How To Field Dress An Antelope
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I’ve never cared about the admeasurement of the horns or antlers. I’ve never handed a taxidermist any money.
I acquire abundant added amusement from cooking, sharing, and bistro the meat than staring at an inedible arch on a wall.
Don’t get me wrong, I am afflicted with my friends’ mounts and acknowledge their admiration for trophies, but I accept never had an absorption in the practice.
The abutting I get to accepting my bold army is acid the horns off the beyond bucks and beasts and blind them in my barn as hat racks.
For me, it’s all about the meat, man.
Taxidermy is expensive. My “trophy” is audition my 5-year-old son exclaim, “I adulation antelope!” afterwards bistro a bunch.
Seriously, my wife and I sometimes admiration how that kid walks about because we rarely attestant him absolutely bistro absolute food. So, watching him eat ALL of his antelope steak, again requesting more, is as abundant a bays as I can imagine.
My dad accomplished me to be a meat hunter. He was an expert–and actual successful–hunter. And he took abundant pride in caring for the meat from the added the beastly went bottomward to the aftermost altogether able chaw on our plates. That’s why I like agrarian bold so much–because my dad adapted it so well.
He accomplished me about what makes a acceptable venison steak, and I appetite to canyon that on to you. Accumulate in apperception that all the afterward “suggestions” are appealing adamantine to aloof go out and do–even for the best hunters. But, they are goals to strive for.
["620.8"]Also accumulate in apperception that all the afterward approach are attainable. It all could appear for you if you adjudge the acidity of the meat is the best important aspect of hunting.
Perfectly able venison starts with the coursing itself, obviously.
Hunts should be planned with the aftertaste of the meat in mind. Don’t appearance up on aperture day and drive about on two-tracks casting off pot shots at abroad specs. Scout the breadth in the backward summer/early fall. Get out and airing the draws and the stands of trees. Acquisition the Meat. Acquisition . . . the . . . meat.
When you acquisition the meat, watch it for as continued as you can. Figure out what it does all day. Envision this:
With the added “luck” you aloof gave yourself, plan an aperture morning meat agriculture bite operation, or appropriate strike, if you will.
Be amidst the meat aback it wakes up in the morning, if possible. Take them out afore they faculty you. Best importantly, accomplish abiding your attempt kills them instantly.
Neck and arch shots are the adopted meat-harvesting shots, but also the best risky. You don’t appetite them to run. If they flee, that agency their bodies appear adrenaline. Adrenaline affects the aftertaste of meat, and contributes to that “gamey” taste some of us hate.
Now, you’re activity to appetite to get to the downed meat as bound as possible. Start acreage bathrobe as anon as you can, because calefaction is the adversary of meat.
You can grip-n-grin for your Facebook photo afterwards you get the beastly opened up and bankrupt out.
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Drag it to your agent and elevate it up into the air on your custom-made, swiveling bold winch that fits in your receiver hitch. What? You don’t accept a custom-made, swiveling bold winch that fits in your receiver hitch? Get one if you’re austere about meat hunting.
If you charge a bold winch, let me know. My brother-in-law builds them.
Winch it up. Skin it.
Douse it with baptize while ablution the blood, vitriol, and beard off of the body with a previously-unused toilet brush.
Bring two or three 6-gallon baptize containers for this purpose.
Let the meat adhere in the wind to dry absolutely and to abide to cool. Once dry, beat the body about on the swiveling meat winch into the accessible lid of the old refrigerator that you found, brought home, gutted, and angry into a behemothic acknowledgment now laying door-up in the aback of your auto lined with blocks of ice.
If it’s an elk or larger, you will charge to division the body afore agreement it in the bootleg meat cooler.
Pack added accoutrements of ice about the absolute carcass. Shut the door.
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Put the meat in compress captivated plastic. Eat the affection first, again the tenderloins and aback straps.
Freeze the rest. Thank me later.
So there you go. To be a acknowledged agriculturalist of adorable venison that isn’t boxy and gamey, you accept to accomplish the added accomplishment and apprehend that aloof about aggregate you do throughout the planning process, the coursing and post-kill affects the aftertaste of the meat.
Eliminate the variables that taint the acidity of the meat and you too can adore abundant venison all year long.
NEXT: WHY YOU SHOULD BE PROCESSING YOUR OWN WILD GAME AND HOW TO GET STARTED
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