I am not a hunter nor a butcher, but I’m baffled why there’s no mention so far in this thread of the need to “hang” a carcass after slaughter/field dressing and before butchering. If you eat meat that’s just “a few hours old”, you’re getting the rigor-mortis version.
I suppose if you kill an animal and immediately hack off a slice to cook right away, you can dodge some of the toughness, but AFAICT it’s absolutely standard to age a dressed carcass for at least a couple days, and up to a couple weeks, between killing and butchering, at temps slightly above freezing.
Well, sometimes when you butcher the animal you can see parasites… but more often you can’t. Which is why game meat should be cooked until well done, to kill any parasite that might be on board.
Don’t eat game animals that died of natural causes. Don’t eat animals that even if killed by collision with a vehicle are wasted, covered in sores, or otherwise clearly unhealthy. Part of butchering/inspecting a game animal you’ve killed is looking for signs of disease in things like the lungs.
Can you be 100% sure? No. Guess what - the meat you buy at the store isn’t 100% guaranteed to be safe, either. That’s why you get recalls of meat from time to time.
All wildlife have parasites and diseases. All. Of. Them.
Hanging deer is not done in Arkansas except to clean it. The blood is drained, it’s immediately wrapped and frozen. If you live in a colder climate during the season YMMV.
Cooking kills the bugs(except prion). Then you’re eating cooked bugs and worms. Yuk. Not me.
You bring me some venison I’ll be glad to cook it for you. But I ain’t eating. It’s all for you🙄
I like my meat to have that nice purple stamp on it.
But I mean, you don’t want your meat “fresh” in the sense of not adequately aged, right? I would far rather eat beef or venison from a carcass that was killed two weeks ago (assuming proper dressing/hanging/butchering procedures in the meantime) than one that was killed two hours ago; I need to be able to finish chewing it sometime today.
Knowing a lot of hunters in Minnesota and Wisconsin I know the cost of processing the meat by a butcher is not cheap. If they are donating the meat to food pantries who is paying the cost of the processing? The state? The pantry? Donated services by the butcher?
I’ve shot and ate 3 elk and eaten parts of many others, mostly quite rare. If I had a head-strike hit on an elk or deer in my truck I wouldn’t hesitate to take it home and butcher it. Those seriously worried about parasites should look at the hunting statistics. Hunters “harvest” hundreds of thousands of animals each year and there is no epidemic of prion disease or parasites. That non-farmed salmon you just bought? A wild animal.
Refrigeration doesn’t bring decay processes to a total stop. It just slows them down.
Meat from an animal that took a few hours to get to a refrigerator isn’t necessarily less fresh than meat that’s been refrigerated for weeks.
I’ve hit a deer and, not being equipped to field dress it on the spot, donated it when the police officer who responded to the scene asked me whether I wanted to donate it. I’m also happy to eat venison; and would be happy to eat moose, but we don’t have any around here.
I don’t expect the food banks are providing “mystery meat”. I expect they provide it labeled as venison or moose or whatever, just as if they provide farmed meats they’re labeled as pork or beef or whatever they are.
Hell, spare tires aren’t even standard. Last three cars we bought just came with a can of fix-a-flat and an air compressor. And, come to think of it, I’m not even sure any of them came with a jack. I do remember buying one for the latest car. I can’t remember about the other two.
Interesting thread. This reminded me of a discussion I had when I was on a photo vacation in Newfoundland. Restaurants, hunters and food banks can all apply for a license there which allow them to donate/sell (in the case of hunters) and accept (in the case of restaurants and food banks) wild game. Roadkill rules seem to vary from place to place. If it’s just killed, I don’t see it as being all that much difference from being shot. Just err on the side of caution for it.
I’ve eaten hunted meat at people’s homes and in restaurants. Never got sick from it.
Every state’s game commission is different. Pennsylvania’s are strict, Ive deal with them.
A guy I know, but do not like, hit a deer a few winters ago. Ruined a headlight but only struck the deer’s head. He pulled off the road, quickly gutted the animal, and got it into his truck’s bed.
He took the deer home and hung it from his porch roof (not an uncommon sight around here). But it wasn’t deer season. He skinned it and did a crude butcher job.
Meanwhile, a neighbor reported him. Game commission came and cited him for taking a deer out of season. The fact he’d hit it didn’t matter.
To me, and believe me I’ve ‘butchered, cleaned, watched gutting, seen vats of blood’ so much wild meat it’s kinda sad, it’s the yuck factor. The yuck yuck yuckiness.
I can’t even tell you the smell, the cleaning the silver skin, the scraping fat, the hair, fins, scales, skin plus the obvious worms and veins.
There’s no way I’d eat that shit.
Even tho’ apparently I can cook it well.
Add the fact it was hit by a vehicle, then you have large blood clots and bone shards. Nope.
