Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Field dressing / deboning

As a meat wrapping, cheese cloth is pretty worthless - including those cheap deer bags. Flies can lay eggs right through the stuff and it doesn't keep dirt out. I agree that old sheets make great, cheap bags. I have a good supply of old pillow cases for deer quarters and loose stuff like neck meat.

I have never understood the concept of cheesecloth for a game bag... saw a guy's elk in it and he asked what white fuzzy stuff was growing on the meat... fly eggs before they turn.

Kent

if your self taught that Taste of the Wild cookbook is worth its weight in gold....its an excellent resource on butchering and is not just a cook book.....on top of buying one for myself ive given it to a few people as christmas presents....

The reason people leave the hide on while hanging an animal to age for long periods is to prevent the meat from drying out and developing a "rind" which will have to be trimmed off later.

Aging it now won't hurt it any but if it wasn't stretched when you killed it, it likely won't get much more tender.

Here is a good thread on aging: Aging by experts

I don't think someone could debone one in 10s of minutes, but last year in thirty minutes SlipSinker and I took one from freshly killed to quartered and in packs in 30 minutes, using the gutless method.

There's an old rule of thumb for aging beef. Because of differences in enzymes, I don't know if it applies to the deer family. As temperatures increase, the enzyme action that does the tenderizing speeds up, at an increased risk of spoilage.

in general, for each 10F increase in temperature, decrease hang time by half. Each of these will give the same amount of tenderizing.

35F 2 weeks
45F 1 week
55 3 days
65 1 day
75 eat it now

Steely mentions aging cuts of meat in the fridge.
Beef is certainly aged in this way, either dry or wet aging but I suspect with with shop bought beef you can pretty much guarantee it was hung at least until rigor was over, and that the animals them selves were not well past their prime. Additionally you do not have the added complication of them loosing condition during the rut..

With those differences in mind, I will be very interested to see if post butchery aging of the tough venison has any beneficial effect..

You're making me wish I would have paid to get some home! Those tenderloins were great.



Here in NC, you may shoot a deer in the morning and it be in the 20's or 30's, but by afternoon it may have warmed up to the 50's - 60's. About my only option is get it out whole if I'm close to a vehicle or quarter and pack out if not. I usually quarter and pack out. Even if I can get it out whole, it is a rare occasion when I could hang it whole and let it age a few days...because of the daytime temperatures. The other option is taking it whole to a meat processor and let them hang it in a cooler. I have done that, but never been satisfied with the results of their cutting/butchering.

And yes, most of mine I cut up at the kill site are a bit on the tough side. But I usually also cut it up within a day or so. Maybe this year I'll put the bagged meat in the fridge for a few days before cutting up.

That mulie Rock Chuck mentions above however, was primo. We gutted and left it overnight, then the next day quartered and trimmed off everything, then we kept it with us(in cool temperatures) in bags for another 2 days before final butchering and wrapping.

I went back and read ^this^. I'm surprised to see 55� and 65�. Is this correct? It seems to me to be warm. I'd be somewhat afraid to hang a deer for two days in 55�-60�.

However, if it is safe then this opens up some windows of opportunity that otherwise I considered closed!

Just never would have considered hanging a deer for a day at those temps.

Note that I said 'at an increased risk of spoilage'. That chart's for demonstrating the affect of temperature on tenderizing, not for storage. You don't want to hang meat long when its that warm. Once it's cool, you can get away with short times that warm, but I don't recommend it with a hot carcase.

I just butchered a cow elk that the quarters hung in the shade at camp... 30 the low, 60ish the high. Shot sat morning That's good here in az and I could have let it hang more but I'm busy the rest of the week.

Once the initial chill sets in the meat it's easy to keep in if you keep it out of the sun.

Elk we kill in sept are hung in temps of 45 to 85 and after three days and driving home, the meat is cold enough you need to take a break from cutting to warm your hands up.

I shot a big mule deer in the low desert and 90+ temps, low probably 60ish... uncover it at night to chill and cover with a old sleeping bag during the day to hold it in. It was perfect and cold.

I'm very picky on no gamey taste with my meat. Just take care of it and it won't sour.

Kent

Another question, I know deer "bleed out" when punched with a bullet.
However, I've had instances(more often than not) where deer were quartered and packed out immediately after the kill, and it seemed the meat had a high blood content.

That meat we cut up last Monday had virtually no blood left in it.

I've heard of people hanging a whole deer, with hide on, with a couple bags of ice stuffed in the cavity. This was to allow a short time of ageing but also to allow blood to drain from the meat. The ice was necessary because temps could rise into the 50's which was considered too high.

Hide on is disaster here, other places may vary?

Wife and I were driving home Sun from camp and a truck loaded with camp and a whole cow unskin't, just gutted thrown on top. About 75 degrees where we were and getting lower toward Phoenix where it was 90.

Unless he just killed it and was running it to the butcher fast, that was one nasty critter and I've seen plenty like that.

kent

The blood content depends on how you hit them. You got the lungs and the heart kept pumping until it ran dry. If you take out the heart, it can't pump the blood out of the meat. A heart shot is quicker, but I prefer the lungs just for that reason.

Kosher Jews cut the throat in a ritual. The idea is let all the blood pump out to satisfy the Old Testament law to never eat blood. Of course, the Jews, being Jews, added all kinds of other rules to it that the Bible doesn't have.

I once saw a documentry about Israeli arab hunters in Israel shooting these small gazells.
They were armed with shotguns do to local laws, but still aimed to wound the animals so they could be finished off by cutting thier throat to comply with "halal" (sp?)

So, re: another thread discussing high shoulder shots. You take out the CNS and the deer drops right there. I assume everything shuts down, including the heart so, one could assume that a DRT shot would produce meat with a high blood content, unless it could be hung and allowed to drain.

On a deer leaving the hide on or off is dependent on the temperature, in my opinion. So is hanging it outside. If there is any doubt, it goes in the fridge, quartered. miles

On neck shots, I tend to bleed the animal as a matter of course..With heart/lung shots, not so much..Usually, I am mostly concerned with getting the animal gralloched and hung up in a reasonable time and in a way that avoids any further conamination, ie don't bust the gut or the bladder!