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.
As soon as I was done with my morning responsibilities, my grandpa helped me carry the 80 pound plastic bin of iced, unprocessed pronghorn into the kitchen. We had several game bags containing many different chunks of meat. The pronghorn was basically filleted, but I still had to de-bone it and cut it into pieces that were small enough to be wrapped up.
I began with the hind legs first, which were stuffed into game bags completely whole. They barely fit in the kitchen sink, which is where I rinsed off the debris and de-thawed them just enough so my knives wouldn't be cutting through ice. I used several different kinds of knives, from my tiny self-defense knife to my grandpa's largest butcher knife. My grandpa's filet knife worked the best though. My grandpa was my knife sharpener and my wild game packer. He sharpened the knives when they got dull and wrapped/labeled the cuts of wild game.
The legs were pretty hard to handle. They were covered in several layers epimysium, which is a slippery, elastic tissue that surrounds outside muscles and protects them from friction. Pronghorn are super speedy animals, so they have a lot of epimysium protecting their muscles from friction. I used my smallest knife to cut off as many of the layers as possible, before getting to the actual meat. I used the filet knife on the actual meat, and carefully cut off excessive fat and sinew with it as well. It was tedious work that took me three hours to complete, and I wasn't even finished yet.
I kept the bones for bone broth, and moved onto the front neck, shoulder, and leg meat. These were a little easier to deal with. I still had to de-bone the leg meat, but the neck meat had been cut off of the bones back on the dressing rack at camp. Just like before, I kept the bones for bone broth and cut off as much epimysium, sinew, and excessive fat as possible, without taking off any red meat.
Finally, I moved on to the heart and the liver. The liver was partially destroyed, so I carefully cut off the destroyed part, keeping the majority which was good meat. I then moved onto the heart, which was perfectly intact. I cut off the top arteries, left and right atrium, and the aorta since those are about as tough as cartilage, keeping the left and right ventricle, AKA the bulk of the heart, for meat. I then sliced the heart in half, cut out the valves and heart strings, since the valves are also very tough and the heart strings get stuck in my teeth, and packed it away. It took me a total of 6 hours to process and pack the pronghorn meat from start to finish, and I didn't take any sitting breaks.
My legs were basically numb by the time I was done, but I was so satisfied with my work, that I barely noticed. I knew I'd be staying with my grandparents for another week or longer, so I put a few pronghorn cuts in their freezer, and my grandpa drove me to my house to drop off the rest of my pronghorn in my own freezer. We got about 50 pounds of meat off that pronghorn, which is very impressive. That's the benefit of hunting older, larger animals. Some say the younger animals taste better, but I prefer larger, older animals since it means more meat for me, and gives the younger animals a chance to breed.
I rested for the next couple days, before moving onto the hide and the skull. I decided to work on the hide first, since that was at a greater risk of rotting than the skull. The ice was beginning to melt, and the air was getting warmer, so I took advantage of the warm, sunny weather to begin curing the hide.
My grandpa had gone to a construction site, where they gave him a large piece of plywood for free. It was in the junk pile anyway, and was the perfect size for my pronghorn. After he did that, he helped me rinse off the hide. Because the guys at the camp just pulled it off like a sock, I had to cut the hide in half. I held onto it while my grandpa cut it down the middle of its belly.
Once it was separated like a blanket rather than rolled up like a sock, I tossed it down onto the concrete driveway and used a hose brush to remove as much of the loose tissue, debris, shed fur, and blood as possible. My pronghorn hide had been soaked in blood, especially near the entrance and exit wounds of the bullet, so I did my best to clean that off without taking too much fur off. Untanned deer and pronghorn hides tend to shed really easily, so carefulness was key to prevent bald spots from forming.
Once that was all done, my grandpa and I left it on some landscape rocks, fur side up, while we rinsed off the driveway, so no neighbors in that high end suburban neighborhood would freak out, and spent 15 minutes going to the store for salt and borax.
Target only had about 6 pounds of salt left by the time I got there, and to cure the hide, I'd need a total of 16 pounds of plain salt at least. Nevertheless, I decided I only needed about 6 pounds of salt for the first treatment anyway, and since the store was so close, it wasn't a problem to go there everyday for more salt.
We returned home, and for the next 4 hours, inside a closed garage next to a space heater so my fingers wouldn't completely freeze, grandpa and I stretched out the hide, fur-side down, using almost 60 nails, and cut off the excess meat and fat that had stuck to the hide. After that, we spread out the salt in layers on the raw hide and left the hide for the night to cure.
The next two days were just a repeat of salting the hide. We removed the old used salt after 24 hours, and replace it new fresh salt. On the last night of curing, we added in some borax. Borax prevents bugs from chewing on the hide, as well as gets rid of any possible decomposing bacteria, so the hide could stay like that for several years before getting tanned. Salted hides still shed very easily, though not as much as a raw hide, so I still had to handle the salted hide with care.
After the borax treatment, I walked into the garage and was about to start taking out the nails, when I noticed something very peculiar. There were a bunch of tiny imprints and tiny black flakes in the white smooth borax. I also noticed that there was a trail of fur leading out of the largest bullet hole and under the closed garage door, where the was a small gap. I immediately went into panic mode, taking out the nails as quick as possible so I could see how much damage the mice had done to the fur. All I could think was, "Damn it, I should've known curing the hide on the floor was just asking for this!"
My grandpa helped me move the salt and borax off the hide and into a box, before I ran outside with the hide and inspected the fur. It was remarkable, to say the least. The mice had actually done me a favor. They chewed off all of the bloodstained fur, leaving behind the clean fur. There weren't any bald spots or visible damage done to the fur or hide. I took in a deep, long breath, smiled, and said to my grandpa, "I guess God was just helping us out. The mice just took all of the bloody fur and left the good stuff behind."
Still, I decided the hide needed to be suspended off the ground for the rest of the curing process. The fur was still very damp, and needed to dry. However, I didn't have any good ideas on how to do this, but my grandpa did.
My grandpa had a roll of thin landscaping rope he had no real use for. The garage door track had a couple of holes on either side that my grandpa could funnel the rope through. He threaded the rope through four separate holes in total, so we could still stretch out the hide, but just keep it suspended. It was a genius idea, and actually worked very well. The fur side could dry, and the entire hide could stay away from the mice. It stayed up there for several days.
Meanwhile, the skull still needed to be cleaned. While my grandpa was out and about, I had the whole garage to myself. I had a large tarp spread out on the floor, and I knew I had to clean the skull inside the garage and house. I didn't want to offend the neighbors, so I decided to endure the overwhelming smell of flesh and blood inside a cool garage. I opened a few windows in the garage to create a draft, and began my work, without gloves of course.
I had an entire pronghorn head to deal with, fur and everything. I'm glad I have a poor sense of smell for that, but the pronghorn head still smelled strong enough to make me cringe a few times. I had the hose nearby, and a large bucket, so I could wash off the head in that bucket without showing it off for the world to see. I also kept another bucket in the garage that was full of water, so I could wash off the knives every few minutes or so.
First, I had to skin the head, so I pressed the knife end hard against the pronghorn's forehead and slowly cut all the way down to the mouth. I slowly but surely peeled off the hide, releasing whiffs of all sorts of interesting smells as I did so. Once that was over with, I worked on removing the eyes. I knew exactly what I was cutting, so no eye stuff would leak out. Then, I used a large butcher knife to separate the head from the windpipe, throat, and upper neck bones.
Now that the head was successfully skinned and removed from the neck, I was able to pull the jaws apart and break them off. Basically, I just ripped it apart, which is how you are supposed to separate the bottom jaw from the top jaw. Then, I took a firm hold on the tongue with one hand and pressed my weight against the bottom jaw on the floor with the other, and discarded that.
A half hour or so later, I had the skull in a large pot I had brought to an extreme boil. For the next 12 combined hours, I simmered the skull, cut off the flesh, rinsed it off, and simmered it again. Near the end, I added borax and dish soap into the boiling pot, to whiten and disinfect the skull a little bit more. I had to remove some extremely softened bones above the nasal cavity to remove the nasal cavity, as well as to the brains. Next time I do this, I'll make sure to have a pair of long surgical pliers so I don't remove any bones. In the end, while it wasn't perfect, I had myself a pronghorn skull to add to my collection.
While the skull dried, I revisited the pronghorn hide, which was still damp. To counter this, I spread it out on a card table in the garage, and my grandma let me use her blow dryer to dry the hide. Every 5 minutes, I gave the blow dryer a break, and ran outside to shake the hide and let the sun and wind dry it. It was pretty windy that day, which really helped to dry the hide and blow away all of the excess salt and shed fur. Obviously, each time I ran outside with the pronghorn hide, it kept it downwind from myself so I didn't blind myself with salt and borax. For three hours, I did this, until finally the hide was bone dry and ready to be boxed up and saved until a spot at the tannery opened. As of now, it's in a cardboard box in my garage where no mice can get to it.
I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish, and it's amazing just how much work is put into processing wild game. I spent a combined 24 hours in a span of 5 days working on the pronghorn with my hands, not counting the curing, cooking, and de-thawing time. People don't realize just how much work it takes to hunt and to process animal. If people realize that, they'd have a lot more respect for their food.
