Food guide

White-tailed deer: catch, clean and cook

One deer gives 40 pounds or more of meat, plus sinew for lashing and a hide; this guide walks through bleeding, gutting, skinning, cutting it up, and smoking or drying the meat so it keeps.

Page numbers below are from the US Army Survival Manual (FM 21-76) unless another source is named. Each one opens that page.

Ways to catch it

Clean it, step by step

1. Bleed the deer by cutting its throat, unless it was already shot through the chest. If you can, clean it near a stream.

   p. 121
2. 

   Roll it onto its back. Slide the knife under the skin with the edge up and cut from the throat to the tail, going around the sex organs. Do not cut the guts.

   p. 121

3. The manual says to remove the musk glands so they do not taint the meat. On a deer these are the dark tufts of hair inside the back legs. Either cut them off carefully, or leave them on and never touch them and then the meat (general hunting practice, not the manual).

   p. 121
4. 

   Field dress the deer (field dressing means gutting it where it fell, so the meat cools fast). Cut the gullet (the food tube) away from the thin wall below the lungs, then roll the guts out of the body.

   p. 122

5. Cut around the anus, reach into the lower belly, grab the lower intestine and pull it out. Pinch off the bladder and cut below your fingers. If urine spills on the meat, wash it.

   p. 122
6. 

   Save the heart and liver. Cut them open and look for worms. A good liver is smooth, wet and deep red or purple. Throw away a bad liver; the muscle meat can still be eaten.

   p. 122
7. 

   This is what worms in a liver can look like: a hard pocket with flat worms (liver flukes) inside. Throw a liver like this away.

   p. 122
8. 

   Hang the deer in the shade so it cools and drains. Cover it in the daytime to keep flies off.

   Military Survival and Rescue Guide, page 89
9. 

   Skin it: cut along each leg from above the hoof to the belly cut. Pull the hide away from the body, cutting the thin tissue where it sticks. Cut off the head and feet.

   p. 122

10. Quarter it (cut it into four big pieces plus the back). Slice the muscle that holds each front leg; there is no bone joint there. For each back leg, cut around the big top bone to the ball-and-socket hip joint, cut the tough bands around it and bend it back.

    pp. 122 to 123

11. Cut out the two long tenderloins along the inside of the spine and the backstraps along the top. Break the ribs first, then cut through the breaks; it saves your knife.

    p. 123

12. Save the long tendons from the legs and back. Dried and pounded, they make sinew, the best natural lashing for small jobs.

    p. 162

Cook it, step by step

1. Roast big pieces on a spit over the fire, or boil them. Stew the small bits left on the bones for soup.

   p. 123

2. Cook the heart, liver and kidneys the same way as the meat. Cut out the tongue, skin it and boil it until tender.

   p. 123
3. 

   To smoke meat to keep it: build a small tepee of three poles and wrap it with a poncho or tarp. Make a small, smoky fire of hardwood that is a little green (soak it if it is dry). Never use pine or other sappy wood; the smoke ruins the meat.

   p. 123
4. 

   Slice the meat thin and hang it on the frame so no piece touches another. Keep the fire low; you want smoke, not heat.

   p. 123

5. Smoked overnight, the meat keeps about 1 week. Smoked 2 days without stopping, it keeps 2 to 4 weeks. It is done when it looks like a dark, curled, brittle stick, and you can eat it without more cooking.

   p. 123
6. 

   To dry meat instead: cut 6 mm (quarter-inch) strips along the grain. Hang them on a rack in sun and wind, out of reach of animals, covered from flies. They are done when dry and crisp and no longer feel cool.

   pp. 124 to 125

7. Cook fresh venison to 165 F inside (general food safety, not the manual).

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