On random thought while daydreaming about the next hunt, my thoughts turned towards what my hunting party traditionally does: eat the semi-pluck+. For those of you unfamiliar- pluck is the vital organs, traditionally lungs, liver, and heart. We don't eat the lungs since Americans are conditioned to not think about it, but we do throw in the testicles and kidneys now. Lately I was considering trying some lung if any were left, possibly tongue and brain. When I conversed lately with other "hunters" it was kind of hit-or-miss if they also ate organ meat and none of them had the same ritual to eat them day-of. If they did eat organs it usually was just the liver, heart, or kidneys but separate. Anyways, this has me wondering how common it is among this crowd- to eat as many of the organs day-of as possible.
Typically, we fry in a skillet of oil... get oil hot, fry 1-2 onions down to shrivels then remove them to prep the oil, then dip the pieces in flour to fry, add garlic salt and pepper afterwards. If you have any methods / additional organs to suggest I try I would be interested to know.

Not always but sometimes keep the liver on a smaller, younger deer. Been thinking about the tongue, but it is pretty small. I used to eat beef tongue and it was good. Have eaten lung from hogs, but not deer. It was edible but not outstanding in any way. Grandmother used to cook the melt from beef, and as I remember (long time ago) it was strong. I like pork liver, with young deer second. Better than chicken liver to me. miles

Been wanting to keep some livers and make liver wurst ( however it’s spelled)

I keep tongue and hearts.

I don't like the liver but know others that do, so I give mine to them.

Dont like kidneys of any sort and don't know anybody who does.

I really like the hearts, we eat them either day of or day after.

Been meaning to try tongues but it seems like you would need a few. I like beef tongue so it may be good.

I eat heart. Rest of the guts are fed to the coyotes.

Eat backstrap the day of, if anything.

Favorite would be to eat a grouse gotten during a deer hunt.

When I worked at the pack, the lungs all went to a mink farm. No one seemed too upset by that.

I just don't eat offal

I'll save a heart or liver if someone in camp requests that I do so. I'll eat some heart if somebody else prepares it. Wouldn't give you a nickel for a truckload of any type of liver, though.

O/T, but I'm with MadMooner on the grouse.

Always heart.

No thanks, I do keep the heart for my dog though.

Ate deer heart and liver tonight.

Brother, make a chili with the heart meat. Le bombe!

Always heart. Never lungs.. honestly I never even thought of eating them. As far as I know I've only eaten kidneys once in a traditional London steak and kidney pie.. wasn't very impressed.

Always heart. Don't like liver. My son likes it and keeps it.

Not sure why you would want to. I've always wanted to like liver I just can't.

I never liked liver until eating pronghorn liver. As with all pronghorn meat, it needs to be cooled and rinsed soon after killing. A friend put it in a bucket of cold water for a few hours, then fried it that evening, thin-sliced and not cooked too much. Very mild and sweet.

Started treating and cooking other game livers the same way, including deer and elk, and started liking it as well. Which makes me suspect that the "problem" with game liver is mistreating it in the field.

Have always liked heart, especially if it's given a couple days to relax and "age." Doesn't change the flavor much, but it does become less chewy.

Sounds like me and sardines.

Thanks for your inputs. So far I will add testicles, tongue, and fresh backstrap day-of. Brain maybe but I'd try some seso de res tacos to see if I'd like it. Also- the way I described the preparation, chicken frying in onion oil... I am of the opinion it's even better the next day somehow.

Whitetail deer heart and liver make fine eating.

I second that..

Might want to think twice about eating deer/elk brains. With CWD on the rise eating any kind of neural or lymphatic tissue would not be wise. Also brains have a high level of cholesterol - pork brains have the highest of any food I know.

I love eating heart, deer, elk or beef and do like beef kidneys but have never tried elk or deer. I like beef liver but my one trial of elk liver was decidedly bitter and have not tried again.

So I have been told about elk liver- make sure be blood has been well flushed out. We slice about 1/2" thick and put in a mild brine or water to do that... it takes a lot of water and lead time to get it out. Same goes for the others actually. Maybe that will help any future attempt.

Will give that a try next season already have this years elk put up. The liver on this elk looked a bit bruised though the shot was forward of the liver. So did not collect it.

Hey @Prwler, I thought you might also be interested:
-since you mentioned CWD I did some initial reading on the topic
-currently it is flagged as a risk of transmission with some suspected cases but nothing definitely proven. keep an eye out for "spontaneous Crutzfeld-Jakob" diseases as there may be correlation, even cause.
-the CWD prions exist in the whole animal. Even urine and saliva supposedly contain it. Of course, I would expect neural tissue to have higher concentrations
-CDC advises to not eat infected animals out of concern for crossover to humans
-prions take a very high temperature to denature, like 700-900°F degrees. No mention was made as to the effectiveness of acids, bases, or proteolytic enzymes.
-I did not look into if there was any sort of quick and cheap field test. Animals that are behaving / visibly impaired by CWD are obviously gone.
-(commonly known) prion diseases take a long time to manifest symptoms. There are no known cures for these types of diseases.

Perhaps you already knew this; I certainly did not know these details.

On a related topic, risk of prion-like disease was one of the first things that came to mind when they started saying how they were going to fight an overhyped flu by di**ing around with people's mitochondrial DNA. And then fools volunteered to get it!