How To Preserve Game Meat

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Do you want to know how to preserve game meat? After scouting and finally taking down the big buck, it becomes obvious that you have to get it home, clean and cut it up, and store it for consumption. It is a lot of meat and you can’t shake off what it entails to preserve the meat. In this article, we will discuss the different ways you can preserve the game meat that you worked so hard to get.

How To Preserve Game Meat

1. Clean The Meat

Although you field-dressed the deer out in the woods when you took the deer down, you should still do a final clean-up job on the target at home with more tools and resources at your disposal. Learning how to preserve game meat is a good skill to learn as a hunter and for survival situations.

Carefully inspect it and remove any leftover chunks of fat, membrane, entrails, dirt, leaves, and blood. Also, remove the bones and connective tissues which will also help to keep the meat cool. How to field dress a deer is explained in this article.

2. Use The Sunlight

You can use the sunlight to dry and preserve the meat. This is a method that was used many years ago when refrigeration was not available. It is still effective but has many negatives. Using the sunlight to dry the meat will be a target of flies and other insects which can contaminate it when they make contact. A net or some cover that will allow the sunlight to still get to the meat can be used to protect it from insects while it gets dried.

Additionally, this method is only effective when there is sunlight. Moreover, you must have some platform built to hang the strips of the meat on to get direct sunlight for a long period of time to dry out the fluids from the meat.

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3. Curing/Corning

Curing or corning the meat involves using salt to remove the fluids from it. The salt dehydrates the meat and prevents bacterial growth without the presence of water. This is the same principle that the ancient Egyptians used to mummify their dead. This method of curing the meat is also referred to as a dry cure. Another method of curing is called wet cure.

4. Wet Cure

Wet curing involves submerging the meat in a salty solution. The meat is kept in the salty solution for a period of time. Then take it out of the brine and let it dry. The meat will be coated in a protective layer of salt that prevents microorganisms from growing.

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5. Smoking

Smoking meat is another way to preserve meat. This involves creating a system in which you build a fire that produces a lot of smoke to dry out all of the fluids from the meat. Smoking the meat also gives it flavor. Smoking the meat is similar to grilling today.

6. Pickling

Pickling is a close cousin of wet curing. With curing, you create a brine with salt, sugar, and sometimes spices. The meat is then submerged in the brine for a period of time. Pickling is a little more complex and time-consuming.

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How do you preserve wild game meat?

You can preserve wild game meat by curing, smoking, drying by sunlight, or refrigerating it.

How do you keep meat from spoiling in the wilderness?

You can preserve meat in the wilderness by drying it in the sunlight.

How do you store deer meat long term?

You can store meat long-term by refrigerating it, smoking it, and curing it.

How do you preserve meat without refrigeration in the wild?

You can preserve meat without refrigeration in the wild by smoking, curing, or using the sunlight to dry it.

Should you rinse deer meat before freezing?

Rinsing deer meat before freezing is not a bad thing to do. It helps to clean the meat of dirt, excess blood, and remnants of the animal’s organs.

The Bottom Line

How to preserve game meat is a very important aspect of hunting. After working hard scouting, tracking, and taking down the deer, you want to preserve the meat so that it lasts for a long time.

In this article, we discussed the different methods of preserving game meat to give you the information you need to preserve your game meat. Moreover, you can also read how to tan a rabbit hide, how to ship meat after a hunt, and how to tan a deer hide. If you are interested in learning how to smoke fish, then read this article.