Part 1: Dad's Tags

My 30 year old beast is still running great, even better today than it was opening day having just repaired a small fuel leak on the gas tank filler neck. Check out the Argo Repairs 2020 page for details.

We got our fresh harvest back to town mid morning and were pleased to provide the very first moose hung in Harry's new state of the art moose processing facility in Portugal Cove.

His set up is complete with a 110v trolley mounted winch, permanently affixed moose hanging straps, full size laundry sink, washroom even a full kitchenette!

The winch really takes care of one of the worst job, getting the halves or quarters hung.

In no time we had the animal skinned, quartered and trimmed while dad worked on preparing the lunch he took in the woods for us in the shop's kitchenette.

Once everything was trimmed I washed down all the quarters twice using a 50/50 mix of water and vinegar and microfiber cloths. This will remove all blood, kill off any bacteria on the meat, and seal the surface. The microfiber cloth is the best thing I've used to date for removing 98% of hair from the quarters with very little effort.

The quarters were covered in cheese cloth to prevent trouble from flies while the meat hung in the cool for a couple days. We would have to process this animal quickly as temperatures were due to rise later in the week. You will have to check out Part 2 of our 2020 Moose Hunt to see the solution we have for that problem for the remainder of the season.

On the 23rd we got together to process Dad's moose by deboning the 4 quarters. Top quality roasts were cut out and bagged while everything else was cut; connecting tissue, fat and grizzle trimmed out then placed in 50lb meat totes to be ground.

These grey meat totes from princess auto are great, easy to clean, readily available and stack together nicely when using the lids. I also use a smaller black tub for scraps, the different colour and size help keep the two easily identifiable while processing. Trimming out the crap that most people keep in for filler really makes for a high quality ground meat sacrificing maybe 5-6lbs from the whole animal.

At the end of the night the meat totes were placed in French's big blue insulated fish box and covered in ice.

I came back the following afternoon and got all the meat ground and bagged using my 575watt Kitchen Aid meat grinder.

When I bag ground I always use a scale to get the bags even and accurate which is very convenient for portion control and for making sausages. It's great for easily adding a certain number of pounds of meat to the mix. Medium size ziplock bags hold 2lbs and Large size hold 5lb very well. I flatten out the bags and remove air to ensure that they freeze well and keep well.

Part 2: Harry's Tags

The only downside to an evening hunt is that it make for a fairly late night of skinning and cleaning by the time you get back to town. Once again Harry's fantastic moose processing facility was put to good use.

One main difference this time is that French & Stroh's dandy creation was finally finished, a semi portable refrigerated cooling room which will keep the quarters chilled regardless of the weather.

It's an absolutely dandy set up that allowed us to hang the quarters for a week before processing them in the same manner as the rest. Next up is my Thanksgiving Hunt!

Part 3: Mike's Charity Tags

This was my first ever solo moose harvest.

I stacked the 4 quarters on a fresh tarp in the front of my truck's bed which left enough room for the bike at the back resting the rear tires on the tailgate.

On my way back to town I immediately dropped off the jaw bone to the wildlife station at Paddy's Pond before it got gross, then to my place to drop off the bike, and then on to Harry's to hang and clean my harvest. This was my first time harvesting a moose solo and I have to say it's one of the most rewarding accomplishments I've made in my hunting career to date. It's amazing to be in the woods with the bye's which we've done a lot this year and will keep doing so, but to me this was a unique and extremely rewarding accomplishment that I wont soon forget.

In Portugal Cove Harry, Arch and I got to work skinning the moose graciously making great use of Harry's state of the art facility and equipment.

Once again I washed down the quarters with a 50/50 mix of water & vinegar using a microfiber cloth to clean, sterilize, and seal the meat and effortlessly remove all hair left by the skinning process.

French's cooler was put to good use to hang the quarters until Bassan, Roger and I got a chance to process them.

About a week later Bassan, Roger and I got to work processing the quarters.

Just like our past animals, we debone, cut out & bag all the prime cut roasts and label them using Bassan's easy peezy 27 class moose roast classification system. The rest is placed in 50lb meat tots and ran through the grinder.

This year Matthew and I wanted to enhance our sausage making and move away from the prepared sausage mixes which have a lot of salt and binder. We started creating our own mixes using only pure spices (and less salt) based on extensive research, trial and error. Over the course of the fall we made up a bunch of 3lb test batches to dial in a few recipes. Bulk barn turned out to be a great source for ingredients.

I organized mine into sealed containers to keep them fresh and orderly. My favourite two recipes are Spicy Italian with Red Wine, and Okto-beer-fest which features mace & ginger in the mix to which I add a quantity of my favourite beer of the day. Matthew also had great success replicating McDonalds breakfast sausage blend!

One test batch of Okto-beer-fest was made with this Innis & Gunn whiskey barrel aged stout which turned out amazing.

My Italian recipe multiplied out well for a 16lb batch but I did cut back and adjusted the amount of minced garlic and salt in the larger batchs. Accurate note taking of any changes is key to replicating the recipe in the future.

For most of my own sausages I've moved away from putting them in casings. Not because it's hard, I have the right equipment, but I really like taking the sausage meat, flattening it out in the pan and splitting it into meat sticks as it cooks, I find it better than eating casings.

There ends one of my favourite moose hunting trips to date, but the season is not over yet, French still has a set of Not for Profit tags to fill which is a partner either sex license.

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2011 Michael Smith