinpoint aim at the 'eyes', which incapacitate the deer but do not cause instant death.
Apparently, when you go into the mountains, you can get stung by hornets multiple times in a day. Furuta's house also houses a huge hornet's nest that he found in the mountains.
This is the woods behind the workshop.
If you look closely, you can see that the deer have stripped the bark off the trees. With the bark stripped off from the base, the tree can no longer grow.
The damage caused by deer to forestry is serious, and
Deer are not only found in the mountains, but also in areas around residential areas, where they eat crops in fields and cause traffic accidents by hitting cars. There was deer droppings behind Mr. Furuta's workshop.
In recent years, the number of hunters has decreased, while the deer population has increased. For this reason, an increase in the number of hunters is essential to reduce the damage caused by deer. Mr. Furuta has made it his life's work to pass on the methods of capturing and butchering deer to future generations. At the time of this interview, he was butchering deer with his daughter, Ai.
We are also cooperating with Mie Prefecture's 'Mie Gibier' initiative, which produces high-quality deer meat by creating manuals for capture and butchering procedures, and are working to train the next generation of deer, including by participating as instructors in seminars held by the prefecture .
The achievements of 'Mie Gibier' seem to be well known both inside and outside of Mie Prefecture, and while listening to the live broadcast of the Diet on the radio while traveling by car for this interview, I happened to hear Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba mention 'Mie Gibier' in response to a question from former Mie Prefecture Governor and House of Representatives member Hidetaka Suzuki. The remark can be seen from around 57 minutes and 17 seconds in the video below.
[National Diet Live Broadcast] House of Representatives Budget Committee Prime Minister Ishiba attends intensive discussion (March 3, 2025) - YouTube
In addition to catching and butchering the game, Mie Gibier has established strict manuals for processing. In the article below, you can see the process of making hamburger steaks at Sanshoku Co., Ltd., a company approved as a Mie Gibier processor.
I was shown how deer meat is made into hamburger steak at a certified Gibier factory - GIGAZINE
