Wild Fish & Game Processing and Cooking

I will start this fine thread off by saying fried redfish is bestfish and you can all fuck off

>>806420
Alright, let's begin with some general concepts to improve meat quality in big game. This applies right at the beginning - in the field.

You've shot and recovered your quarry.

You need to get to work as soon as possible dressing and skinning it because it's crucial to get the temperature of the meat down quickly. This is especially important when hunting in warm weather early in the season. If you don't, bacterial growth moves very, very fast and your meat will be taste terrible. Often, people who complain about the taste of wild meat have simply been fed poorly handled or ruined meat.

If the temperature is below 10 C you have some breathing room, but if it's warmer than that get your ass in gear. Quartering helps cool the meat and so does taking off the skin right in the field and putting the quarters in game bags/cheesecloth. If the weather is around freezing or below then skinning doesn't need to be done immediately, but gutting/dressing should always happen asap.

If it's a hot day above 20 C you should really plan ahead for cooling the meat. Bring some bags of ice in a cooler in your vehicle so that when you get the animal/quarters out of the field you can chill them right away. If the weather is too warm to hang and age at your own place, take the animal straight to the butcher shop - they have humidity and temp controlled coolers to properly hang the game. Even if you debone/butcher yourself, they will often be able to hang and cool it for you.

If you don't have any kind of facility available to cool the meat and keep it around 3-4 C then you will need to butcher it right away. The quality will suffer just a bit, but in general if you can't age the meat for whatever reason, it's not that big of a deal.

Ideally you want to age the meat a bit before butchering. I like to hang meat 4-10 days but of course this depends on the weather. You want to keep the meat above freezing but below 4.

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I really really wanna catch a toona and filet it's red ass right there on the boat and eat sashimi.

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>>806436
It goes without saying that you want to keep the meat as clean as possible in the field. Be careful when dressing. Don't puncture the stomach, intestines, or the bladder. Don't take shitty low probability shots. Instead go for heart/lung shots and the animal will almost always be stone dead and properly bled out by the time you find it.


I highly recommend gutless field dressing method. Field dressing is a bit out of scope, so look it up on Youtube if you're interested. I use it almost all the time except for the smallest of deer. If you accidentally gut shoot an animal, do the gutless skinning dressing method 100%. If there is stomach acid in the body cavity, when the gutpile is out, wipe the inside of the cavity dry with paper towel. Always trim away the bruised and bloodshot meat around the entry and exit wounds asap.

Never, ever, ever, fucking ever wipe or wash a carcass or quarters with water. Just don't do it. It doesn't clean very well to start because of the membranes and connective tissue surrounding the meat. It will push bacteria from the surface into the grain of the meat and it just makes a goddamn mess in general. If your meat is severely fouled by dirt, vegetation, or non-blood gut fluids then just wipe with a cloth/paper towel and trim away the thin outer layer with a knife.

When I hang my animal to age I remove the game bags and I don't age with skin on. Some folks leave the skin on during aging, but I find it way easier to skin the animal when it's still a bit warm and pliable. As long as you don't age more than 10 days you shouldn't have much waste in terms of dried crust.

>>806437
OP here - fresh tuna Ceviche on the boat is amazing. I have a great and easy recipe I'll post later

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>>806441
I forgot to mention, when you skin and prepare for aging leave as much possible fat on the carcass as it will help keep the meat from drying out. This will get trimmed off later.

When I was a noob I would take my animal in to get butchered. But I started doing it myself and I've never looked back. It's easy (and I think fun) and it saves you a pile of money. I've heard sketchy things about some butcher shops and I like to know I'm getting my own meat and that it's been cleanly and properly handled. Here's the equipment I consider essential if you want to process your own meat.

-Good quality boning or filet knife
-Good quality chef's knife
-Meat grinder/sausage stuffer
-Vacuum sealer

You can go without the vacuum sealer and just wrap the meat with butcher's paper, but it lasts way longer in the freezer if you seal it. It's pretty simple to do this in your own kitchen counter. But if you have the space, setting up a table in the garage makes it a bit easier. Get some friends to help out if you can, it can be a lot of work especially with bigger animals like elk and moose. If the weather is cool enough to let the meat continue to hang round 3-4 C you can spread the processing out over a couple days.

Throughout this thread I'm going to call meat of all deer species venison. This includes pronghorn, deer, elk, and moose. Of course each type of animal and meat has it's own unique nuances, flavors, and textures, but in general these concepts should be universal.

Venison fat and bones does not taste very good. It can be the cause for what some people describe as "gamey" flavor. For this reason all possible fat get's trimmed off when deboning. I keep a bin of fat, connective tissues, tendons and ligaments, and trimmed scraps for doggo food. He loves that shit! Since the bones do not taste good I avoid chops and similar cuts requiring the bone to be cut.

cont..

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>>806424
Yellow Perch a best freshwater. Fat bluegill, crappie, and walleye are all decent as well.

Remember people, when fishing over-pressured (and often urban) fishin holes, don't keep all the big game fish you catch. The lake will soon be filled with nothing but carp and bluegill.

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>>806452

For example, lamb chops are heavenly, but cutting deer chops with a saw smears bone paste on the meat which IMO does not taste good at all. I keep all the large leg bones for doggo and the rest of the bones goes back into the bush for the crows and coyotes to pick at.

The exception to fat is bear fat which is goddamn amazing and if you throw that away you are committing a crime. If you hunt bear, learn how to render the fat and use it for pastry cooking bliss.

Lot's of hunters call the loins backstraps. Let's use loin which is the proper butchering term.

The way I debone and cut meat is super easy. Basically I just cut away muscle groups from the skeleton with a filet knife.

I keep tenderloins whole and I cut loins off in one long piece and then cut into foot long lengths. I wrap and freeze these pieces whole. These are mostly used as steaks because they are tender as fuck. Loin and tenderloin will always be the most premium meat on the animal. When I'm ready to cook them, I cut these long pieces across the grain into steaks of whatever thickness suits me at the time.

The large leg and shoulder muscles are kept for roasts. When working with these, try to trim as much of the connective tissue and "silverskin" away. Again, these tissue scraps make for great dog food. We don't want to be wasteful do we?
Some of the leg and shoulder muscles are very large so the can be cut into various-sized roast pieces. These cuts also make great jerky because they are easy to slice along the grain into thin strips. Plan ahead and keep a couple very large cuts too, because a large elk shoulder roast is great for corning or making into pastrami for example.

I usually keep the flanks whole and some of the largest neck pieces which on moose and elk can make good roasts on their own.

The rest which consists of small leg muscles, the shanks (forelegs), rib meat, neck meat, and any other scraps I cut into 1" cubes which gets ground into burger or kept for stew.

My hunting buddy's friend just got mull down by a bear couple months back while he was trying to process the deer he shot in the forest.
Lesson here is that never go hunting alone not matter how good you think you are, always have someone so they can be on the look out for you.

>>806462
Good stuff man.

I always bring my deer to a butcher but it would be cool to get started butchering myself.

Good info about processing thank you

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>>806462
Also the 1" pieces are used for sausage. I'll describe sausage making and recipes in more detail later, but grinding burger is super easy. Invest in a decent meat grinder. You will not regret it. It's also great for grinding up old roasts from the bottom of the freezer towards the end of the summer.

Alright, let's talk about bird and small game handling. The basic idea is pretty much the same as big game. You want to get the guts out and the temperature down as soon as possible. Some fucked up Europeans like to hang their birds by the neck with the guts in until the heads fall off and some other silly shit like that. If you want to try that, fill your boots but it's really nasty in my opinion.

For grouse, I like to tear the head off, step on the wings and pull the legs and the clean gut-free plump breasts just pop out. It pretty much dresses itself, it's so amazingly easy and simple it's perverse. Don't be wasteful though, cut the legs off as grouse thighs are great and the calves make for excellent soup stock. I also keep the heart, liver, and slice the meaty pieces from the gizzard to feed doggo as a reward for good retrieves right in the field. If you don't have doggo to reward keep it for yourself (except liver) since it's good to eat. Grouse hearts are small but delicious.

For waterfowl, if they are grain-feeding dabbling ducks, pluck that shit using the wax dunk method and keep them for roasting as the skin and fat on roast duck tastes amazing. The organs on ducks are also very good for cooking and if the ducks and geese are quite fatty, the liver will be good for making into spreads. However, if the ducks are divers or you're shooting over water I usually just skin instead of pluck because the fat will probably taste fishy and nasty. In general I don't personally like the taste of diver ducks much at all and avoid shooting them when I can. Dabbling ducks I shoot over water are usually good to eat but I don't like to pluck them.

>>806477
>The organs

I forgot to mention big game organs. I keep the hearts and liver and tongue. If you're doing gutless, it's easy to cut between the front ribs and pull these out. If it's a very young animal I sometimes eat some liver myself, otherwise it gets cubed up for doggo. Mature animal livers have not tasted very good in my experience and I've tried quite often. Same with heart. I've heard that young venison heart makes great tartar but I've not been adventurous enough to try that.

Rabbits and hares are basically the same as large game on a smaller scale. There are some cool techniques for easily cleaning these. Look it up.

I'm gonna go play some vidya for a bit, but will be back later to talk about fish cleaning and start on actual recipes and preserving and cooking ideas.

>>806485

You like tongue?

Alright so I've been meaning to ask this but lacked the right thread. Hopefully some more hunters can give their opinion on it.

Here's the thing: I want to learn how to hunt and process game but I am hesitant because of the guilt involved. Before you start thinking I'm some liberal hippie, I have no issue with hunting or meat eating in general.

I live in the UK and my issue is that as I wont be surviving off the meat I catch, it is selfish and greedy for me to end a life when I don't need to. Even if I eat a rabbit after I kill it, chances are I will still buy meat from the store the next day anyway.

It seems selfish that I want to kill an animal and eat it when it's almost a 'hobby' rather than a necessity. I try and rationalize it by thinking that hunting and processing game is an important skill that any self sufficient human should know, but I cant shake the notion of guilt from it. If I was living innawoods for a month I would have NO problem with it as I would have no other option, unlike now where I have food that is already dead on the shelves (yes, I know meat farms are fucked).

tl;dr - What philosophical mindset should I take on to come to terms with hunting and eating animals ESPECIALLY in the learning stage where their death isn't necessary for my survival?

>>806633
I live in US NW, I am quite left leaning even by old world standard, and hold an Econ degree. (That means I hate Trump and Sanders, but will vote for Sanders to prevent a Trump presidency, indifference about Clinton... yet support tests on UI)
I see no problem here, since whatever you can provide for yourself animal protein wise are largely indifferent to the global supply chain, and what you pay in license and equipment are proportionally much more important to the wild life conservation efforts that are funded by those revenue. So, you are actually doing good, when hunting and eat the meat.

In the other hand, even if you do it purely as a hobby, hunt and feed, encourage a better more responsible way of hunting (e.g. as OP mentioned only take kill shot for the sake of meat tasting better and dressing easier, if nothing else.)

So, no, even if hunt and feed is actually selfish in your moral standard, as long as it id not conflicting with public well being (which I see no evidence of in your case) then it should actually be promoted and you don't have to feel guilty about it. (unless you believe in some kind religion that equate selfishness automatically to guilt, then maybe you should abandon religion or maybe you should not hunt but keep that to yourself.)

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Do you guys leave your meat to cool before butchering? When butchering anything Ive always just killed it, taken it back to camp, skinned, butchered, prepped then cooked. The only cooling time I normally have is if I put the meat in the chilly bin while I go back out to look for more game.

Pic is of Hare back legs being pan fried. Tasted bloody tidy.

>>806710
That's exactly what I was looking for.

The way I see it, even though I'm still in the learning stage, gaining the knowledge to one day be able to source my own meat (humanely) will allow me to step away from factory farmed meat, which in the long run is a positive thing.

Thanks bro

>>806923
You don't want to do it while the animal is in postmortem stiff, so either before (while warm) or after.

>>807860
since rigor mortis (postmortem stiff) set in about 30 mins after the kill in normal temperature, it would be preferred to do it before the rigor mortis sets in.
This will greatly effect the tenderness of the meat.

>>807860
>>807866
Cheers. Ive never had much trouble woth rigor mortis but Ill bare that in mind.

>>806437
go easy on soy bro, jesus christ

>>806436
Yes, get that meat cool. While it is rare these days, I fucking hate it when I see a deer tied to the hood of a car.

Tip for critters like elk, if you aren't just going to quarter it right away: The area in the back of the neck stores a lot of heat for long enough to fuck up the meat, even in 10f/-12C temperatures. Take your knife and cut down the center of the back of the neck all the way down to the spine to open it up. 2 1/2 years ago, 3 of us got 3 elk in the evening, within about 30 minutes of each other, and by the time it came to quartering that night, we just said fuck it for the third one, and decided we were just going to hang it and quarter it in the morning. Three elk is a lot of work. Even after all of the rest of the meat was nice and cool, we cut into the back of the neck and it was still very warm.

Another thing that I would add is that you need to get the esophagus out fairly quickly. It can carry enzymes which will screw up the meat near it.

>>806633
Kill an animal and eat it. Let somebody else kill an animal, then go out, buy it and eat it. Either way, an animal is dead. Kill a rabbit and eat it, and that is one more day that you won't be pressed to go to the store for meat. Last time I killed an elk, I didn't go to the store and purchase any beef for at least a year.