Expert Advice

Bill Vaznis, Editor of Bear Hunting Magazine

TROPHY CARE

Rick Streeter is an award-winning taxidermist with a penchant for detail. Like Beckley and Mandell, he believes you must be prepared to take care of your trophy before it hits the ground. “On any do-it-yourself hunt,” advises Streeter, “check ahead to see if there will be a generator in camp for cooling the hide and meat. Is there a freezer available in a nearby town? What about a walk-in cooler? A taxidermist? A meat cutter?  If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, then you must be prepared to make other arrangements before you step into the field.

“Even if you book a fully guided trip, you can’t expect the outfitter or guide to double as an expert taxidermist, too. I tell my clients to find a local taxidermist, and ask him how he likes his hides. He is more likely to give you solid advice concerning trophy care.  I just had a new client come into my studio requesting a full body mount on a beautiful black bear. Unfortunately his guide cut the bear’s rear legs off, and there is nothing I can do to repair the damage.”

If you are back in the boonies, and do not have access to a freezer or cooler, then are going to have to remove the skull yourself, but be careful. The hairs here are quite short in this area making it difficult for a taxidermist to repair the damage if you cut a hole or lop off an ear by mistake. Use a scalpel, available through your taxidermist, or a small folding knife, the smaller and sharper the better. Use a larger knife only for scraping excess meat off the hide.

Take your time and do a good job. What you do in the field before it reaches a taxidermist can mean the difference between a life-like mount for your living room wall, or a bad mount destined for the back of the garage.

“The first mistake hunters make,” says Streeter, “occurs when they cape the animal. For a full shoulder mount, you must cut the hide off from well behind the front leg. Starting at mid body is never a bad idea; too much cape is always preferable to not enough. Use a big knife, like one with an eight-inch curved blade, and try to leave as much muscle tissue on the carcass as possible. Otherwise you will be spending extra hours later scraping the meat and fat off the hide.

“The most common error we see here at the studio however is a cape with four eye holes. This occurs when you cut into the membrane located right above the eyeball. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, stick your finger into the animal’s eye socket and feel for the knife’s blade. The presence of your finger against the blade will hopefully guide you around the socket and stop you from cutting through the upper eyelid.

“The second most common error occurs when you slice the lip leaving most of it attached to the skull and not the hide. The trick here is to insert your finger inside the animal’s mouth, and find the knife’s blade. Then cut inward and back towards the base of the jaw so that you do not cut across the lips. Your taxidermist will need at least a half-inch of lip all the way around in order to give you a quality realistic looking mount.

“Finally, when you get to the nose, stick your finger inside one nostril at a time, (you can use a pair of rubber gloves here if you are a bit squeamish) and feel for the blade. You want to leave the animal’s nose on the hide, not the skull.

“If you are going to be in the field for an extended period of time, and there is no freezer available, you must also turn the ears and split the lips. The lips are easy, but the ears are a bit tricky. I recommend my clients practice on does or yearling bucks before planning a do-it-yourself hunt.” 

I have found that a small folding Havalon knife fitted with a standard pointed replacement blade is the ideal tool for caping big game critters. Its thin scalpel-sharp blade lets me work confidently around the  eyes, ears, nose and lips without fear of slicing into the hide.

Indeed, look closely at mounted bear heads for example. If there appears to have been reconstructive work done around the eyes, then you can bet the eyelids were damaged during the caping process, or too much tissue was left on the lids and there was slippage. Either way, careful skinning with a thin sharp blade will help eliminate these problems.

How should you transport the cape? Whenever possible pack the cape in a burlap bag. This will allow air to circulate around the hide. Generally, however airlines what the hide in a plastic bag so that it doesn’t leak blood into the hold of the aircraft. But the second you disembark get your hide out of that plastic bag and put into a burlap bag. 

“You can also elect to transport your cape in an ice chest,” says Streeter. “Put the ice in a plastic bag, or keep a block of ice in the bottom of the chest with a piece of burlap used to separate the hide from the melting ice and the bacteria in it.

If you don’t what to chance skinning out the head yourself, it is best to freeze the cape and head. The cold temperatures will slow down the growth of bacteria, and the deeper the freeze the slower the growth. 

“Do not salt and then freeze the cape however,” warns Streeter. “It will actually rot in the freezer, although at a slow rate. Like ice on a winter road, the hide will remain damp even though the air temperature in the freezer is well below freezing. If you do elect to freeze the cape, put it in a plastic bag. This is the only time, other than traveling on a commercial airplane when it is mandatory, that I would recommend the use of a plastic bag. You don’t want a warm hide to sit in a pool of water where bacteria are thriving.

“Finally, look at a strand of deer hair under a microscope and you will see roots growing around each strand of hair. The bacteria loosen the roots causing the hairs to fall out. When packing, storing or transporting hides, think dry and cold. Moisture and warmth are big no-no’s.”

Bill Vaznis, Editor of Bear Hunting Magazine

MEAT FIT FOR A KING

Larry Mandell has been a professional meat cutter for 24 years. He has also butchered thousands of whitetails for area hunters and for local venison donation programs. He knows why his own venison always tastes good, real good in fact, while the venison from other hunters can sometimes taste a bit gamy.

“The secret to good tasting venison,” says Mandell, “is to first cool it down as fast as possible. A deer starts to cook from the inside out as soon as it dies, turning the meat green and giving it a skunk-like smell in short order.

“Secondly, you must keep in mind that the better you clean the animal, the better the quality of meat you will have. The biggest problem hunters make in this regard is that they don’t always complete the field dressing chores.  For example, it is not all that uncommon for us to find the esophagus, heart or lungs still in the chest cavity. On occasion we might even find that the hunter failed to remove the rectum leaving us with that and a full bladder to contend with. If the deer was shot in the intestines or the liver, there might also be food particles, blood, hair, bone fragments or other body parts in the body cavity, all of which can eventually transmit a bad or gamy taste to the meat.”

“I suggest you gut the animal as soon as possible, and after removing the entrails roll the carcass over so you can drain as much blood from the body as you can. Then take a rag and clean out the body cavity of excess blood, body fluids, partially digested food particles, urine, feces, broken bones, dirt, etc. Do not use creek water to wash the meat as it may be infected with various forms of bacteria. Keep in mind that the stomach contents of a gut shot deer will definitely taint the meat, especially if you shot the deer on a warm evening and didn’t recover it until the next day.”  

You might also want to saw or chop through the pelvis to help cool the rear quarters. If you have no cutting tools, stand on the deer’s rear legs, grab the tail and yank up forcefully. In most cases this should crack the pelvis.

“Now you can prop open the body cavity with a stick,” says Mandell, “and hang the deer up to get it off the ground. If it is not a trophy buck, split the breast bone to the base of the neck to help get the heat out. Keep in mind that the neck holds lots of heat and is home to several strains of bacteria used for digestion.

“Then hang it in the shade. It makes little difference if you hang it by the neck or back legs, although most hunters seem to prefer to hang their bucks by the hind legs because it is easier for then to skin it from this position. Do not however skin your buck until you are actually ready to cut it up otherwise the meat will dry out, get tough and actually blacken. Once the carcass has cooled, the hide will actually help keep it cool, especially after a heavy frost. It will also continue to protect the meat from dirt, debris and insects.

“If you can’t get the carcass to a processor in a day or two,” advises Mandell, “trim as much fat from the carcass a possible. Bone out the larger portions such as the front shoulders, back straps and rear quarters, and  then wrap the meat and place it in a cooler on ice to chill it down as fast as possible. Do not wrap the meat in plastic as it holds in heat and moisture. Freezer paper or aluminum foil is a good choice. If there is no ice or cooler available and you are still in the field, wait until the carcass cools before you wrap it in cheese cloth, and then bring in to a butcher ASAP.

“Finally, do-it-yourself butchers should remove as much fat from the carcass as possible to eliminate any gamy taste. Add beef suet to your ground venison, and you will have more taste. Bones can also give your venison a bad taste. I opt to bone out all meat, including the back straps. Sometimes bacteria forms on the inside of the body cavity, giving it a slimy appearance, especially if the animal was gut shot. The presence of bone in the meat can thus give your chops a gamy taste.”

Think Ahead Before You Drop the Hammer Or Let An Arrow Fly!

I positioned my bow on the moose’s rack, and then walked around and around the huge bull awestruck by his immense size. How in the dickens were we going to get this critter back to camp, I thought to myself?  I turned to Cliff, and told him with a straight face to start dragging. I would meet him back at camp by sundown.

“Yeah, right,” said Cliff in reply. He knew I was feigning sarcasm, but we did have a job to do, a 1,200 pound ordeal that would take a string of pack horses and three long days to complete. Fortunately my guide had already devised a plan based on forty years experience in the British Columbia wilderness. Best of all, his plan worked.

Indeed, the first step in game care is figuring out how you are going to get the meat and cape back to camp before it spoils. Some critters like deer and antelope are easy to drag or toss into the back of a 4×4, but larger animals like moose, elk, caribou and bear can be more of a challenge. In some cases you can hire the services and pack animals of an outfitter, but when you are on a do-it-yourself adventure, this may take a few days to arrange.

So what should you do? Outfitter Jeff Beckley of Three Bars Ranch in Cranbrook, British Columbia, believes “ethical hunters should know how they are going to keep an animal from rotting before they even think about dropping the hammer. It just takes careful planning.

“The first step is to field dress your trophy as soon as possible, but even after eviscerating a big-game animal know that the front shoulders and the neck still retain a lot of heat. You have to take immediate steps to dissipate that heat in order to stop the meat and hide from spoiling. And the bigger the animal the more important this task is. The neck of a bull elk in rut for example is usually half again as big as normal. Indeed, spoiling always starts in the neck, and even though you are not likely going to eat the neck, the spoiling quickly radiates through the whole animal.”

Your Havalon Piranta will quickly field dress any big game critter. Its strong scalpel-sharp #60XT Stainless Steel blade is strong enough to sever the wind pipe and internal connective tissue yet sufficiently sensitive to remove the bladder and lower colon without spilling the contents onto the meat. Indeed, I field dressed my last whitetail buck with a Havalon Piranta in less than 60 seconds!

And the replaceable blade feature means you do not have to stop and sharpen your knife. Just pop in a new blade and continue working! This is especially helpful when field dressing a larger animal, such as an elk or moose when darkness is closing in fast.

 “After completing the field-dressing chores, cut the hide along the top of the neck to the base of the skull, and then tube skin the cape starting from behind the front legs. Once you have peeled the hide back as far as you can, cut the head off. You can cape the rest of the head right then and there, or bring the cape and skull back to camp with you and let a taxidermist complete the job for you.”

Take your time! A Havalon Piranta fitted with a Havel Blunt tip #22XT is the perfect tool for the job. It is thicker than the standard #22 blade so it holds its edge longer and resists breakage. It is also safer for you to work with and less prone to poking hard-to-repair holes in the cape.

“Next, cut a half-dozen small poles, and roll the animal over on his back and on top of these poles. This will allow air to circulate all around the carcass. Now you can open the brisket. You are going to need some type of special tool to open the brisket of a larger big-game animal such as a moose or elk. A small hatchet or portable game saw will do the job nicely, if you prepared for the event and brought one with you. Split the brisket all the way to the base of the neck, and then reach in and remove the windpipe. Now is the time to make doubly sure you have already removed the heart, lungs and other internal organs, too.

“Now cut a small stick and prop the brisket open with it,” adds Beckley. “With this stick in place and the removal of the animal’s wind pipe and other internal organs, most of the body heat should dissipate over night. Before I leave the kill site however I will place pine boughs on top of the animal to help keep the birds off the meat.

“If it is still early in the morning, you have more time to play with. You also have more time for the temperatures to rise. If you have a big animal like a bull elk you are going to have to sever the animal in half at the spine, and then drag the front and rear quarters into the shade or a moist area near a creek. If it is a great northern moose, you may have to cut the animal into four or five pieces. Your goal must be to get the animal out of the sun and into a cool area. One trick is to place logs or green poles across a cool running stream, and then put the front and rear quarters of the animal on those logs. 

“Finally, when transporting the meat back to camp, I usually leave the hide on to protect it from dirt and debris rather than place the meat in small cheesecloth bags that tend to rip and tear. I then peel the hide off back at camp, and put the meat in heavy-duty game bags for the trip to the butcher.”

Check back next week for Part 2!

Grand View Outdoors has launched a digital magazine dedicated to the AR platform. According to the editor, Ralph M. Lermayer, the objective is “…to act as your primary source of information on all things significant to the AR platform, both the AR-15 and AR-10, and to enhance, defend, and promote the AR’s natural and deserved move to the hunting community.”

To read the premiere issue, click here.

The Piranta-Edge was recently field-tested by North American Hunter magazine and received a score of 8.4. To read more about how products are scored and the review of the Piranta-Edge, click here.

photo courtesy of outdoor alabama

State conservation officials in the state of Alabama are concerned for feral hog hunters and the possibility that hog hunters may contract swine brucellosis while field dressing their kills.

Swine brucellosis is an infectious disease found mostly in the Southeastern part of the nation. Humans can get the disease by handling infected tissue, which might come in contact with small cuts or lesions while field dressing.

Be sure to wear gloves and wash hands with soap and hot water as soon as you can after field dressing.

To read more about swine brucellosis, click here.

Bear Kelly represents Summit Treestands in Decatur, Illinois. At a recent National Hunting and Fishing Day event, Kelly spoke to the crowd about the importance of wearing approved safety harnesses when hunting in treestands.

Summit Treestands offers “Seat-O-The-Pants” Harnesses, which are lightweight, four point safety harnesses. Additional styles are also available through Summit Treestands.

Kelly is also a guide in North America and Canada and an adventure hunter for the Outdoor Channel. If he says your treestand needs a harness, get hooked up.

To read the article about Bear Kelly’s National Hunting and Fishing Day demonstration, click here.