Weight of Cordrays Ground Beef Venison
The taste and quality of the venison steaks yous serve for dinner depend largely on how the deer is handled in the field.
Silently, the deer comes slipping through the wood, stopping every few yards to check for danger along the path ahead. The hunter sits in a tree stand up 50 yards away on full alert. Soaked in sweat from the oppressive September rut, he fears the deer will current of air him at whatever minute. The immature cowhorn buck, a nice "meat deer," steps into a little clearing in the forest and the hunter makes a well-placed shot. The deer is down. Now what?
The decisions that our fictional hunter makes in the side by side few minutes will determine the quality of the venison he puts on the family dinner table for the rest of the yr. Should he field clothes the deer, or just effort to become information technology out of the woods and into a cooler as presently equally possible? Should he attempt to butcher the deer himself or take it to a processor? Unfortunately, for many hunters, the answers to those questions, and many more, are oftentimes based on myth and misinformation about the proper protocol for handling deer from field to freezer.
One of the oldest, most persistent myths nearly handling deer is also one of the most harmful. For as long every bit most deer hunters tin can recall, a pervasive dominion of thumb has insisted that you cutting the tarsal glands and the testicles from a buck every bit presently he hits the ground. The thinking was (and still is in some circles) that the gamey secretions from these two trunk parts would somehow leach back into the carcass and taint the meat. "Zero could be further from the truth," says Charles Ruth, the Due south.C. Department of Natural Resources' Deer Project leader. "The deer'due south testicles didn't bear upon the quality of the meat while he was alive, and they won't bother the meat now that he is dead. And get out those tarsal glands alone. Don't even touch them. They will only taint your pocketknife and your hands. And you volition inevitably transfer that to the meat."
Charles Ruth knows a matter or ii about skinning and processing deer. In his former life, earlier he came to piece of work for the DNR, he processed more than than a g deer while working on a private hunting plantation. He even starred in a video produced several years ago by the Clemson University Extension Service providing hunters with a step-by-stride visual guide to skinning and processing deer. "When you hear people talk about eating venison that tasted gamey, it'southward because they got a mouthful of a deer that was mishandled," Ruth says. "Most likely the meat was contaminated with dirt and debris, intestinal contents or bloodshot tissue." The secret to success in processing deer, says Ruth, is keeping the carcass clean and absurd.
"I don't recommend field dressing deer. You can drive a truck to ninety percent of the deer harvested in South Carolina. My advice is to get that deer hung as soon every bit possible and move on to skinning it right away."
There are exceptions to that rule, Ruth admits: "Field dressing deer may be somewhat more pop and appropriate in the more remote areas of the northern office of the state." Sometimes it tin be tough or about impossible to get a deer out of the forest in a timely style in the remote areas of the mountains, particularly if the deer is downed in the late evening. In that case, field dressing is sometimes required, only steps should still be taken to go along the carcass cool and to reduce the possibility of contagion of the carcass from clay and droppings. Oft, the mountain deer hunter must walk out of the woods to go help dragging the deer. That's an opportunity to end at the shop, pick upwards a bag of ice and carry information technology back to put in the crenel. The carcass can be protected while dragging through the forest past cutting a few small slits in the abdomen flaps and endmost the cavity dorsum up, temporarily stitching it closed with a length of string or cord.
But for most hunters, the play tricks is to go the deer out of the woods speedily and either to a deer processor or to the skinning shed. "You want to get right ahead and peel and eviscerate the animal. This is the step that has the biggest effect on the quality of the meat. If you contaminate the carcass with intestinal contents at this phase, or fail to completely remove the bloodshot tissue, it volition spoil the meat," Ruth says.
Charles Ruth has perfected a method of skinning and processing a deer that is a wonder to watch and too involved to describe hither in detail, but several things he does could relieve hunters a lot of fourth dimension and frustration. For case, nine times out of ten, a hunter drags the deer up to the skinning shed and cuts two slits right above the hind leg knee joints, exposing the large Achilles tendon. The two curved ends of the gambrel are and so slipped into these two pockets and the deer is hauled up past winch to a working acme. The trouble with that mutual practice is that once the hunter starts trying to skin the leg surface area around the gambrel, information technology is all simply impossible to work the knife around the gambrel. The solution is so uncomplicated that it evades virtually hunters - peel a modest section of the leg effectually the human knee joint earlier you hang the deer. Simply be careful non to cut the Achilles tendon. It is essential to hanging the deer.
Simply the best advice, the ane matter that will make the biggest difference in the concluding product, is to get rid of every speck of bloodshot tissue. Many hunters simply quickly skin and eviscerate the deer and hang information technology in the cooler or accept information technology to a processor. This is a recipe for disaster. Bloodshot tissue, that cherry-blood-red to blackish expanse around the bullet wound, begins to decompose almost immediately and is a ready-fabricated banquet for bacteria. It can eventually taint the entire carcass, fifty-fifty while the deer is hanging in the cooler.
Here's how you get rid of it. Once the creature is skinned, locate the bullet-entrance hole and begin trimming away the unabridged area effectually the wound until you achieve fresh, undamaged tissue. This is not the time to worry almost trying to relieve every ounce of deer meat. Trim and discard equally of tissue that shows signs of hemorrhage. You tin't eat it, and if you have it to a processor, that's the first affair he is going to do anyway.
Michael Cordray, a custom deer processor located in Ravenel, handles most three k deer a year. He too has some communication for hunters who desire to end upwardly with venison that even those who are timid about eating wild game will brag about. "In hot weather - say Baronial and September - if you tin't become the deer to a processor in two to three hours, become ahead and field apparel it. Get information technology in the cooler or put a pocketbook of ice in the cavity. Fifty-fifty during cooler conditions, it is still important to become the carcass cooled down as speedily as possible. A sealed upward body crenel holds heat. The signal is, accept care of the meat from the time it hits the ground. Once the deer is downwards, it is no longer a deer - it's a piece of meat." .
Cordray says he gets everything from the whole un-skinned deer to private pieces of meat. "Nosotros'll take it however they bring it in, but one matter I would stress is that when hunters peel the deer, they tend to launder it off like you would wash a car. That's fine, but the problem comes in when they lay the soaking wet deer on a dirty picnic table or in the bed of a truck. Everything sticks to a wet deer. The combination of h2o and leaner and dirt is definitely something you want to avoid."
Information technology seems that no one has always taken the time to calculate but how much venison South Carolina hunters put in the freezer, and eventually on the dinner table, each yr. Charles Ruth whipped out his calculator recently and came upwardly with these figures - 221,000 deer harvested last year, times an boilerplate live weight of 100 pounds, times 35 percent average yield of boned meat, equals an amazing seven.74 million pounds of venison. That'south a lot of deer meat, and for some folks, a substantial part of their diet.
So it would seem logical that hunters would take whatever measures are necessary to make sure that the venison they serve their families is of the highest quality and purity. We expect and demand null less from commercial butchers and purveyors of beef, poultry and pork, all the same each year nosotros run into some hunters handle deer carcasses in ways that raise eyebrows effectually the deer camp.
Things like letting a deer lie effectually in the hot sunday for several hours before skinning and gutting, working with muddied tools, and leaving bloodshot tissue for the processor to bargain with, all piece of work to guarantee a less-than-Grade-A product. Have the time to learn to do it right, and go on the carcass clean and cool. Yous will do justice to the fine animal y'all just harvested, and you are much more probable to earn the praise and admiration of those who sit down at your dinner table.
For more than information on processing and preparing deer meat, including "Tender Loin Versus Tenderloin," "Acme Ten Tips for Deer Processing," and "Easy Deer-licious Recipes," become to www.scwildlife.com and click on the "Hunter's Harvest" article. These curt manufactures are included in the online version of "Hunter's Harvest" as sidebars.
For information near S.C. Hunters and Landowners for the Hungry, a nonprofit organisation that provides deer meat to hungry Southward Carolinians, visit world wide web.schuntersforthehungry.com/.
Affiliate heading and recipe from Wild Fare and Wise Words cookbook, past Jim Casada.
Source: https://www.dnr.sc.gov/magazine/articles/novdec2007/huntersharvest.html