Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Rigor mortis and tender steaks

In reading here on the fire I hear a lot about game meat quality in regards to rigor mortis, mostly in the arguments that erupt over the gutless method. My question is how long after the animal dies does it take before they come out of rigor? If you absolutely have to get to it and bone one out immediately after it hits the ground, IE storm coming, last evening of your trip, is there anything you can do to assure better results?

I ask as a proponent of the gutless method on anything too big to drag and deer too if they’re too far to drag. This year I shot a raghorn bull elk across a canyon in CO. It took us about 45 minutes to an hour to work our way around the face to him. But when we got there we did the gutless on him. Hung him in camp the rest of the week in the shade and then in the cooler at home for a few days while I cut a quarter per evening after work. He’s been outstanding eating, very tender and mild. Would he have been in and back out of rigor in the hour it took us to get to him?

My wife killed a 3 year old 10 point whitetail buck this past Monday. I gutted him and we hauled him to my folks’ place. We dallied around having supper for an hour or so before hanging him in the barn. Weather forecast called for 60s the next day so I went ahead and skinned and quartered him and hung everything in the cooler until Friday. I just had some inch thick steaks medium rare off a back strap for lunch and it was quite possibly the best venison I’ve ever eaten, mild and almost fork tender. Was waiting an hour or a little more to quarter him long enough for him to come out of rigor or am I just lucky?

I shot a decent 9 pointer on Friday morning. Gutted and loaded him up and then came on back to town. Temps were in the 40s so I went and drank a couple cups of coffee with my uncles and dad, probably 3 hours before I had him hung in the barn. I skinned and quartered him and stacked everything in the cooler, I guess I’ll find out in a couple days if the third time is the charm.

The Kid,

Posted this not too long ago on another Campfire forum:

The scientific term for what can sometimes toughen boned meat is "shortening," because the muscle cells actually contract when disconnected from the bones. This can also happen even when left on the bone, if the meat cools down too quickly, especially when it goes from warm to freezing in a few hours, which these days is called "thaw shortening." I had this happen to an eating-size mule deer buck here in Montana one Thanksgiving. We hung the field-dressed carcass on a corral gate to cool overnight, and the temperature dropped below zero. The toughest deer I've ever taken! Even hanging the carcass for several days after it thawed didn't tenderize the meat much.

The warm-meat problem is due to rigor mortis, which is also essentially a muscle contraction. If the muscles start to go into rigor before the boning occurs, then the meat can toughen due to the contraction. Oddly enough, this is more likely to happen in warmer weather--which is when many hunters bone out animals, to "cool 'em down." Warm temperatures accelerate the chemical process of rigor, while cooler temperatures slow it down.

The other factor, of course, is the tenderness of the individual animal. Wild animals are not a consistent "product," like domestic meat sold in stores. They vary considerably in age and condition, and younger animals have less of what is called "organized collagen," the protein fiber that makes meat tougher--which is broken down during the chemical process of "hanging" game. Some species develop relatively little organized collagen even as they grow older, such as pronghorns, so "shortening" doesn't affect their meat as much. In fact we've boned out quite a few freshly-killed antelope with no problems.

Other animals can be affected when boned out, depending on their age and how far rigor mortis has progressed. It's better to bone them before rigor even starts, or after it has dissipated--which normally takes at least a day, though again, temperature affects the chemical process.

As a matter of fact, we've been timing the rigor-mortis process with a mule deer doe I took last week, because my wife Eileen writes game cookbooks for most of her living, and wanted to get some precise results. So we put a thermometer out in the garage, and checked the doe (an older, bigger one) periodically, starting two hours after it was killed. Eileen will probably write it up for our on-line magazine, RIFLE LOONY NEWS. We'll probably take one or two more deer this season, and will repeat the "experiment" on them.

Usually you are talking about 24 hours.

What the animal was doing when it was killed makes big difference.There are a lot of variables that effect tenderness. I mentioned rigor mortis because when I use to do a full quartering of an elk and split the spine, with no deboning, the back strap/loins/T-bones were always the most tender cuts. Now I find the opposite to be true.This is only my experience and I eat a lot of elk. I am sure others will chime in and have completely opposite opinions on it.

I've tried to age boneless meat in a cooler with ice with mixed results at best.

I’ll add that when I mention the cooler I’m not speaking of an ice chest. My cooler is an old Coca Cola refrigerator from my dad’s old convenience store with the racks removed. So meat is held at about 35-38 deg with room for air to flow around it.

The ideal way to process a deer or elk is to hang it whole, skinned and cleaned for 24-48 hours with temperatures of the meat not above 40deg. This will allow all the animal to go through rigor. Then you should quarter it and get the temperature down in the upper 30's until you get it all cut and wrapped. Elk are not often in a location to get this done. I do not do the gutless method. I am not a Lazy meat packer.

batlz,

Exactly--but as some have noted that's not always possible

Here's the piece of info The Kid apparently passed over from my info: "It's better to bone them before rigor even starts, or after it has dissipated--which normally takes at least a day, though again, temperature affects the chemical process."

One concrete example might be a young cow elk (not a calf) Eileen killed in 2013, in a deep draw over a mile downhill from the road where we parked the pickup. It was late in the afternoon on a very warm day in early September, and instead of doing gutless, we field-dressed it conventionally. Then, while Eileen cut off the lower legs and head, I hiked back to the pickup for our Neet-Kart (a concession to age that I purchased at 60), an inline-tire game cart that has handles at both ends, with bicycle-type brakes.

By the time I got back she was done, and I sawed the spine in two right behind the ribcage, which still left the backstraps mostly connected to the spine. We loaded the back half on the cart and wheeled it out as the light faded, then came back in the dark for the front half. (Did not want to leave it overnight because there are a few grizzlies in that country.) By the time we loaded both halves into the pickup it was 10:00, and we drove an hour home and hung the halves up. Did not skin any of it, except for slicing the hide down along the spine and peeling it back enough to cool out the shoulders. Hung the halves in the garage, which cooled down to around 50 overnight. Left it on the bone until rigor dissipated, then skinned and cut up the carcass enough to fit into big coolers for a little aging, before we butchered a few days later.

Maybe the meat would have all been tender if we'd boned it out, but have had some experiences otherwise.

John, you about have me talked into one of those Neet-Karts.

If you are by yourself, packwheel or honey badger wheel beats neetcart.....

We deal with heat in TX mostly.

If I can gut a deer I'll let it hang over night if temps are ok or all day.

Usually we have to debone a bit within a few hours. In that bad time usually IE starting rigor.

I try like heck to go early or late but lots of times the weather is the factor.

After that it stays in the cooler almost always 10 days on ice. We don't have a walk in... or weather to hang.

We rarely have bad meat.

The worst I've had though is even been backstraps taken off an animal during rigor... tough as whatever you think tough is to you.

Preferably I'd hang for 10 or more days at the right temps with hide on...

Yep!

The Neet Kart is best for heavier loads with a person on each end. Generally I can handle a pronghorn or a doe deer by myself, but last fall killed a big-bodied mule deer buck and after lashing him to the NK as it lay sideways on the ground, could NOT get it tipped upright. Turned out he and the cart together weighed more than I did!

Killed him just at the end of legal light, and didn't particularly want to cut him in half and make two trips in the dark. But I wasn't far from where Eileen was hunting whitetails on the Missouri River, and she had our old side-by-side wheeled cart in her pickup, so she drove over and brought it. It only weighs about 12 pounds and one person can easily bring out a pretty big deer--but it isn't nearly as good on sidehills as the inline NK.

Lots of good info here from folks with tons of experience.

Because of my health issues, we started doing the gutless method several years ago. Perhaps we have just been lucky, but so far, we've had nothing but fantastic results. This past Sunday, I took two mature whitetail does just seconds apart -- and a little before 7 a.m. The temp was probably in the high 40s/low 50s. By the time I rounded up our twin boys to do the retrieval, heavy lifting, weighing, etc., along with getting a few photos, nearly 90 minutes had passed. But by noon, both had been taken care of and the meat put on ice in an over-sized ice chest. We'll wrap and freeze it in the next couple of days.

Last night, we took one of the hams, sliced it fairly thin, seasoned it and then double-battered and deep-fried it. It was melt-in-your-mouth tender.

From this:



to this...in about 36 hours...

Made tender with a Contender! That your 30-30 barrel?

One of the problems with caring for deer meat in Texas is that it is often pretty cool in the morning and can be 70-80 at noon so you can't hang the meat. It would be nice to have some information on what temps and how ling you have before the meat might spoil. Another snivel is that though it can be freezing at 7am when it gets around noon the flies are out in force.

Yep, that's the 24" Van Horn 30-30 barrel. Used the 150 grain Speer Gold Dot Bonded/Blackout bullets launched at 2469 fps MV by a book charge of CFE223. The first doe was 170 yards; the 2nd was at 205-210.

You make a great point about the see-saw weather in TX. It definitely adds another dimension to game processing.

There are tons of scientific studies and data on this subject. Here's just one link:

Rigor and chemistry link

MINIMUM of 24 hours IMHO to pass rigor issues. But since you got those 2 does off the bone before that set in its not a big deal.

Rarely will I even consider meat thats not at least a week aged in some form or fashion though.

The new dentures help demand tender meat too. LOL

I like to brine deer meat, seems to make a difference.

Interesting read.

I have the same problem here in Oz. If I knock one early in the morning I usually have to get it gutted, back to camp, boned out and into the portable fridge within a couple of hours, before the flies turn out in force. If I knock one in the evening I have more time, but still have to get it packed away before turning in for the night. The only exception is where there's a coolroom or meat house, such as there is on a couple of properties I've shot on.

I usually let the meat have a few days in the fridge before freezing it. As long as I've made a good clean kill on a healthy animal the meat always seems to be tender. This has even been true of mature bucks and stags, though I don't shoot those once they're well into the rut.