NOTE: In this, I will be explaining some pretty graphic content in regards to how I processed the pronghorn. As you can imagine, turning an animal into food is pretty gory. I may include some pictures too, just because I've been doing some thinking and discussing with other hunters, who believe and have convinced me, that the best way to honor an animal is to describe and show people exactly how it is treated after death. Believe it or not, most people have no idea what their meat went through to become a steak on a plate, or what their leather went through to become a wallet, or how nature works, or what nature really is. As a hunter, I feel responsible to show people the side of hunting that is hardly ever shown or discussed outside of hunters.

Words cannot describe just how excited I was to cook the first of this year's pronghorn. My grandparents and I took the meat, hide, and head home in two large plastic bins full of ice. Thankfully, the day we returned home, a cold front had moved through and froze the air, so the meat was safe inside the chilled ice bins in the garage for the night. 

Still, I couldn't resist. I had to eat some of the pronghorn I worked so hard to hunt the same day I had hunted it. My body was begging for me to rest, so as soon as I got home from the hunt, I laid down and slept for awhile. But, as soon as I was up, showered, and unpacked, I went out into the garage and shoved my hands into the frozen game bags. Both sirloins were put into the game bags last, as I requested. They were already cut and ready to be cooked. 

I rinsed off the fur and the dirt that had stuck to it, but then I plugged in my George Foreman grill, carefully wiped some grape seed oil on the hot iron using a paper towel, and put the pronghorn sirloins on the grill for five minutes. When I took them off, the inside meat was still red and cold, though the outside meat was fully cooked.

A common misconception people have with red meat, is that all of the meat is contaminated and must be fully cooked just like chicken and pork. This is true for ground red meats but not whole cuts. Bacteria only sits on the surface of each whole cut. The interior of the cut is perfectly safe to be eaten raw. Inorganic, factory farmed meat does risk having some interior contamination, but in my opinion, inorganic, factory farmed meat tastes like crap anyway, so I almost never eat it. Some wild animals, such as bears and moose, often do have interior bacteria that can hurt humans if it's not dealt with properly, but pronghorn almost never does. 

The fresh pronghorn sirloins were just as delicious as I expected them to be. Just delicious! Those pronghorn eat a lot of sage, which gives the meat an earthy taste and enhances the game and iron taste too. I didn't season them, mostly because wild game doesn't need seasoning. In my opinion, it's best when it's unseasoned and practically raw. Some people might cringe at that, I know my mom does, but that's just how I eat things.

If I do season my meat, it's with very light seasonings like onions, salt, sage, orange, and lemon. I don't do well with chutney, BBQ sauce, cajun seasoning, mexican seasoning, indian seasoning, fried meat, or really anything that isn't a whole, raw food. Some may call me boring or whatever, but I prefer just the raw, unseasoned taste of rare, organic, red meat and fish. However, if I cook my fish, I always cook it with whole organic chopped lemons and salt, and keep the middle a little under cooked. But, I tend to buy most of my fish from the sushi freezer at Whole Foods, which is just a freezer full of fish steaks that are specifically there for raw consumption. 

After I finished off those sirloins, I just relaxed for the rest of the evening, went to bed, and woke up the next morning ready and eager to work on processing the pronghorn meat.