Butchering question

fingers284 said:
I wont kill an animal unless I know I have the time immediately after it hits the ground to bone out completely and trim completely (every bit of fat, sinew, shot damage),everything done within an hr most times. Have never had a "gamey" animal,( young, female or old buck heavy into the rut) since I started sticking to this regime. I have made my own sausage for some time but quit that the year my kids bought me a meat slicer, now I just slice everything that isn't going to be a roast or steak and 24-48 hr marinate it in the sausage mix of my choice for that year and then cook in the smoker just the same as jerky would be...tastes like the sausage but no added fat so the wife considers it healthier so I get to eat more.
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Yep - moose and bear were pretty much 75% of our meat and never had a gamey one. Every critter was gutted and cooled on the spot, then skinned in the next few hours at most (bears right away). Never had a gamey deer either. One time though, a buddy asked me if I wanted a bear he had shot. I went and picked it up and put it in the back of my hatchback. By the time I got a mile down the road, wife and I were gagging. I stopped in a side road and heaved the carcass. When i called my buddy, it turns out the bear had been shot (arrow) at dusk, and found next morning. Not pleasant.

One of the best investments if you butcher and/or process your own meat is a vacuum sealer. I buy hunks of meat when they come on sale (sirloins, pork loins, turkeys, etc.) and turn them into steaks, chops, roasts and ground meat, and the meat keeps at least 3 or 4 times longer without freezer burn. I'm just finishing up a wild boar I got in early December and the meat is still perfect.
 
Another reason for boneless cuts is that some smaller animals can have really small tenderloins etc ...... what you can do then is butterfly them to double the size for a portion and have less steaks to turn over while cooking.
 
Papaclaude said:
Yep - moose and bear were pretty much 75% of our meat and never had a gamey one. Every critter was gutted and cooled on the spot, then skinned in the next few hours at most (bears right away). Never had a gamey deer either. One time though, a buddy asked me if I wanted a bear he had shot. I went and picked it up and put it in the back of my hatchback. By the time I got a mile down the road, wife and I were gagging. I stopped in a side road and heaved the carcass. When i called my buddy, it turns out the bear had been shot (arrow) at dusk, and found next morning. Not pleasant.
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An old timer butcher, taught us that animals should be gutted and hanged within a four hour window or else the the stomach will start to bloat with gasses and ruin the meat; it will taste bad. The gases are the reason that bodies bloat and float to the surface when in a body of water. I'm not sure how "scientific" four hours was, but we always gutted and hanged an animal as fast as conditions (weather, distance, etc) allowed and had no problems.
 
City Boy said:
An old timer butcher, taught us that animals should be gutted and hanged within a four hour window or else the the stomach will start to bloat with gasses and ruin the meat; it will taste bad. The gases are the reason that bodies bloat and float to the surface when in a body of water. I'm not sure how "scientific" four hours was, but we always gutted and hanged an animal as fast as conditions (weather, distance, etc) allowed and had no problems.
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I guess it all depends on a bunch of reasons - weather, whether the critter ran far, etc. Also, bears, especially in the fall, are a lot chunkier, very fat and have thick fur, so they seem to heat up a lot faster. As a rule, I start gutting as soon as I find the critter (99%+ of the time within minutes of being shot), and I use a couple of sticks to prop the cavity open. Then, I hoist it up in the air to cool ASAP. I usually wait 'til it's home before skinning if it's cool enough outside. Bears I try to do on the spot. And my first meal on getting back to camp is the liver, sliced thin, with onions and mashed potatoes. Yum!!!!!
 
We go for all the prime cuts in steak then it's ground and cubes. That's the order in which we prioritize our butchering all boneless and vacuum packed. I found a pack of moose in the back of the freezer from 2 years ago. Thawed it out smelled fine. Cooked it up and it tasted like I shot it in the fall. The meat is too precious to not take the time to get it vacuum packed.
 
caribou or bison will bloat within 30 to 45 minutes ... gutting has to be done the fastest you can on any game ...

now for the skin i do not know where some get the idea that the game has to skin right away most important is to let the meat cool down.

we kept some skin on caribou for close to one week in meat house and never lost any meat ... if there is a good ventilation ...

when you skin and take apart the animal you cant reverse the process and need game bags otherwise is the meat is not protected what is the purpose to rub it against soil, trees etc...
 
TSPIRI said:
We go for all the prime cuts in steak then it's ground and cubes. That's the order in which we prioritize our butchering all boneless and vacuum packed. I found a pack of moose in the back of the freezer from 2 years ago. Thawed it out smelled fine. Cooked it up and it tasted like I shot it in the fall. The meat is too precious to not take the time to get it vacuum packed.
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i had moose tenderloin from 2 years ago in the freezer and not vaccuum but still very good ... do not ask how loins can stay that long in the freezer: i had no idea ...
 
I love a good tbones steak..nice and rare. White tail deer from Southern Ontario don't have the same problem with bad tasting fat like northern deer.
 
Papaclaude said:
I guess it all depends on a bunch of reasons - weather, whether the critter ran far, etc. Also, bears, especially in the fall, are a lot chunkier, very fat and have thick fur, so they seem to heat up a lot faster. As a rule, I start gutting as soon as I find the critter (99%+ of the time within minutes of being shot), and I use a couple of sticks to prop the cavity open. Then, I hoist it up in the air to cool ASAP. I usually wait 'til it's home before skinning if it's cool enough outside. Bears I try to do on the spot. And my first meal on getting back to camp is the liver, sliced thin, with onions and mashed potatoes. Yum!!!!!
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We also put sticks inside to prop open the cavity and let it cool and usually some fresh branches with needles at the opening to keep out little birds like whiskey jacks. If we had to leave the animal for some reason, like taking quarters back to camp one at a time, we put an old t-shirt on the body, some First Nations guys had taught my dad decades ago that the smell of humans would keep away wolves from the animal .... I can't tell you the effectiveness of that technique, but we never had trouble with wolves, so I see no reason to stop that practice lol.

We hung the meat on poles when back in camp to cool as well.
 
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medvedqc said:
caribou or bison will bloat within 30 to 45 minutes ... gutting has to be done the fastest you can on any game ...

now for the skin i do not know where some get the idea that the game has to skin right away most important is to let the meat cool down.

we kept some skin on caribou for close to one week in meat house and never lost any meat ... if there is a good ventilation ...

when you skin and take apart the animal you cant reverse the process and need game bags otherwise is the meat is not protected what is the purpose to rub it against soil, trees etc...
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We always kept the hide on until back home and it was time for butchering. We'd hunt up north and kept the hide on the quarters for protection of the meat while traveling home. We used game bags and packed meat against meat and hide against hide to avoid cross contamination and we never had a problem.

If meat is packed right and vacuum sealed in the freezer, it's good for a couple years no problem.
 
Keithjohn said:
Big ugly has quoted my thoughts exactly , although I do eat moose steak ( back strap ) cooked on bbq time to time most steaks and all deer steaks get turned into Swiss steak

I'll double. All the bone and gristle , fat etc removed makes all wild game meat better .
I can't be paying others to put enough time and effort to cleaning and trimming meat to my standards
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I'm also on board with BUM & Keithjohn. Some will disagree of course, it's a free country. Game fat is a pretty good way to lower the enjoyment of eating it IMO
 
One thing I'll add, a chest freezer is much better than an upright at keeping meat for long periods of time. I have a very old chest freezer that I keep all my wild game in, I have moose that is just freezer wrapped that is still fine after nearly 4 years. There is sometimes small pieces of freezer burnt meat that can easily be trimmed off but all in all our meat can last a long time. The same package of freezer paper wrapped meat will be spoiled in less than 1 year in our up right. Not sure if it's all the air space around the meat or what but this is the truth. I'm sure it helps that our old chest freezer doesn't get opened all the time. Once or twice a week typically.
 
savagelh said:
One thing I'll add, a chest freezer is much better than an upright at keeping meat for long periods of time. I have a very old chest freezer that I keep all my wild game in, I have moose that is just freezer wrapped that is still fine after nearly 4 years. There is sometimes small pieces of freezer burnt meat that can easily be trimmed off but all in all our meat can last a long time. The same package of freezer paper wrapped meat will be spoiled in less than 1 year in our up right. Not sure if it's all the air space around the meat or what but this is the truth. I'm sure it helps that our old chest freezer doesn't get opened all the time. Once or twice a week typically.
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If your upright is not frost-free, you're OK. I have 2 uprights (one frost-free, one not) and a chest freezer. The non-frost free upright is just as good as the chest freezer.
 
I always eat the tenderloins first because they are easy to get at, and they make a good treat to celebrate getting your deer! I get the back straps made into boneless chops and grind the rest of the deer. This will mostly be made into both Barbecue and Breakfast sausages. I do get the butcher to add pork to my sausages just because I think the moisture from the fat goes a long way toward moistening and flavouring the product. I also like to mix the ground meat with pork for tourtiere. I have a decent corned beef recipe that translates well to deer. Every few seasons or when there seems to be a surplus of venison I will do a pail up. Last year one of my hunting buddies shot a nice buck on the last day of our muzzel loader season. This was a beautiful animal but far from prime venison. He had the entire animal minus the tenderloins turned into jerky. That jerky lasted a long time and fed his beer league hockey team for a whole season!
 
the_reaper_33 said:
I wish I can taste southern GMO deer. Our organic northern deer probably doesnt even compare
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I have eaten lots of both. Deer I have harvested in southern Ontario had yellow fat from corn and were very good. The deer harvested in North West Ontario have white fat and taste just as good. The deer eat a lot of moss known as old man's beard in my area and they are delicious. Had one bad one in 30 years. Older buck shot after the rut and had been eating cedar.

Darryl
 
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