Venison

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Has anyone out there noticed how hard it is to process deer meat these days. It seems everyone is putting out corn to lure them in which causes more fat to form in the meat. Since deer fat goes bad in the freezer you have to cut it out. I found that if you can the meat, the fat does not go bad. I've had canned venison that was over a year old and it was still fine. But within 3 months you can taste the difference from the frozen meat.

-- Nick (wildheart@ekyol.com), November 14, 2000

Answers

I haven't had that problem, but then I don't know if I shot deer that had eaten a lot of corn or not. Based on what I've seen around the areas where I hunted last season, I'd say the deer had probably eaten some corn. I always cut the fat off venison anyway, especially if it's a buck. I usually don't put out corn, myself. I once had a few bags, of all things!, of gamebird feed, and I dumped it out, somewhat dubiously, figuring the birds would eat it if nothing else did, and I saw several does and a couple of spikes eating it!

I do about 50/50 canning and freezing my venison, and ate some canned stew chunks that were two and a half years old. Looked kind of yicky but tasted fine after I boiled it for a while.

-- Hannah Maria Holly (hannahholly@hotmail.com), November 15, 2000.


Several years ago, I decided to clean out the deep-freeze and do something with all the deer meat that had accumulated. There were all different cuts, with less of the steaks and roasts than anything. I thawed the meat, put it in my big pressure cooker and cooked it well done, cooled it, removed bone (fat had been removed before freezing) and then pressure canned it in quart jars. This is a lengthy process, but well worth it. That canned venison made the best mincemeat I ever ate--and I normally don't care for venison. As I remember, I cooked the meat quite awhile after opening the jars-- your pressure cooker instruction book will tell you how long. Now with just 2 of us here and dh hunting for trophy instead of meat, we don't use much venison. We used to take the venison to meat processing plant and have lots of summer sausage made up and it was delicious, but since it had pork fat in it didn't keep well for more than a few months in deep-freeze--expensive processing, too. May have to figure out more ways to use venison. dh just left for his hunting cabin in Pope County Il, bordering Shawnee Forest to get ready for shotgun season Friday. We have so many corn-fed and apple- fed deer right here in our yard and orchard, we see them everyday. Grand-daughter will hunt from Grampa's tree house here Friday.

-- ruth in s.e.IL (bobtravous@email.com), November 15, 2000.

I have a deal with the local co-op to where I buy bags of feed which have been infested with weavels or mice holes in the bag at half price. Current batch is deer pellets. Am feeding them to my heifers. Sure hope they don't go and start jumping fences.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), November 16, 2000.

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