Brad Dokken: Northwest Angle students get hands-on experience processing a deer

Nov. 17—ANGLE INLET, Minn. — The four students who attend Angle Inlet Elementary School on Minnesota's Northwest Angle — widely known as the last one-room schoolhouse in the state — recently got a hands-on lesson that likely stands as unique among schools just about anywhere.

They spent a day learning how to process a deer.

It all started the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 9, when their teacher, Allen Edman, shot a doe. He gutted the deer in the field and was thinking about how he was going to process and manage it, when he got an idea:

What about bringing the deer into school and letting the kids do it?

With a history of getting his students involved in the outdoors through hands-on activities such as ice fishing, gathering wild rice and naturally tanning deer hides with smoke and brain tissue, the idea of processing a deer wasn't exactly a stretch.

"I've done a lot of pretty wild stuff in my classroom," said Edman, a 2003 UND graduate who previously taught in Brooklyn Center, Warren-Alvarado-Oslo, East Grand Forks and Warroad, Minnesota. "This is my 20th year of teaching, and I've been dreaming about bringing in a whole deer to process for quite a number of years, but there are a lot of pieces that have to go right to make it happen."

With the key piece in place — a deer — Edman rounded up the knives and other materials that would be needed to skin the deer and turn it from a carcass into steaks, roasts and chops.

Having previously supervised middle school students scraping and salting deer hides

as part of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association's Hides for Habitat program, Edman says he wasn't worried about the process.

The school's paraprofessional helped Edman assist and supervise the four students.

"There were two adults to four kids, so we were able to just really watch and help out, while the kids did the actual work," he said.

The kids — two third-graders, a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader — had no idea what the day would hold in store when they arrived at school last Friday morning, Nov. 10, Edman says.

"I didn't announce it to anybody — it was a surprise," said Edman, who grew up on the Northwest Angle and also attended the school. "I wasn't even sure up until the moment all the pieces were in place that it could work."

He set aside his regular lesson plans — "We don't have a lunch schedule; the schedule is what I make it for the day," Edman says — and the kids donned protective gloves and spent the day learning to skin and process a deer.

"The kids loved it, they had an absolute blast," he said. "Being from up here, they're familiar with hunting, and parents and other people taking care of deer, but they hadn't really gotten the chance to do it themselves."

The students were especially fascinated by the anatomy and the sound of the hide being pulled away during the skinning process, Edman says.

"They wanted to touch the eyeballs, touch the fur, everything there was," he said. "One of my things is the hands-on piece. You could read online about going to Disney World, but there's nothing like actually going and experiencing it — or whatever it might be — firsthand."

Working at a table in the school's multipurpose room, Edman walked the students through the skinning process, which took about an hour and a half.

After a short break, the students removed the head and began quartering the deer and deboning the meat, Edman says.

"We removed the quarters, the back strap, the tenderloins and any extra neck meat," Edman said. "We worked together a little bit more on the meat to make sure we could do a good job of getting it all off (the bone)."

The deer, which was a good-sized doe, provided the perfect model for the day's learning activity.

"The kids were able to see the muscles working, they were able to see the internal skeleton that vertebrates have," Edman said. "We were able to talk about the deer hair and its functions. We looked at the shape of the deer's ears, and how they're adapted to hearing really well. We talked about the length of the deer's nose and all the smell sensors in there and, of course, the eyes and how they reflect and gather light so that deer can see in the dark. We were able to see a working leg and push it back and forth and watch the muscles move."

The students, he said, weren't squeamish about the process.

"They were just more interested in getting into it and doing it," Edman said. "The kids always want to do the different jobs, they want to have their turn actually doing things with their hands."

Spending the day learning how to process a deer would be difficult in schools where he previously taught, Edman says.

"It's nice to have that flexibility with the numbers," he said. "In a normal school setting where I've been in the past, you might have only 45-minute class blocks and then the kids have to go to music, lunch or their next class. And then the struggle becomes, 'How would you make the lab work for everybody so that they all get an authentic experience?' And it gets a little bit tricky to do that."

Hunting, fishing and other outdoors activities are part of the culture at the Northwest Angle and, indeed, across the Northland. That's reflected in the learning activities Edman's students have experienced during the course of his 20-year career.

It's going to be tough to top the lesson in skinning and processing a deer, though, he admits.

"Any idea that I have brought to class that I think might be fun and interesting to do, the kids have always jumped on board and been really excited to participate," he said. "I just like getting my hands in there and getting dirty, and it turns out, so do the kids."