The steps I will give you below if followed will insure that you will enjoy every pound of your meat and will make suitable gifts for your friends and family.
If it is below freezing it is an ideal condition to preserve the quality of your meat. Field dress carefully to not spill the bile or intestines in or on the animrub outside with snow. If it is 40 or above Field dress and skin immediately. Try to hang and air as soon as possible, if raining shelter and wipe off with rags asap. The natural coating under the skin will harden and keep blow flys and other parasites from being able to lay eggs inside the meat.
In wet conditions the outer meat will taint or spoil for every hour you leave the skin on. This taint will ruin up to 20% of your meat and spoil the tast of the rest of the meat by being processed with it.
2. AGING MEAT MYTH:
Do not!! hang wild game to age!!! You need to process it or freeze it asap. Having tender wild game is a process of choosing the right animal at the right time of year. Wild game should be cut and wrapped as soon as the body heat and blood drain out. Aging is for domestic animals with fat cover and cotrolled cooling enviroments. This is rarely the case with wild game. Any meat will be soft if you let it rot long enough! I find alot of these people are to lasy to cut thier meat soon enough and wind up throwing it away or trying to give it to others. If you do have a slick or tainted animal you can salvage it by have several sanitary paper covers and towels. First you peel at least 1/4" to 1" of the meats outer layer and roll the meat constantly to the sanitary paper and throw away the contaminated meat and paper. Carefully wipe and wash what you have to and sanitize your cutting tools each time before you begin to cut what you intend to keep.
3. CUTTING METHOD:
Whenever possible cut and bone all game by hand, this allows you to watch for the common parasites that burrow into the large muscles of the back strap and hams. This parasite is very common to wild game that graze in areas around preditors such as wolves. You can tell your animal has this by the small holes or tunnels in the flesh and you will find a small white pill. In the lower 48 we used to get a new tag from Fish and Game but now they tell you that as long as the meat has been frozen 60 days its ok. I still prefer to know. Using a band saw smears the bone marrow across the meat and any other contamination that may be there. If you want the bones for soup set them aside and cut or crack later and keep seperate. Meat cutters want to use a saw because they get paid by the pound and can cut a small animal up in 10 minutes compared to 60 minutes by hand.
4. HAMBERGUR OR SAUSAGE PREP:
First plan ahead what your family eats or what you want to give away. The better the cuts of meat the bette the hamburger will be. If you don't eat roast put them for hamburger. Take the tuffest pieces, shanks and ones with grissle and save for soup or stew.
Second set the meat for hamburger or sausage back in freezer and chill to 32 degrees. Wild game at room temp will mush up when grinding. Use a corse plate first and regrind a second time with a fine plate. This insures a quality grind and mix. Anyone who says just corse grind once is just trying to do as little as possible fot the money you are paying them.
Third; Fat additives and premix batches:
Do not use pork, beef or fat subsitutes. I always buy pork shoulder butts, which is pork steak with natural marbling. This is low cholesteral and makes the best eating hamburger or suasage base you will every eat. The Pork shoulders can be baught on sale for as low as 99 cents per pound and is a pound per pound addition to your meat not evaporation in the pan or oven. Meat cutters love to sell fat because they pay little or nothing for it. Wrap this mixture in 5 lb packs and freeze you can make any type of jerky or sausage now or thaw and make the sausage at a latter date. This also gives you the option of experimenting with small batches of sausage and jerky flavors to decide what you like and then make bigger batches later by hand at home anytime you like.
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