While we hunters enjoy the early season as an opportunity to start hunting sooner than later, the warmer temperatures pose a challenge when it comes to proper care of your harvested big-game animal. While seasoned hunters are pros at preventing big game such as pronghorn antelope, deer, elk or moose from spoiling, be sure to your new hunting recruits know to take precautions once their animal is on the ground.
Teach them to begin the cooling process immediately. Meat spoils particularly fast around the ball joints in an animal’s hip and underneath its front shoulders. Make sure you walk your new hunters through the skinning and quartering process as soon as possible and move the animal into cold storage. For larger big-game animals, remember to teach new hunters to make some cuts in between muscles to the bone to allow the heat to escape. Larger muscles take longer to cool, so meat can spoil within hours if the heat is trapped.
Not cooling the meat quickly can lead to what is referred to as bone souring, which is caused by the spread of bacteria—typically near the bones—that gives the meat a pungent scent and a bad taste. Once bone souring occurs, it cannot be reversed.
Make sure your new hunters know we all have a legal and ethical obligation to properly care for our wild game meat. If the meat spoils, we not only face heartbreak over losing nutritious meat—which is lower in cholesterol and higher in protein than beef and other red meat—but we also may be cited by a game warden for wasting game. Hunters who have a plan for field care of their meat before ever taking a shot are the ones who end up with a full freezer. As we get set to head out during the early season, here are a few tips to share with the hunters in your camp.
When an animal is harvested in the evening, it still must be found, cleaned and processed. Meat can spoil overnight partly as the ground is an insulator. While the top of the carcass might cool down, the side laying on the ground will retain heat.
Have bags of ice ready to go in the cooler in your truck bed. Hunters who have a shorter drive from the field back home or to camp can fill the body cavity of an unskinned pronghorn or deer with ice bags to cool it. However, remember that body heat can remain in the thickest parts of the animal, such as in the hindquarters, so ice is a temporary precaution. Avoid relying on ice alone when cooling down larger animals such as elk or moose, which require skinning and additional cutting to allow the heat to escape. For longer trips, blocked ice stored in a good cooler will last much longer than cubed ice.
If the early season temperatures are soaring, skin, quarter and put the meat on ice rather than hang it in the heat. A large cooler will hold most of a deer, and sometimes the entire deer if it has been quartered, or an elk that has been cut into smaller pieces. Just make sure you remember to leave evidence of sex and species per the state wildlife agency regulations where you are hunting.
Hunters who choose to get their wild game meat processed rather than butcher it themselves should know in advance where the nearest meat processing facility is and its hours of operation so meat can be cared for quickly. Remember that during hunting season, space may be limited at some facilities. Consider calling in advance to check your options before going hunting. For those who want to donate some of their harvest, ask if the processor participates in a local NRA-backed Hunters for the Hungry program. To find a participating processor near you, clock on this NRA link: https://hfth.nra.org/
Beware of bugs—and protect your wild gam meat accordingly. When it’s cold, flies are rarely a problem, but they show up in droves in warm weather. Game bags keep meat free of flies while also keeping your meat clean. In warm weather, bag skinned meat immediately. It is easier to keep meat clean than it is to remove fly eggs, hair, dirt, grass and pine needles later.
Use water carefully as there are conflicting views about washing down a big-game animal with water after skinning it. Many professional meat processors agree that using clean, cold water to remove animal hair and dirt is a good practice if the carcass will air-dry quickly to make sure the water does not promote bacterial growth. A cold-water spray can also speed up the cooling process.
Helping new hunters to take these precautions makes sure they will enjoy not only their hunting adventure but the rewards of their harvest and the long-lasting memories of the experience.
