How would you preserve deer or other large game in a survival scenario?

How would you go about preserving deer meat using common tools, and without the use of a freezer or other tool that requires power?How would you preserve deer or other large game in a survival scenario?
Its almost alarming to me how few people understand some simple primitive ways of preserving meat and yet say it cant be done, and I didn鈥檛 mean you but rather some of your answers here.





Mountain alder and cottonwood with the bark removed makes for good smoking wood in the north as does wild apple and hickory in the southern states. Then there are some desert plants as well.


You cut up the meat in strips a quarter in thick and about 1 陆 inches wide and dry it on a rack that the smoke permeates. A sort of tepee is draped around the rack to concentrate the smoke and heat. Native Americans used no salt in this process and dried fish the same way many times with out smoke but just sun dried in fair weather. If its damp and rainy then heat from a fire must be used to dry the meat or it will get rancid.


There are plants that are toxic that you don鈥檛 want to use for smoking fish or meat. The list is so long that its best to learn about them from one of the sites below. And I might add there is tons of information in the links below.





Links; http://www.aircav.com/survival/asch08/as鈥?/a>





http://www.wilderness-survival.net/food-鈥?/a>





http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/f鈥?/a>





http://www.wilderness-survival.net/Appc.鈥?/a>





Note;


I meant no insult to randkl, but the fact is millions of people preserve meat and fish to this day by drying or smoking. He is correct that if you get the smoke area too hot and actuly cook the meat it will reduce its preservation time. This holds especially true if there is lots of fat in the meat, lean meat works much better.


However I know many tribes of Native Americans that smoke cure or dry fish for the winter. The Aleut, Tlingit and Haida people of Alaska have taught me some of their methods. And boy are there lots of different methods! I have right now about 50lbs of smoked salmon and 30lbs of smoked deer meat, plus a bunch of different dried critters people gave me.


Here are a few things I have; dried black sea weed, smoked ling cod, trout, sockeye salmon, smoked king salmon, Halibut, Sitka deer, black bear, moose, Dall sheep and caribou. I even have some smoked seal meat a native friend gave me.


And all of that stuff is fine to eat because it was done right. I soak all my meat and fish in a brine slution over night before I cold smoke it in my smoke house. But I could improvise in the woods and do the same. It鈥檚 a primitive technology that is still going on today.


All that said if you do it wrong it will rot and make you sicker than hell! Also smoke has carcinogens in it, even clean hickory has such in its smoke. Its not enough to consider if you eat smoked products now and then. But I think is a real consideration if it鈥檚 a major part of your diet. The store bought smoked jerky has nitrates as well as low level carcinogens. So I think my brine solution is much more natural.How would you preserve deer or other large game in a survival scenario?
If your in survival mode a large game animal should only be taken when small game is very sparse. Big animals even that timid defenseless deer can easily tear you up and cause injuries that can kill. Better off setting snares for rabbit etc. Unless of course you are planning on surviving off the land for a VERY extended period the amount of work to try to preserve meat is excessive.





But I agree with most of the above with the exception that first priority would be to jerk the meat since most people in survival situations don't have the available salt and or means to produce it e.g. access to sea water and a large pot.





Going by the username an inferance of alaska or cold climate would also lead to the possibilitys of slicing it thinly as you can and letting it freeze in open air, or a pit dug down into the permafrost if avalible.
Preserving meat is all about removing contaminants and reducing the ability of bacteria to multiply. The easiest way is to remove all moisture from the meat because bacteria need moisture. You can either pack the meat in salt, which will draw the moisture into the salt (salt curing), you can slowly heat the meat in a smoke chamber which dries the moisture (smoke curing) or cut into thin strips and hang to dry (dehydration).





If you make the stew and seal in jars, unless you heat the jars with the lids on and allow the cooling to seal the lids, the meat will still rot, but it will take a little longer.





I would try a little of each. If you don't have access to mounds of salt, then smoke and dehydrate some to serve as emergency reserves in case you go a few days without fresh kills. Also remember to rotate your stocks by eating the older reserves and making new.
Easiest method is the heat sterilization method.





Cut the meat up into 1/2'; chunks, put it in a pot on the fire and boil the hell out of it. Pack the still hot stewed meat into sterile jars or cans and seal them with a wax/fat/beeswax plug. To use, you spoon out the wax seal and boil the contents....anything not eaten can be resealed.





Food can be saved that way for months.





Smoking/drying meat is a bit harder than most folks realize.





Addendum Balt: Nopers, Balt. The fat/wax seal has been used for literally thousands of years in every society that could make large amounts of clay or glass pots. The mason jar/lid modern canning method you mentioned has been used for about a hundred....and it only came about because it was easier than the fat/wax seal it replaced. The food in the jar is sterilized by heat and the fat/wax seal maintains that sterility just like a lid. Bacteria can't grow through it thus it seldom goes bad if done correctly. You tie a piece of cloth over the sealed top to keep insects and other baddies out. Chances are, your own grandmother preserved food that same way.





Wagon train travelers would dice meat up into a large stew kettle that hung over the fire and eat from it for weeks at a time. Add fresh meat and whatever roots and veggies you could find and melt a thick tallow layer over the food when moving. The tallow/fat/wax seal method preserved the food to the point that Norse, Gaels, early Americans, and later even, the Mormons, would keep the same kettle going all winter.





He asked about ';common tools'; and ';no power'; etc thus salting and most smoking/drying is out. To salt a single deer takes approx two pounds of salt per pound of meat.....and not many of us stock salt in 100lb bags in our larder nor carry it in our BOB.





Smoking is the same. We can drive to the local supermarket *today* and buy the wood chips to ';smoke'; our meat in the barbeque out back but that's not real smoking and that's not survivalism. That's smoke flavoring. True preservation smoking requires large amounts of the right wood and knowledge that most folks simply don't have access to. 90% of the wood in the world will ruin your meat and make you sick to your stomach....10% will make you dead. How many of us know the diffs and have access to the right stuff in a survival situation? Got seasoned wood? Green isn't the same. If your meat doesn't reach the right temp during smoking, bacteria still grows and you die. Too hot, you melt the fats in the meat and it goes rancid and you die.





Most folks here can't properly dry meat even using a commercial dehydrator. Not dry enough, you get rot. Too dry, you get cracks between the fibers and you get rot. I'm not even going to get into the proper methods in a survival situation. Drying foods, just for those reasons, has never been considered a survivalist skill....it falls under the heading of ';primitive living'; more than anything. It relies on you having access to a minimal level of equipment and time/energy that you don't have in survivalism.





I've written a *lot* on the survivalism topic these past thirty years. Enough to know what doesn't work, anyway.





Addendum Beedsarefunak: No one said it wasn't possible....I said very few folks know how to do it and it's not a survival skill, it's a primitive living skill.





Yes, I can quote a few tasty woods, too....and I can even point them out to you in the woods here. Not many folks in this forum or any other, though, could find an alder if it bit them on the ***.





In survivalism, you don't destroy a potential food source for anything. You don't cut down an apple or a pecan tree to smoke meat....the trees are far more valuable as a food source.





Btw, smoked meat isn't dried....and dried meat isn't smoked. Those are two entirely different methods of preserving.





You can spend an hour or two on those sites you found and find all sorts of contradictory info. One says to smoke your meat at 200 degrees and that less is dangerous....another, the right one, tells you to smoke at 140 degrees approx. If the meat cooks on the inside, it goes bad no matter how it was smoked. If it's not smoked hot enough, it goes bad, too.





It's obviously possible to smoke and dry meat in a primitive living setting....ancient folks did it all the time.....it's *not* very feasible in a ';survival'; situation. They worked all year to do it so they could get through to the next one. You, in a survival situation, can't waste the time or the energy doing so.





Most folks, including most in this forum, have no real idea what survivalism is. You ask them what they would do if the store shelves emptied and there was a food shortage.....they answer ';I'll plant my own food.'; When you ask them where they'll get the seed, they have no idea. Ask them how they plan to plow when they have probably never even *seen* a hand plow and they have no answer. Our ancestors survived because they worked their asses off 20 hours a day and had a thousand years of know how. Folks today think they can just revert back to that same level of existence in an eye blink. They can't.





As I said, it's a bit more difficult than most folks think.
I wouldn't. In a true survival situation, I'd eat my fill, then kill something else when I got hungry again. If game wasn't plentiful, then the only methods that would work are the two that have already been mentioned; salting or smoking/drying it. Unless it was below freezing outside, of course.
Your best bet, if you don't have a source of salt, is to either dry the meat or smoke it.
you would have to dry it in thin strips unless you lived in a cold climate then you could cut it up into chunks and let it freeze.
You have all the real answers on this one-


1- salt it if you can


2- smoke it if you can


3- leave it and kill something else
Salt and smoke, just as it's been done since we climbed on down from the trees.
Smoke it till it is jerky.
salt it...or if wood is available ...smoke it or make it up as jerky
salt the crap out of it