Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Do you eat the meat?

So, here's my question. What do you guys do with your wild game? Give me honest answers now.

I hunt "big deer" (moose), and this is what I do:

Share the meat with my hunting partner, so by the time I butcher it I have about 250 to 300 pounds in the freezer. In the freezer I have steaks, roasts, and about 40 pounds of hamburger meat. My wife is not really anxious to eat moose steaks, but she eats a small portion. One of my sons, won't eat it, but the other does.

We cook the meat over low/med heat for a long time, and add: Olive oil, Mrs. Dash, onions, a few pieces of carrot, a little water (for extra moisture), salt and pepper to taste, garlic, and a few drops of vinegar or cooking wine. We use a tight lid over the pan or pot to keep the moisture inside as much as possible. Then we serve it with mash potatoes and gravy, and a fruit salad. My mouth just "waters" when I think of how delicious moose meat is.

We grind our own meat, and don't add fat. Then when ready to make hamburgers, my wife mixes the moose meat with hamburger meat from the supermarket. She adds Mrs. Dash, chopped onions, garlic, salt and pepper, and a little vinegar of cooking wine right into the hamburger meat, and just before I place the hamburgers (coated with olive oil) on the grill. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

I agree with some of the other folks- i don't shoot it if i don't eat it. We eat an elk and a deer each year, several blue grouse, and whitetail meat from SC if my uncle is kind enough to bring some when he comes elk hunting out here. I have had mixed experiences with game processors, and now prefer to do my own butchering. In my opinion most of the "gamey" flavor people talk about is a result of poor meat care in the field or an animal that ran for a while after being hit(lactic acid buildup in the muscles). I cut elk and deer into quarters, cut out backstraps/tenderloins, and bone out neck and rib meat. I like to age it for a week if possible, then cut into steaks, roasts, etc. We end up getting a good bit of grind meat, which we mix with beef suet. Jerky- get a cheap food dehydrator. Slice meat while still mostly frozen and cover with red pepper, Woostershire, and a little liquid Smoke. Usually takes 5-6 hours. A great marinade for game meat is a cup of red wine, a half cup of soy sauce, and a half cup of olive oil.
I got a doe with my bow on the last day of archery season and can't wait to cook some up(as soon as i get the CWD test results!). Good luck to all in your hunts. My elk season starts Saturday, and i am like a little kid on Christmas Eve.

Some years I have shot as many as 16 head of big game here in Ak including a moose so we clearly cannot begin to eat it all... but we do make a run at it! Our deer meat has always amazed those that believe their corn or alfalfa fed deer are better.

I save the whole hams from deer and smoke them for a few hours (brine them first) and finish off in an oven at about 180* for a long time. The meat falls off the bone, is tender and the smoke just does the right things.

Just spent yesterday cutting and wrapping 3 big bull moose with my hunting partner and others. The meat is particularly clean and user-friendly when we are done with it.

Ray
Add quite a bit of olive oil to your ground meat as you go and skip the beef mixing... we have been doing it that way for years and it makes great lean burger... the olive oil does not go rancid in the freezer for a very long time either...
art

Thanks, Sitka deer. I will try that next time.
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99ElkHunter: You are correct about taking good care of the meat. My hunting partner and I skin and quarter the moose fast. We keep the meat cool, dry, and clean. We place a bucket half-full of water next to the moose to wash our hands and knives while we work. Moose, like elk and other animals perfume themselves with their urine, specially around their bellies, so we pay close attention not to introduce bacteria from that area into the meat. If one can keep stomach contents and bacteria from touching the meat, it tastes much better. Once I get home and hang the meat, I remove the game bags and spray the meat with a mixture of water/citric acid to restart bacteria growth. Vinegar works well too, and so a salt/water mixture. The moose I killed this year tastes great, but I hung it for 2 days at 40 degrees only after treating it with citric acid.

I grew up eating wild meat. Deer, moose, grouse, bear. When I was a kid, we thought that people who ate beef and pork didn't know how to hunt.

My kids are still that way today. They think poor people have to eat beef and pork. The last few years, the Lord has smiled on our hunting, and we have put a moose and a deer away for the years meat. We don't buy beef and pork, period! I get some sausages and pepperettes made, but mostly we just eat the whole thing. Steaks, roasts, and lots of burger.

Last year we put up about 500 pounds of meat in the freezer, and we are just about out. I gave away maybe 30 pounds to my brother, and if you come for supper, and don't like wild meat, don't ask what is on the table. Also eat the tongue and the heart.

Best dern meat in the world, and NO chemicals!!!!!

ROTR- That sausage maker wouldn't happen to be over around Santa Clause, IN would it?? There is a small shop there that makes the best venison summer sausage that I've ever tasted, period!

Yes I eat the meat. I get it cut up at some local place after taking the quarters there, then shipped FedX to me. Last year's Caribou was as good as any beef, not gamy. I got steaks, roasts, and the rest mixed with domestic fat to make summer sausage. That was delicious. This year's elk arrives tomorrow. Same except I got hamburger as well as sausage, 40 pounds of each. Both it and the caribou did not run after being shot.

If it's not food or a nuisence, I don't shoot it! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

As a lad, I didn't know cow's were a meat animal! We ate deer almost exclusively. An yes, alot of it was "speed beef". <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

We do our own processing, and usualy one or two killed by close friends. Backstraps, loins and hams are cut into steak, the rest gets chunked and frozen for hamburger grinding after the season or canning. Burger is usualy mixed with 3 or 4 parts deer to one part pork, as venison burger doesn't have enough fat to hold together for cooking.

We also do a good bit of sausage, and jerky. Jerky is done in a salt brine and hung up to smoke. I do some in a dryer, but prefer it done "the old way". Bones are saved for the dogs. We save some ribs for grilling after the weather warms too.

Along with that, rabbits, squirrel and grouse are on the menu. I don't much care for squirrel, but pot pie or BBQed they're not bad. If God made any better eating than grouse, He musta kept it for himself! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

When I first got married, Wifey didn't care for deer, so she fixed it for me, and later on, me & Big Hunter. The "Post Toasties" must have lost their flavor, 'cause she likes it now. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />
7mm

With the price of beef these days, I'll do anything I can to make the budget stretch-- even if it means buying extra doe tags and sitting out in the cold filling them. It's a dirty job, but my family's worth it.

But seriously . . . The deer I take are usually at the butcher within a couple of hours. There's a guy on the way to town that has on operation in a converted garage. It saves me the time and hassle, and the guy manages a large retail meat section in his day job, so I know it's done right.

The ground meat is nearly indistinguishable from beef in many of our favorite recipes--stew,fajita, enchilada, curry, etc. We love exotic recipes. Basically, whatever works for goat seems to work for deer. Jerked venison on a skewer and a venison meat patty washed down with bottle of Ting-- you think you're in Jamaica.

One of my wife's specialties is Elizabethan cooking, so we all get Henry VIII's venison roast about a dozen times a year. The past couple of years, I've made sausage and jerky. We make a smoked breakfast sausage that we crumble into white gravy -- to die for!

In 20 years of doing deer I've had two bad meals. One came from a package of ground venison that somebody gave me. Lord only knows how that meat was tortured. The other was a slab of ribs from a big buck that didn't get dressed soon enough. He was too big to carry out, so I got the farmer to come down with his loader and we loaded him in the back of my pickup. It was getting late, I was in a hurry to get home, so I road back to town with the deer undressed. The rest of the venison was fine, but the ribs tasted like fresh-cut grass. They went straight to the dog.

I love venison. So do the kids. However, some of our guests have been less than effusive when we serve bambi-- more on moral grounds than anything else.

For those who find the taste of venison distasteful, or if you have a less-than-optimal piece of meat, here are some ideas:

1) Go visit the Indian grocery. A tablespoon or two of Madras Curry and a half-cup of yogurt thrown in with chunks of venison will kill any odd taste. Crock-pot the concoction all day. Serve on rice.
2) The smaller the chunk, the smaller the taste.
3) Red wine in a stew will do the same thing. Give it time.
4) Let questionable game soak in brine for 8 hours.
5) Most French recipes enhance gaminess. Most German recipes hide it.
6) Caribbean, Indian, Cajun, and Spanish also can be doctored to downplay the taste of the meat.
7) Most domestic barbeque sauces don't do justice to game. Goodies and Wickers are two that I can recommend. Goodies is a hotter-than-normal soul food sauce. Wickers is a light vinegar-based sauce popular around Memphis.
8) Cincinnati Chilli is the all-time surefire venison hider. I prefer GoldStar. It's built to simmer headmeat (that's the secret to Cincinnati Chilli) for 36 hours. Serve over spaghetti with shredded cheddar. Krogers usually carries the packets in the packaged sauce section.
9) If you go overboard on spicing to hide the taste of something, and you want to resurrect the concoction, throw buttermilk or yogurt into the pot. It'll tame some of the worst misfires.

I eat it all. Usually, its wild boar. The shoulders are cooked down in a kettle to make shredded pork. Save the broth for stock.

Strong tasting ground meat is best as Tacos! Just add a taco seasoning packet. No one can tell the difference (even my kids).

Cook the ribs in a slow cooker covered with Dark beer and barbeque sauce (equal parts). NO one will turn that down.

Have the hams smoked into --- Ham! Served this for Christmas Dinner last year!

I find that a little creativity and the dersire to cook a good meal can defeat "the gamey smell" pretty easily.

BMT

I'm not sure where my cousin takes it! We visit his parents in the Linton area(and he hunts some there), but he lives up North by DeMotte..I seem to remember him having some before his parents retired and moved south, so I guess it is somewhere by DeMotte.

I went to Santa clause Land as a child..many moons ago <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Mike

We hunt primarily for the meat. The smell of meat cooking is an acquired thing. I am so rarely around beef that the smell of it makes my stomach churn and the taste of beef fat can really get things rolling. I have grown so accustomed to lean meat that I don't even care much for more than the smallest amount of fat in the meat except for well layed moose ribs or the the layer of fat on some nice caribou loin steaks. Quite frankly I believe if caribou smells bad when it's being cooked it was probably killed at the wrong time - for eating one is better off killing the cows and they are less season/flavor sensitive anyway. For some reason reindeer, the genetic domestic equivalent of caribou, nearly always taste gamey to me though.

Nowadays nothing smells gamier to my nose than fatty ground beef or as rank as some portions of pork.

How meat is handled, processed and cooked has a lot to do with how well it is accepted. Wild and domestic animals need the same care in the pre-killing, killing, and handling afterward. The leaner wild meats need somewhat different cooking methods. I'm not so sure that we don't, in many cases, have better control over the killing and handling of our wild meats than do the commercial meat packers whose product is first trucked under some pretty stressful conditions. Wild meat can, IMO, be a better product all around than the domestic protein.

Speaking of how it is handled and processed, the point was driven home last year in a news repot. It was the first day of buck season, and a live report from one of the larger processers (6pm local news), showed successful hunters bringing in their kills to be done. Folks were lined up God knows how far, all with the hides still on, quite a few with the guts still in. It was probably in the upper 50 degree range too. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> How'd you like to get your meat back with that mixed in?

My brother in law is another. If he happens to kill something worth bragging about, he loads it in the truck, to drive around and show off! After he's visited everybody, it's then delivered to be processed.

Gives me a whole new appreciation of being able to butcher my own.
7mm

we go through 3 deer per year, if i can get that many. we have eaten as many as 5 in a year, but if i just take 3, we usually run out of deer in early august. i try to take 4 deer per year, and i have the entire 4th deer ground w/ 15% beef tallow (except for the loin and tenderloin)...we go through a lot of burger here. very versatile stuff.

the only game meat we give away is if someone wants a sampling of sticks or jerky. otherwise, we eat it all.

not a big fan of ducks, so i quit hunting them a few years back. try to get a couple of canadian geese, but that's all i want.

we go through as many pheasant as we can shove into the freezer. some years this is a lot, others it is only one or two (speaking of which, season opens saturday).

along with the occasional hog that we raise most of the meat in my family of sixs diet is wild game.we usually eat 5 to six deer a year and we all like it except for the new born and she doesnt have teeth.i have my own cold storage building and the wife and i do all the skinning and cutting up.i get the hide off quik and let the meat age a little.our meat deer are usually young ones and they are tender.big old bucks i ussually make jerky out of them.i dont like using a band saw because it smears fat and bone through the meat.unlike beef deer fat goes rancid quik so i remove it all.

I've never met a deer I didn't like. Guess they were all well field prepped, even if not by me. Couldn't tell the difference between Kodiak blacktail, NoDak whitetail (corn fed) and Montana muleys (alfalfa), either. Yes, the flavors were a bit different, but they were equally good. In fact, I liked those Kodiak deer best!

To answer the question - if we shoot it, we eat it, or if we have more than we can eat- we give it away to those who appreciate it as much as we do. I can't believe my family -3.5 of us (kid in college) ate a whole mature bull moose all by ourselves last year - but we did. About the only wild game I've never cared for is seal and walrus. Some black bears. Polar bear is excellent. So is bowhead and beluga, which I had the opportunity to eat when living in North Slope villages. Never had a bad caribou, but I don't shoot big bulls during the rut. The wild sheep and goat I have killed are even better than elk. Have encountered two not pleasant, but edible 3 year old bull, just pre-rut, moose. I'm unsure as to whether this was poor skinning technique, or that as adolescents, they had raging hormones. One big moose in rut was totally unedible (even to the dogs) as he had been fighting, with many wounds, all infected.

I have never taken anything to a butcher. Over the years tho, I have found myself becoming more discriminating on what becomes steaks and roasts, resulting in more burger. We LIKE spaghetti, goulash, and shepard's pie! We usually run out of moose burger before we do steaks or roasts. I only course grind our burger. No fat added - if I wanted beef fat, I'd buy beef. I, too, add olive oil- but usually just before I cook it. I marinade game steaks in olive oil, sometimes with a bit of Wortchestershire sauce , with fork punctures, before charcoaling them on the grill. A butter, garlic salt, and pepper baste - sometimes lemon pepper - really tops it off! Hard to beat a crock pot pot-roast, with veggies, put on in the morning before leaving for work. Always falling apart tender. I add a cup or two of water to keep it moist.

Haven't shot a snowshoe hare in years- but I'm rethinking this in light of crockpot/spicing up methods. Previously, we just pan fried them- they come out pretty tough, and fairly tasteless that way. We were off spruce grouse for awhile, but only because we weren't cooking them right. Those I have shot this fall have been excellent - garlic salt and pepper, then rolled in flour, fried in a hot, bacon grease and butter covered skillet until just barely done. As they turn more to spruce needles, we'll see.

When my oldest son, just turned 21 a few days ago, was about 6, my wife wanted to celebrate something or other and bought several 16 oz T-bones. After trimming the excess fat off, I charcoaled them to a faint pink inside. But in Blakes portion, I'd missed a pea sized corner of fat back in a crevice. With his lip curled up on one side as he stirred it around his plate, he asked "What is that?!" I looked at my wife and asked "You suppose we're a bit heavy on the game meat?"
When Ty came home from 2 weeks in Space Camp in Atlanta a cople years back, he walked in the door and said "MOOSE!"

Yeh, Rolly. We eat what we shoot. To the point that greasy beef (and bear) is not a preferred choice.

Yeah, I eat game if I shoot it with a few exceptions. There are a couple I don't like: aligator and sandhill crane, there are a couple that I can't/won't eat: nutria and a boar hog that has been run hard in hot weather. Even a buzzard won't eat a stunk up hog and if a buzzard won't eat it neither will I.
Only deer I know a lot about are whitetails and I'll take the hams, muscles separated and sliced into steaks, back strap and tenderloins cut out for grill or pan. Rest of it either made into pan sausage or smoked sausage mixed with pork trimmings because I want enough fat in it to cook in the pan without having to add grease. Make some into jerky. Do all my own game meat.

BCR

Rolly:

We eat all of it. I usually get at least one elk every year. We can only shoot one mule deer and I usually get one of those too. I get an antelope tag about every third year because it takes that long to draw. The last couple of summers I have gone hunting exotics in TX and come home with more meat. Sage grouse and pheasants are also on the menu.

The elk meat is easy because it is mild. But the mule deer often has a heavy gamey taste. Probably from eating sage. Antelope is usually pretty mild because they eat the same kind of crops that whitetails eat.

I cut the backstraps and tenderloins into steaks and I also get a few steaks from the shoulders. I cut the hind quarters into roasts, which I cook with some onions in a crock pot. The key to the steaks is not to over-cook them. I like to broil them but they are so lean that they become shoe leather very quickly. So you have to be careful.

The rest I grind. Some I make into sausage but most becomes burgers or meat for casseroles. I don't add beef to the ground meat. For burgers, I add an egg to keep the meat from falling apart. Others have mentioned that they remove all the fat. I agree that's critical.

We eat the sage grouse only because I feel that if I kill it, I owe it the respect to eat it. But I wish someone could tell me how to cook the sage taste out of it.

I also kill several hundred prairie dogs each year, out of a sense of civic responsibility. But there's no way that I'm going to eat those rats.

KC

For those of you who have the entire deer ground into burger or sausage or avoid some game animals altogether, I would encourage you to try recipes from other parts of the country/world for venison steaks and other types of wild game just to see if you like the variety. I know the burger is good prepared a lot of ways, but I personally prefer my steaks (prepared as discussed below) to anything prepared with the burger.



People in the rural South and particularly Cajun country (read poor folks) have long had to be creative in making tough cuts of meat (and undesirable meat such as possum, raccoon, and nutria, a large swamp rodent) tender and palatable to keep protein on the table. I realize that people in other parts of the country have done the same thing (slow cooking in stews, Crock-Pot recipes, etc.), but something different might be what your tastebuds are seeking.



For my deer (Arkansas whitetails), I typically get the tenderloin, backstrap, and hams cut into small (2"x2"), thin steaks and the rest ground into burger.



My mother found a simple way of preparing venison steaks that even my father (who wouldn't eat venison for years) likes.



1.a. Place frozen steaks in a shallow GLASS (I would avoid metal) casserole dish,

b. add plenty of salt,

c. fill casserole dish with water,

d. cover dish tightly with plastic wrap (my mother believes this is important), and

e. place in refrigerator overnight (until completely thawed, at least).

2. Rinse the steaks thoroughly with fresh water to remove as much of the salty brine as possible

3. Make shallow cuts (just break the surface) across the grain of the steaks to break the connective tissue in the muscle fibers (I much prefer this to pounding it)

4. Dredge in flour and sprinkle on a little pepper and maybe a tiny bit of salt (you probably already have plenty of salt from the brine marinade).

5. Fry in a skillet with a shallow layer of oil until the surface of the battered steak is a light to medium brown color.



Very simple, but the meat has no gamey taste to speak of (due to the brine) and is very moist and tender -- you can cut young deer meat prepared this way with a fork! Southerners have long used frying like this to make tougher cuts of meat (e.g., cube steak or "minute" steak) tender and tasty.



Don't worry for those watching your fat, cholesterol, or sodium intake, there are more healthful recipes available, as well.



Cajun recipes are good for wild game (e.g., duck gumbo) both in masking the gamey taste and making the lean meat tender. Justin Wilson, noted Cajun cook and storyteller who some of you may have seen on PBS, had a wild game cookbook published several years ago.



Also, the Arkansas G&FC has a lot of good recipes for various types of wild game ranging from Southern to Cajun to recipes you would find probably anywhere in the country. Here are the links:

http://www.agfc.com/education/recipes_details.html

and

http://www.agfc.com/education/phyllis/recipes.html



The burger is tasty, but the steaks are awesome.

I just had 245 pounds of elk meat delivered to my house FedX overnight. Any guesstimates as to what that bull might have weighed?