Okay class, first we shoot the deer

At Maysville High School in Maysville, Missouri, population 1,100, classes can be a bit tough for the squeamish. Coursework may involve assigned reading and algebra, but also a fair amount of blood and guts.

In 2022, the high school, an hour’s drive north of Kansas City, added a farm-to-table elective taught by a family and consumer sciences teacher, Amy Kanak, who works with an agriculture teacher, Brandi Ellis. Students have already learned to harvest and process livestock and game in their agriculture classes, and to dissect the organs in their science classes. The new course gives them the opportunity to prepare meals with the harvested meat, a logical conclusion to the hard work of students in other classes. Ms. Kanak provides instructions on the tail end of the nose-to-tail process, on meal prep, returns, budgeting and bulk cooking.

But it all starts with the hardest and messiest part: culling animals and breaking them down. For many students, it is the first time they have held a knife and slaughtered. Ms Kanak hopes students will complete her course with an understanding of where their food comes from.

Ms Ellis, who believes the lessons are crucial at a time when grocery bills are rising, said: “It forces them out of their comfort zone a bit.”

Garrett Bray, then a senior at Maysville High School, pulled a freshly shot doe from the woods on his family’s property in 2022. Garrett learned to hunt from his father and has been hunting from a young age.

Max DeShon, right, helps drag two young animals out of Garrett’s pickup. Normally, Garrett would have field-dressed the deer himself, but he delivered them so students could learn processing and butchering.

Sophia Redman, a 2022 freshman, makes a first cut on a doe during an agriculture class.

Kaleb Jestes, left, processes venison and sorts it into different cuts during a farm-to-table food course. A single deer weighs an average of 60 to 70 pounds of processed meat, making it an affordable option if you know how to hunt and process the animal yourself. Deer permits in Missouri starting in 2024 will start at $7.50 for antlerless deer, or $18 for each deer. Youth tags cost even less.

Cindy Eggleston, an eighth-grade science teacher, shows her students, from right, Keely Hardin, Makenzie Mason and Kella Morris, freshly harvested deer organs that will be part of an anatomy lesson on the heart and lungs.

Max Heintz retrieves a rooster from a shed outside the agricultural building at the start of the school day in December 2023. ​​A local resident called Mrs. Ellis and asked to donate seven overly aggressive roosters to the program. Mrs. Ellis teaches students how to cull and process chickens every year, often after raising them at school.

Culled roosters bleed into garbage bins in the agricultural building.

Makenzie set out in 2023 and took the temperature of the water while her classmates Nathan Schnitzer, center, and Bo May held their culled chickens during an agriculture lesson. Various classes take part in the entire process throughout the day: culling, gutting the carcasses by first dipping them in boiling hot water, and preparing the birds for cooking and eating by removing organs and legs.

Keagan Reeder, left, and Cooper Ray, center wearing hats, stand by as Colton LeMunyon, in Buffalo Bills hoodie, grills chicken the students have marinated.

Colton dug into a fried drumstick from a rooster that had been culled by a class that morning. Students noted how tough the meat was, likely due to the age of the roosters.

From right we see Kameron Keesaman, Robert Stinley Jr. and Bo Zeikle put on their aprons at the start of a cooking class.

Frying chicken livers from the roosters that the agricultural classes had cleared and processed the week before.

Charlee Kimbrell, left, Robert Boucher, center, and teacher Amy Kanak “cheer” their fried chicken livers before tasting.

Fried venison steak with chicken, topped with gravy and fried potatoes and green beans, prepared and served in Ms. Kanak’s classroom, the end of a process that started in the back of a pickup truck.

Katie Currid contributed reporting.