Game Processing Tips

Effective game management has led to substantial harvesting of game animals giving rise to a profitable industry by way of game processing companies, which offer excellent cutting and packaging services for game meat. Your game animal is processed primarily as boneless and semi-boneless meat. You can have the meat custom processed by specifying what you want. For example, you can order what you want as steak, roast and grind as also the size of each package. You can specify steak thickness, roast sizes etc.. Prime boneless cuts include Ribeye’s, Tenderloins, New York’s, Sirloins, Round Steaks cut in top round, bottom round and eye round steaks, sirloin tips, chuck steak/roast/stew meat. Semi boneless meats are cut into Porterhouse steaks, T-Bones, Rib Steaks, Chuck Steaks and chuck bone in roasts and Sirloin Steaks and Sirloin bone in roasts. Good game processing companies make sure that you game meat does not get mixed up with that of another customer and therefore undertake the processing on a ‘one animal at a time’ basis

There are excellent tools and kits available to aid you in field dressing and processing your game animal yourself. For cleanliness and protection from viruses, germs, bacteria etc. you must get yourself a field dressing kit that usually consists of two sets of gloves; one pair of thin disposable plastic gloves of shoulder length and another of wrist length made from latex with a textured surface to give an enhanced grip. The gloves also prevent fat from getting lodged under your fingernails and rings. As a safe field-dressing tool the single knife supplied in a sheath available for hide skinning and meat carving can be of great help. A sharpening file is also supplied along with the knife. These knives are razor sharp and also have a gut hook to easily open the body cavity and slice muscle from bone and cut through bone when required. Small gut hooks 2 to 3 inches in size that can double up as rope and safety belt cutters and hung around the belt/neck are also available. As an all in one solution you can buy a complete butchering kit as well that includes a hoist, rope (for hoisting the game animal to a convenient height) a butcher/blade saw, cleaver, utility knife, skinning knife, fillet/boning knife, caping knife, game shears, steel stick spreader (to keep the body cavity of the game animal open for convenient field dressing) knife sharpener, gloves, cutting board and many other tools. The tools allow you to get exact steak thickness and roast size from your game meat. You can even go for an 18v cordless battery operated quartering saw for working on your game animal. There are sprays to prevent bacteria and spoilage of your game meat if you prefer to use them.

There are many other products that you can choose from if you decide to process your game animal yourself. In addition to making steaks, roasts etc there are numerous recipes you can use to make jerky/smoked jerky, sausages etc from your game meat to enjoy it over a long period of time.

In case you have used the services of a game processing company you can make excellent sausages from the grind supplied from your game animal. Alternatively you can chop or grind the meat yourself at home mixing it with spices and seasoning stuffing it into natural or manufactured casings to make different kind of sausages like fresh sausage, dry/semi dry sausage, cooked smoked sausage etc. It is advisable to use only good meat (ground or chopped) , high quality spices  and salted hog casings for your game meat sausages.  When grinding the meat at home, first coarse grind it, mix the other ingredients and then regrind it. This will give excellent results. You can use any combination of spices and recipes to suit your taste.