Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Antelope Meat Care Questions

sounds like yah got it skinned relitivly soon and hung up......im fairly sure that would work here for goats if yah were near enough to camp to get it hung and skinned fairly qick....think what helps in this case is im guessing yah have low humidity so skinning and hanging the animal in the shade prolly helpred cool it off fairly well due to moisture evaporating of the carcass...also im quite positive the only reason it worked is good air circulation...leave the goats laying with the skin on in the back of the truck is going to create hotspots that arent going to cool down very fast.....also there generally aint many trees where we hunt speed goats.....lil shade aswell.....just works best to get them on ice ASAP.....

Use to love to hunt Antelope in Wyoming when I lived in Cheyenne. Can't say I ever aquired a taste for them other than making sausage. Everyone was a quick 1 shot kill and great care was taken to preserve the meat. To me it still tasted like sage but others who ate the same antelope liked it. I guess it's just me and not always how well you take care of the meat. The hair on Antelope is hollow and will break if bent backwards so be carefull when you drag or handle the cape. Good luck to all.

Yes, the work has always been done shortly after the kill, circumstances permitting. That just seems natural to me- kill, care, carouse, in that order. In almost all my hunting, I bonk something, quarter & bag it, and begin the pack out; and my pack-out might be only a hundred yards.

You're sure right about our humidity. "...but it's a dry heat" they like to say around here!

Dead bodies simply never bounce around my car for a tour of the prairies.

I use the shade of my tent or car out in the sage flats. And air circulation is a good thing. And ice is a wonderful invention.

Last year we hunt them in a tree in the shade let them cool down and then hung them over night in a coolish shop cut wrapped and froze them for the trip home it was great table fare. We were only 2 days away. We saw a lot of guys with the small freezers they had them cut and wrapped for like 60 bucks and then froze them solid hauled the littler freezers home in the back of trucks. Those guys were from the east and had done like that for years from WY.

Thanks guys! I think I got a good idea of how to handle them now. If we do get nine, we may try dragging to the truck and then skinning and also try skinning and packing them to the truck right away to see which works best for us.

I am excited! It sounds like it may be a lot of work but a great time.

Take a small tarp if you try to skin them in the field. I hate skinning animals on the ground due to all the crap that gets on them, I don't care how careful you are. Antelope are pretty small critters. I grabbed one by the horn and drug him about 200 yards last year, it wasn't bad. If it had been farther, a little cart would have been nice.

Good Luck

loder

I have hunted pronghorns from New Mexico in late August to Montana in November. The biggie is to cool the meat out, however you do it. This depends on field conditions more than anything else. I have used everything from part-out in the field to just-gut, depending on conditions, and haven't had a bad one decades.

My wife and I have mostly hunted in late October in Montana for many years. Usually we just gut them and leave them belly-up, then skin and butcher when we get home. We do usually rinse the cavity but other than that they are fine.

I wouldn't dream of doing the same thing with a New Mexico buck on Aug. 30th. Then they should be skinned and hung in a cool place within 2-3 hours.

But you can't put off immediate cooling with pronghorns as you can with a lot of other game.

I often hear these comments about antelope. I have shot over 30 of them, from my home state of MT, to CO, WY, NM, and NV. Some taken on cold days of late October and some in the blistering desert heat of August. Shot them grazing among the sage, the wheat stubble, alfalfa, and some lunar-style landscapes. I have yet to find one that was anything but delicious.

They are my favorite. I have had some old bucks and bulls that required a good chili recipe to digest, but never an antelope.

I am meticulous about field care and processing. And, like most said above, I cool them down immediately.

Call me lucky, I guess. Hope I stay lucky. I have three pronghorn tags to fill this year, so more good steaks for the freezer.

Don't be afraid to take off a little hunting time to get the meat very clean. In general there'll be plenty of animals to hunt. Last fall pard killed his late in the afternoon. We skinned/quartered on the spot and it was sunset before we got it packed back to the truck. Put it on ice (we had ice in a cooler in the truck) overnight. In the AM we stayed in until sunup and got all of the hair etc cleaned off and headed back out just before noon. I killed mine early afternoon and again got it on ice right away. We headed back to town and spent the rest of the afternoon getting mine cleaned.

I use Ziplock Big Bags in the Large (3 gallon) size for packout and storage and leave the tops open. They allow the meat to cool quickly without being submerged. Before we headed home we dumped the blood from the bags and all the bloody ice cubes, put fresh ice blocks into a large cooler and then duct taped it shut. Both turned out to be tastey.

I would reemphasize having a packframe. I got one as a christmas present and I used it for both of my antelope last year. I didn't really need it for the buck but the doe was quite a ways from the road. The section of the unit that allowed the reduced price doe tags was flatter and the pronghorn were more of a walk away from the road. The pack was a huge help as soon we got into the car it started raining. Sitting by the road in the dark with all of the stars eating a little jerky was one of the happiest moments of the season. The pack made those miles a lot shorter and the pronghorn was in the ice a lot quicker.

Pronghorn is also my favorite meat, though I have not had the opportunity at an elk, even while though I have lived in Colorado. However, I wonder if people who like antelope more than other meat might like it more because they take better care of the antelope than they do deer or elk. We put pronghorn in ice as quickly as we can but we haven't done that with mule deer or my lone whitetail.

I know a butcher/taxidermist in Douglas that I've used - Jeremy Herrick. He's treated me very well over many years: probably processed more than 25 antelope for me.

I gut the antelope and take it to Jeremy. He skins it and processes it for me. He does a better job skinning than I do. Pretty simple.

Jeremy Herrick: 307-358-3340 (work); 307-351-1777 (cellular).

What I like to do with mine is wash out the body cavity in the field. And as soon as I get it home hang it up, skin it, & hose it down. Hosing it down cools it quickly & cleans of any dirt or hair.

I love hunting and eating Antelope but don't enjoy it off the grill as much as other game. I hunt them in Wyoming and Colorado and kill my fair share each year and don't mess around once they are on the ground. It seems they are always rutting and chasing when I'm hunting though. This year Colorado has a December doe hunt and I drew a tag. I will be curious to see if the meat is any different that far past the rut. What do you guys think who have killed them in Nov-Dec?

All this advise works on deer, javalina, elk and Spanish goats, but I'd rather eat a skunk than a pronghorn antelope, and I know a lot of ranchers that feel the same way..The meat is dark red comparable to horsemeat..I am not a picky eater and we eat all wild game and have all my life from all over the world, I eat Menudo, son of a gun, bone marrow, guts, lungs, heart, liver, have drank curdled milk mixed with blood in a Masai village, drank the green water out of chewed up grass from a buff stomach and near puked but it stayed down...I just don't care for pronghorn antelope, its nasty, even the young ones!

I don't know about all that but once I wanted to shoot one at long range so took the heavy rifle and portable bench. We lazered one at 875 yards that was hanging all by itself in a draw. After I shot and we were getting close to the goat we could tell it was a late fawn and it couldn't have weigh over 50lbs on the hoof. I butchered it and laid the cuts out in the fridge. It was like veal and we never froze any.

Hmmmm,agree with just about all being said on care for antelope. Been lucky too I suppose, as I've not had a bad one yet. A little tip on dragging them is to get yourself one of those teflon sleds you roll up, tie underneath your daypack. These REALLY make dragging easier! Alot easier. Anyway, there ya go, good luck. Tom [Cabela's has the sleds]

YES gut the thing as soon as you can !!!!! they blot fast !!! When you skin the lope make shure you do your best to not let any hair touch the meat !!! Big one on the hair for some reason when hair gets on the meat it makes it taste bad and i mean real bad . then when you put it in the cooler go to town and get some dry ice ! most towns carey it so all you need to do is ask at a store . Well that about dose it have fun and hunt hard !!!

shoot straight shoot far shoot safe

I always like to remember that these taste much more like pronghorn than antelope and care for them accordingly.

eastplace,

As I noted in an earlier post, I have hunted pronghorns from late August in New Mexico to early November in Montana. (I don't know of any seasons that go later than Montana's, which starts about the 10th of October and ends about a week into November, but would like to hear if anybody knows a later one.)
I haven't seen that the rut has any effect on the meat--and both my wife and I love pronghorn meat. And I have killed a number of big bucks from the beginning to the end of the rut on very warm days.

I have also come to believe that there is something in pronghorn meat that causes a few people to react violently against it. Dunno what it is (maybe sage) but I do know a few people who just can't stand pronghorn meat that tastes fine to most other people. As a matter of fact Eileen and I just served pronghorn to her brother and his wife and they both loved it. They're from New York and hardly ever eat game of any kind!

Of course they also liked moose, elk, whitetail, etc., as they were here for a week and game is all we eat, so that's what they ate.

One more note, I tried to do a European mount myself and failed miserably. The horns ended up decomposing and unsheathing off the skull stubs. Anybody have any input on how to handle the skull if you are not getting a full blown mount?