From Field To Table: Report on the Wild Game Processing Class Offered by University of Florida Meat Processing Center

A few weeks ago I was in my favorite gas station/BBQ and breakfast joint/bookstore (well, it's owned by the son of a famous herpetologist, things often get a little mixed together in a university town) when I saw this flyer on the counter:

I thought Albert holding a steak on a fork was a nice touch.

I was intrigued.  Seems some people at University of Florida picked up on the micro-trend for classes such as this and wanted to see if anyone was interested in one here in Gainesville.  I know I was, since my experience with processing deer was limited and hog non-existent, so I sent and email and a check and signed myself up.

The morning of the class was rainy, but I got lucky and parked fairly near the building.  I was surprised by the number of other people approaching the building through the grey drizzle.  Chad Carr, Meat Science Extension, played host at the event and welcomed us each as we arrived and signed it. The turnout far exceeded my expectations as I estimated at least 70-80 people were milling around outside the auditorium.   The demographics were not especially surprising though, we did mostly consist of white males.  However, a few minorities were in attendance, as well as a reasonable number of women.  Many of the attendees were younger (it was at UF) but quite a few looked to be in the second half of life.  Later on I learned that at least a few had never hunted in their lives but were interested in learning.

I doubt that many other classes of this type had the facilities available to us that morning.  The University of Florida Meat Processing Laboratory is a full Federal (USDA- FSIS) Inspected meat processing facility designed to facilitate teaching, extension and research programs for the Animals Sciences Department.  The room superficially resembled any other teaching auditorium on campus, with stadium seating for around 100 students, but the overhead rails that curved in front of the blackboard and lead to the huge stainless-steel dutch-doors of a massive walk-in refrigeration unit belied the differences of the lessons learned here.  

I was surprised to find myself slightly queasy at both the thought of the thousands of animals that had been presented to thousands of students in this room and the very faint but unmistakeable smell of blood hidden beneath sanitizers.  It didn't take long for that feeling to pass as  Mr. Carr started us off with some background information about the aims of the course.  It seems he too had been taken aback by the large turnout, and was very enthusiastic for the chance to contribute to our education. 

A gentleman from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission then gave an informative talk about the hazards of game-borne illness, not the least of which was the possibility of being bitten by a tick piggy-backing (litterally!) on our quarry.  Seems the most dangerous in Florida may be brucellosis contracted during the processing of wild hog, and he warned to always take topmost precaution when handling their carcasses.

The FWC speaker also gave a warning about something looming on the horizon:  Chronic Wasting Disease.  They have a passive monitoring system set up in this state that involves testing road kill, other found carcasses, and voluntarily donated hunting kills.  Evidently a major vector for the spread of CWD is by captive animals transported to "high fence" ranches for canned hunts (yet another reason to dislike those businesses).  Florida definitely has a high concentration of them, some of which are uncomfortably close to our 40 Acre Pines site.  No evidence of CWD has surfaced in Florida, but it may be only a matter of time. 

Next came the practical demonstrations.  A freshly killed young male goat played the role of a deer carcass as two very knowledgeable assistant managers  gave a lesson on skinning and gutting.  One thing I learned is that it is not always necessary or even wise to gut an animal.  Sounds counter intuitive, but if you know the animal has suffered a gut-shot it may be better to glean cuts from the outside of the carcass (most of the usable meat anyhow) than to open the thoracic cavity and introduce the intestinal contamination to the exterior.  You do give up the flanks, organs, and tenderloins, however.

"You can do it all with this knife!"

Later on the same to guys partially disassembled a wild hog that had been captured and pen raised in preparation for this class.  Strategic use of meat marking ink simulated contamination from a bullet wound and a less-than-expertly done field dressing. 

 

 

I was surprised to learn how little lean meat was on a wild hog of this size.  Evidently they don't share the muscle-producing genetics of their factory cousins.  According to these guys, a 125 lb wild hog might only yield 20 lbs of meat.  Of course, you'll have all the fat you'll need, render for lard anyone?

Note the size of the loin vs. the cape of fat over them in that cross-section

The class ended up with a sausage and jerky making demo, which was somewhat interesting but made it look way too easy since they were using a $5000 meat grinder. 

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In other news, my beautiful old compound bow suffered a breakage during practice over the weekend.  Nothing catastrophic or explosive, but I had to talk to three bow shops before I found one that could fix it, due to its design differences with modern bows.  In a way it was a good thing, because I discovered a local pawn shop actually has a pretty nice archery pro shop, I would have never thought to check. 

I just called them and the bow is ready for pick up now.  John and I had planned on hunting this evening, but I don't find myself in the proper mindset today.  I'll see what he thinks when he gets back from his field job.  Only a few more days of either-sex archery though, next week its a few days of antlered archery then my weekend of Muzzle-loading in Goethe State Forest!  That will make a nice couple of posts, I hope.

I'll leave you with a couple of pics from my moonrise walk at my favorite local preserve (two square miles with no hunting season there, its hard to count how many deer blow at you as you walk the trails)

Wait, so what's that old rhyme? "Red touch black, good for Jack. Red touch yellow..." wait, what?
LOL, yep, I almost tripped over this one, but coral snakes aren't supposed to be that dangerous. I mean, they can kill you, but they aren't eager to bite.

The most Southern Gothic photo I've ever taken.  Quick, get it on the cover of a vampire-werewolf romance novel!