Thread: Advice on handling meat after the kill

Cool it. Cool it fast...

Basically if you're in the bush, hang the carcass out of a tree and gut and skin it as a minimum, pegging the gut cavity open to allow air to circulate. It gets surprisingly cold in the winter in the bush especially at altitude, I've been up in the central plateau at -4 with a big red stag for a total meat recovery between two of us of 48Kg plus the head. That was a brutal carry out, but the meat was amazing. Worst thing you can do, is fluff your shot and end up chasing the animal around for a few hours - it'll be full of lactic acid and the meat will go rancid and end up with near instant bone taint and green striping. I've often seen pig hunters come in with a buggered absolutely destroyed animal, flanks covered in sweat and chew marks all over it and I'm always like - yum, actually (not).

Probably great fun, but I wouldn't want to eat it.

How do you know it's off? Smell isn't a good indicator surprisingly, I've taken animals that stink from the get go and others have been quite free of smell but the meat is green striped and curled up (full of bacteria and past 'aged') so you can't really rely on that. It's quite dependent on age and sex of animal, general health, time of year and also what it's been feeding on. I tend to run off appearance and condition of the meat, any green striping needs to be cut off and also freezer burn or anything overdried or scaled. If it stinks like seriously sweet decay then it's probably a bit past it, put if you slow cook it and then curry it you'd be surprised what you can get away with.

How you treat the meat is the key, as I said cool it quickly. If it's cold enough, and you are boning the animal out a clothesline arrangement between the trees and the meat cuts sectioned out and hung over will cool it very quickly. If you can, bleed the animal (hilar or neck shot, or cut the main vein if the animal is still alive when you get to it) as this removes a lot of the nutrients and acids that promote meat spoiling. Once the meat is cool, you can bag it in plastic or anything really and go from there as it won't sweat and promote bacteria growth. Do the best you can at this stage, even if it's just a mesh bag and skinning and gutting and pegging the gut cavity open in the shadiest spot you can find (this is the minimum level I would accept for an eating animal, you gotta get it cool!!!).

With the cuts, if you section the cuts out along the fascia lines in the muscles they will cool and skin off and last longer than if you have ragged chunks of meat sliced everywhere and anywhere. If pays to learn as much as you can about the processing of meat - I find it really difficult to do this justice with the animal on the ground so if possible I hang it (I carry a little set of yacht pulleys and braid and a little stainless gambrel for this reason, in the right area with good sticks you can dispatch with the gambrel and use a stick to keep the legs apart). With it hanging it's much much easier to set up the cuts of meat and section them out without making a mess of the whole deal, and you can get cuts that equal anything from the supermarket.