It was one of those frosty November evenings when the sun slips behind the trees earlier than you’re ready for. The kind of cold that seeps into your boots and stiffens your fingers around the rifle. I’d been in the stand since mid-afternoon, watching the hardwoods fade from gold to gray, when the deer finally slipped out of the timber. Not a monster buck, not a deer you’ll ever see in a glossy magazine spread—but a good, honest deer. A deer that meant full freezers and meals with family.
Dragging him out through the leaves, my mind was already on the stove back home. Not the backstraps or the tenderloins—they’d have their time—but the shoulders, the roasts, the tougher cuts that most folks overlook. That’s where meals like this come from.
A venison pot pie isn’t about showing off. It’s about taking what the woods give you and turning it into the kind of dish that warms up a cold night and brings everyone to the table.
There’s something special about cooking a meal that connects the woods to the kitchen table. You spend the day chasing whitetails through the November hardwoods, and when it all comes together—meat in the freezer—it’s not just about filling tags. It’s about filling bellies.
One of my favorite ways to honor a deer is with a simple, hearty pot pie. It’s the kind of stick-to-your-ribs comfort food that warms you after a long, cold sit in the stand. It’s also a great way to stretch a pound of venison into a meal that’ll feed the whole family.
This isn’t anything fancy. No soufflés, no Michelin-star flourishes. Just a hot, bubbling dish of meat, vegetables, and gravy tucked under golden biscuits—straightforward food that tastes like November.
Ingredients
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1 pound venison, trimmed and cubed into ½-inch pieces
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2 tablespoons cooking oil
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2 cups beef broth
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1 teaspoon thyme, crushed
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¼ teaspoon black pepper
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1 (10-ounce) package frozen peas and carrots
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2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
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½ cup beef broth + ⅓ cup flour (for thickening)
For the biscuit topping:
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¾ cup flour
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¾ teaspoon baking powder
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½ teaspoon sugar
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Pinch of salt
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3 tablespoons butter
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⅓ cup milk
Directions
Start by trimming every bit of fat off the venison. Wild fat doesn’t do your food any favors—it turns waxy and gamey in a hurry. Cube up the meat, get a cast-iron or heavy-bottomed pan ripping hot, and brown it off in oil. Don’t crowd the pan; let that meat sear.
Add the broth, thyme, and pepper, bring it to a boil, then drop the heat, cover, and let it simmer for about 45 minutes. That long, slow cooking is where tough cuts turn tender. Toss in your potatoes, peas, and carrots, and keep simmering until the venison is fork-tender—another 15–30 minutes.
Mix the extra broth and flour into a slurry, stir it into the pot, and let it thicken up into a rich, glossy gravy. Pour everything into a casserole dish.
Now for the biscuit topping: stir together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter with your fingers until it looks like coarse cornmeal. Add the milk, stir just until it comes together, and drop six rustic mounds of dough right on top of the venison filling.
Bake at 450°F for 12 minutes, until the biscuits are golden and the filling is bubbling.
Serves
About 5 hungry hunters.
There’s no better way to take the chill out of your bones than digging into this dish after a cold day outside. Venison pot pie is proof that a deer isn’t just backstraps and tenderloins—it’s every cut, simmered down and honored on the table. That’s the kind of eating that keeps you warm all winter and reminds you why we hunt in the first place.
Hunting has never just been about the antlers on the wall or the grip-and-grin photos. It’s about providing real food, sharing it with the people you care about, and carrying forward the traditions that shaped us. Every time you put a meal like this venison pot pie on the table, you’re honoring that animal and planting your legacy—one dish, one hunt, one season at a time.
So cook it up, sit down with your people, and pass it around. And if you know a fellow hunter who’d appreciate this recipe, share it with them—because traditions like this are meant to be kept alive.