He had quite the adventure with it, having shot it late in the evening on Wednesday night. He had to gut it and skin it and quarter it and then hang it in game bags in a tree and go back for it the next morning. Thankfully nothing had gotten to it overnight. My dad helped him carry it all back to the truck.By 10 am we had enormous hunks of meat to deal with in the barn at my parents' house:
My dad and Andrew set to cutting it all up, deboning it and turning it to cook-able portions of meat. I spent the day wrapping and weighing and labelling. My mom helped with the girls, kept us fed and ran around getting stuff we needed. With the four of us working it took about 6 hours to get it all packaged.
Elk steaks - yum!
Then we had to buy a chest freezer to put all the meat in. As I packed it all into the freezer I tallied it up and here are the totals:10 roasts, 31 packages of steaks (packages! Not steaks! Each package has 3 steaks or enough to feed our family.) 6 lbs of jerky meat to be smoked, 30 pounds of meat to grind into burger, 13 packages of backstrap steaks (the best steaks.)
Total weight of edible meat: 106.36 pounds. Sweet.
Now on the to-do list:
Grind burger meat
Learn to make sausage and pepperoni
Dehydrate or smoke the jerky
He's still got a bull tag and a buck tag. How cool would that be? We wouldn't have to buy meat till next year. And right now he's out shooting doves with my dad...
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Couple quick garden shots, 'cuz I can:
Yes, they're sideways. Photobucket didn't turn them. A pound and a half of carrots and a few radishes.Life is good. Busy, but good. :-)
3 comments:
Yay for elk meat! Can be very tasty. If I can ever talk my Grandma into giving me her recipe for what she calls "barbecue" because she has no other name for it, I will have to share it with you. It can be made with beef but is best with elk and is some of the tastiest food ever created.
regardless of how I may or may not feel about hunting, this is veeeeery interesting! That's a LOT of meat!
The way I see it is this: we're not vegetarians and we like our meat - and it has some true nutritional benefits, especially for growing children. I don't agree with the way animals are treated prior to slaughter and I don't trust the way they are processed or the way they are fed while they're alive. I'd rather not buy meat from the store but I can't always afford organic and free-range meats.
This elk lived a good life wandering a mountainside eating perfectly natural vegetation. She was never abused or mistreated or forced to live her life confined in a tiny stall being fed grain laden with growth hormones and chemicals. She was killed pretty humanely with the purpose of feeding a family who will very much appreciate her life and the meat she has provided us. This is as organic and free-range as it gets.
Not lecturing or ranting or anything, just figured I'd share my opinion since some people are really against hunting. :-)
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