Wild Game Meat: Be Responsible. Handle With Care.

Remember this:  Field dressing wild game is not monitored by Public Health Officials. No one knows for sure how you are handling your wild game meat but you.  Handle with Care.

The outcome of hunting is the procurement of quality meat, but what is done with that meat after death has occurred is vitally important to how well you fare upon cooking and eating the meat. You have to consider if you share your portions with someone else. They can be worry free you are not setting them up for dysentery, salmonella, or something else they weren’t planning on. The goal is not to make a person who hunts paranoid about eating meat, but empowered. All meat can come with its precautions but living oblivious to what lurks as a food-borne illness isn’t a smart idea. As I have said before, people tend to get comfortable and a little to secure or confident in their ability to let things slide every now and again. I remember one time Emeril made the joke about the Poultry Police on his show. 

Wild game meat overall is a wholesome healthy food source for those who use it to supplement low food stores or as the main source. I say this to exclude farmed game meat. There would not be enough to feed the population of Earth, so those businesses are more like niche markets where people that are localized with the random global buyer has the privilege of buying processed or prepared at a restaurant. It can also be a guilty indulgence for tourist in a foreign land to try as an exotic option to a fast food joint. I am not against farming game animals that were once wild but that incurs the label of domesticated stock, which eventually someone will get the idea to better the quality by manipulation, antibiotics, or some other rhetoric, while justifying wild game meat being raped of its originality. 

In a previous post we noted the diseases that possibly accompany wild game meat such as Salmonella, Trichinella, and Escherichia coli. Escherichia coli has been found in jerky deer meat. Trichinella is found in hog meat that is undercooked. Brucellosis  is contracted through exposure to blood during field dressing in wild hogs. Not only do you have to worry about disease but contaminants/pollutants,  where fish pose a worry of Tungsten and Mercury poisoning from river systems.

You have eyes and prudent judgment, use it.

There is also the issue of using protective latex  or rubber gloves to cover unhealed wounds. If someone gives you grief, just tell them you’re practicing in case someone gets hurt. You might have to saw off a leg just like in the civil war. 

Try to bone out the meat cleanly to avoid bone chips and avoid cutting through the brain or spinal cord. If you can don’t play around with the brain or the spinal tissue/fluids there is always meningitis. Lysol works really well as a disinfectant or Lemon Quant to clean tools used to process the meat. There are other products on the market to fight against protein. Make sure you soak the processing instrumentation while changing the water out because blood and tissues can get caught in the smaller parts of a knife’s mechanism waiting to make you sick.

I don’t make it a habit to eat eyeballs, brains, spinal cords, spleens, or lymph nodes of deer. I do keep the heart. There are a lot of people with gout, so one would have to consider their personal dietary discretions.

If you are going to take your wild game meat to a processor, tell them to do yours separately. Otherwise it could go in with a mass amount of random meat. What you get back may be nowhere near the deer you dropped off in quality. Make sure the meat was in appropriate refrigeration while being processed. Coolers go out all the time.

Hunting participants should always avoid field dressing a sickly animal. You might contract an unknown contagion. Pass on the prospect of making it a meal then turn it into authorities for inspection or testing. Don’t give it to anyone either.

If wild game is healthy promptly eviscerate the animal of the gastrointestinal contents without rupturing the lining. The reasoning for this is the process of death and chemical reactions along with hormones can ruin the meat causing waste. Huntress/hunters should not be in the business of waste. If you are going to keep organ meat inspect each one before packing.  Hair carries all kinds of contaminates, parasites, and bacteria so when field dressing a person could disseminate on the ground, hung by rope in a tree, left intact to transfer to a meat processing plant, or cut up after skinning then placed in a cooler for transport for further processing.

Of course, you have to take into consideration the idea of public consumption to have sanitary meat processing in processing factories dealing with bulk butchery. There has to be an enclosed clean environment inside of a building with shielded clothes, goggles, hair nets, disinfectants and a food inspector present. You will not be doing this out in the field. 

I always inspect the inside body cavity of the carcass. This is where you can see fat stores, abscesses, or lesions.  If this puts you off or just feel like passing on this meat, call your local state wildlife agency just to be safe. There again, your local Department of Resources may not think this is something to bother them with.  You might just have poor quality meat though poor nutrition or bad DNA.

I covered this in brief because of another issue I have seen lately. All in all, even when packing out elk, moose, bear, or deer you will dress out the animal in the field. Hopefully,  you’re not a poor shot, where the bullet hits the guts, spewing digestions minions out on the precious meat it took hours, days, or weeks to stalk down, before it runs off in the bushes. It’s great to see people talking about meat procurement as their reason for hunting.

 It’s even more important, we as hunters, show we are responsible for our technique of clean field dressing. It is anything but sterile.  It’s how we work in the environment of the field dressing procedure. Each person has their own way of doing the field dress procedure. The form of storage for transport is essential. The only person out there with you, unless you’ve carried your buddies, is you, a sharp knife, Nature and a sack to put the meat in. 

You will not find a Public Health Inspector looking over your shoulder with a clipboard, writing you up for failure at identifying the obvious. Be a connoisseur of fine quality game meat first by hunting, processing, and cooking it yourself. Refine your technique. After that,  the germ is its own and the Poultry Police are always watching.

Written By: Angelia Y Larrimore

~Courtesy of the AOFH~