Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska How Much Meat from a Caribou?

Just had my Caribou meat delivered. How much should I have expected from a medium size bull? Got 87 pounds. Among what I brought in was 2 full length back straps. From those I got four small packages labeled loin steaks. Sound reasonable?

John

What was the incoming weight? Was it on the bone or off? Did you get burger and what was added to it if so?

Yes

For members of the deer family and similar sized antelope, if the kill is "slaughter house clean" (none discarded from being shot up) you can expect 34% of live weight = clean butchered meat weight as a rule of thumb. But animals can vary in how fat or muscled up they are ,so that is a loose average. If the game is very skinny the percentage can go as low as 29%. Super healthy animals can go close to 38%

So if you made a very clean kill and you shot an average animal, of average build ,I would say your live weight should have been about 267 pounds. That would have been a dressed weight of very close to 200 pounds. Does that sound right to you?

If your caribou was dressed out at about 200 pounds your meat-take is about right.

If these figures seem seems light I might ask if you got your shanks, rib meat and neck meat too. Because the figure of 34% is ALL edible meat on the carcass. Many hunters and some butchers do not keep shanks ribs or neck.

Depending on what it was shot with, you will see some game with up to 10 pounds of meat thrown out because of blood-shot. A hit through both shoulders is going to be more damaging then a hit through ribs 4" behind the shoulders. Bullets the break up destroy more then bullets that only ball up. Bullets that hit at 2900 FPS do more meat damage then those that hit at 1900 FPS... and so on and so on ......... So the formula is good for domestic lambs and goats killed in the slaughter house, but varies a lot more with wild game, for these reasons above.

Hope this helps some

AK? Which herd?

Sounds like some heavy trimming on the loins... did they differentiate on rib steaks?

Normally we look at 40% of live weight for boneless meat. A very big bull will go 350 or so. The total is not wildly out of line.

Good point on added weight...

Thanks for the info. From what I gather, I guess the amount I got isn’t too unreasonable. My main concern was how little loin steaks we got, given what I brought in.

I killed this Caribou from the 40 mile herd off the Steese highway near Mt. Prindle.

They told me the incoming meat weight was 110ish. I didn’t see the scale. That was without the rib cage and neck. We boned that out in the field. The quarters were bone in. Took every scrap off the carcass we could get. Had about an even split between ground and sausage with the balance being roast, round steaks and the very few loin steaks.

John

Wife and I took 2 medium bulls off the Steese, first and second day of season, respectively, and I do my own butchering. I didn't weigh anything, but I don't know how you define "small". I also don't know what length you trimmed the backstraps to.

I trimmed ours from the pelvic girdle all the way up into neck area, resulting in (IIRC) about 24 inches each. Maybe a bit more. We like to have leftovers for the next day (we are just the two of us now), so I think I put 6 (oir equivelent) 3/4 in thick steaks in each pkg. Didn't count the pkgs either, but I think there were 6, possibly 7.

Ground and sausage will have fat added to it most likely.

This has been my experience as well, with all kinds of hoofed big game.

To reboot my reply- I missed the ''''full length" part. Sorry. As to size of pkg/portions, my wife and I consider two, 3/4 inch thick backstrap steak from our bulls to be a minimum portion, and so throw about 50% more in for reserve or leftovers. Backstrap and tenderloin is prime, so I make those pkgs somewhat smaller - say 1/2 to 1/3 smaller than "other" steak pkgs, which leftovers may provide another mealin themselves. Or at least a lunch snack. If we don't pig out and eat them all first sitting!

You could open one of those "small" pkgs", lay the steaks out and see how the extended estimate (assuming equal sized pkgs) compares to the length of the backstraps you brought in.

That anount sounds about right, give or take 10 lbs or so.

That weight seems about right ..boo really vary in size ...thats why i wait for the snowgo hunt and get me a bigass cow ! Ive added those big tubes of burger from sams in the pass..really steaches out those boo bugers next summer !

i had some caribou meat from Quebec once to cook up, best game meat i've ever had

I don't normally use someone else to process, but when I have, the first thing we did was weigh it all. I was given a record of the weight amount on my receipt.

Fixed a pack of blackstrap the other night and was extremely pleased. It was more tender, moister, and of a milder, more pleasing flavor than whitetail. Better than any whitetail than I’ve ever had.

John

i made the same comparison and conclusion

i was cooking at a game dinner once and someone handed me a recipe, meat and ingredients for stew. Was almost done, sampled the meat and stood there wondering 'what IS this'...? i knew it wasn't deer, elk or moose. someone said 'my uncle from Quebec donated it for the dinner'.

Caribou wins more often than not in blind taste tests against virtually all game animals. Last time we did it:
Caribou
Mtn goat
Moose
Dalls sheep...

Art,
For we Geezers, Cranes are Big Game and tasty.

Are there any around, still.?

had me some great sheep meat on the Rose, a few years ago~