Title: "Gamey" Tasting Game, How To Fix- Part 2
Categories: Game Venison Info
Yield: 1 Servings

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If you are approaching a downed deer that is still alive, approach from the back if possible. Those hooves are razor sharp and horns are no joke either. If you can get on its back and an arm around a doe's neck forcing the chin up, the throat stab-and-pull maneuver is easy and finishes the deer rapidly. If your downed quarry has antlers, use them as handles and pull the head up this way instead. Speed is of the essence; every second your downed quarry remains alive, terrified and struggling increases its suffering and decreases the quality of your fine steaks and chops.

Expect there to be some struggling and continued attempts to breathe even after the throat is severed. If this bothers you, sever the spine just between the skull and the first vertebrae with the deft insertion of a knife. WARNING - Don't attempt this technique on a live deer until you have practiced it and can do it reliably and quickly, one-handed, on a dead deer.

There is a reason I don't advocate spine severing, eye stabs or braincase stabs as the first method of dispatch - it's dangerous, as the knife can slip on a struggling animal and hurt you badly.

It's better to wait for a clean shot in the beginning, but should you miss and cripple, it is your responsibility to finish the animal as quickly as possible. Some hunters use a second bullet or arrow at this stage, but there are certainly reasons to prefer finishing with a knife. Should you wish to save the blood, mix it immediately with vinegar in roughly 10-1 blood to vinegar proportions to use in a civet or sauce. You have about one to two minutes before it clots completely and is unusable for most culinary purposes.

Get those innards outwards as quickly as possible and wash and/or wipe the carcass down with a towel. If you have to field transport, leave the skin on, but get the skin off as soon as you make it to camp and get the temperature of that carcass down by any means you can, as fast as you can. A carcass left at blood temperature will quickly sour and ruin good meat, and getting the skin off helps heat to dissipate. Ice can be helpful, but be aware that moisture is not a good thing in general for meat, so you want to keep it dry if possible as well as cold.

To start processing Bambi, fist the hide off the deer while it is still warm from the kill, and mind those thin stringy flat pieces of muscle under the forelegs that will stick to the hide and make your job a pain if you don't catch them early on and seperate them by slashing lightly ahead of the muscle and into the silvery-white, slimy translucent membrane that seperates muscle and hide. Pliers may help in getting the "slippers" off from the lower legs. Watch out for those nasty hairs that get stuck in the membrane and take forever to wash out. Pull that hide and get it off your butchering floor. Plastic tarps are your friend.

Don't pull the membrane from the muscle (the silverskin) if you plan to hang the meat. Personally, I don't age venison if it's a fat young doe, but that's a matter of taste. Once you've hung the meat, you can trim the silverskin, which should be a bit dry and hard in texture if you've hung it right (and it might even be blackened; this is common enough for an extended aging process). Some meat will go with it, but this is the price of aging.

Oh, and I have two favorite ways to process a carcass. One of them is the traditional gambrel hang, with a cross-hatched stick splitting the legs and the deer hung from a tree. T'other, the one I pick when in my home facilities under ideal conditions, is a waist-height table with a raised metal surface which is holed to allow blood drainage.

Hang the deer up by its forelegs to let gravity do your work for you in removing those unpleasant bits. Unzip the front end of the deer carefully as you do not want the guts on your shoes in a hurry and by surprise, and have a barrel lined with a big Hefty garbage sack between the deer's legs. I make a *tiny* cut first, then slip my hand inside the carcass and keep two cupped fingers on the back of the knife as I cut. This keeps the guts from accidentally being slashed, which is as you probably can figure a really disgusting mess. Unzip slowly and let the guts fall down unbroken out of the slit you are making.

If you've done this technique right, you will have a mess of guts neatly in the barrel. Urge them into the right place with your hands. Wear latex gloves if you're fussy. Don't forget to get the stomach out too, and carefully sever any connections between the stomach and other organs. Let the stomach fall into the barrel; it's tough and won't burst unless you were clumsy with the knife earlier. The rest of the mass will likely remain attached; fish around the diaphragm (just under the heart and lungs) with a short bladed knife that is not too sharp and find the connections to cut when you're ready to dump the stomach and guts. You may find it helpful to haul out the guts in your fist and try to have the connective tissue visible before you cut into it. Small scissors can also be invaluable at this stage.

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