Cameron Hanes - Keep Hammering Collective - KHC 148 - Meat Care: Techniques to Properly Care for Your Game Meat

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Join us for a quick dive into preparing for hunting season like a pro! In this short episode, Cam shares expert tips on gearing up for a successful hunt and proven techniques to properly care for your game meat. Learn how to minimize waste, prevent spoiling, and ensure your harvest stays fresh! Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Timestamps: 00:00:00  Cam’s Thoughts on Losing Meat 00:03:11  Always Have a Good, Sharp Knife - Montana Knife Company Knives 00:08:31  Timing is Important: The Sun is Your Enemy 00:12:32  Order of Skinning and Remove the Meat After the Kill 00:16:42  Gutless Method 00:18:52  Removing Meat from the Head & Neck: Every Last Ounce 00:24:47  Solo Hunt Scenarios to Preserve the Meat 00:27:58  Meat Bags 00:31:18  Keep the Meat Clean 00:32:29  Keeping Bear Away From Your Harvest 00:36:50  Have a Plan Before Your Hunt 00:40:40  Cam’s Preferred Cuts: Taking the Meat to a Meat Processor 00:41:42  Keeping the Meat Cool & Dry in a Cooler 00:42:40  Final Thoughts: Gideon Compliments and Hate Comments Thank you to our sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: ⁠https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/⁠ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order LMNT: Visit https://drinklmnt.com/cam for a free sample pack with any purchase Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Use code CAM for 10% off  Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off

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how do we take care of that meat once the animal hits the ground, right? Yeah. Because it's, to be honest, it's a, the clock starts ticking. It's the most important part. Right. It is. It's just like, um, I think the reason why I wanted to do this is there is a lot of, I see a lot of new bow hunters out there, which is great. I mean, I love it. I love when the world of archery grows. But then I also heard a number of stories this year about bowls that were killed and the meat was lost. And that freaking kills me. I'll just say, I'm not saying I'm better than anybody, but I'm

saying if I got lucky, I don't know what I did or got the right breaks but I've been boll hunting elk since 89 this is what 36 37 seasons now I've never lost any meat okay or that's just

elk but I mean I've been bohunting for that long I haven't lost any meat so when I hear sometimes it happens I understand sometimes you're going to make a poor shot by the time you recover that animal if you hit it in the guts and that's not intentional that that can happen i mean this is a very very hard endeavor you're not going to make a

perfect shot every time this is bow hunting um so if you do make a poor shot maybe back in the guts and generally there's not a lot of blood on a on a gut shot animal um the recovery might take a while to get that blood trail unraveled and you could if it's if it's hot weather lose that meat so it can happen and it's and it's not it's i guess it's it's a fault of the the archer but nobody's perfect right so this is not talking about that this is not talking about uh just a tough shot and you know long heart blood trail and not getting there in time because of the weather this isn't that this is um making sure that we're not losing any meat and we're honoring that animal and we're respecting the life that animal by doing the best job we can once the arrow is released and the animal hits the ground.

How do we get that meat out of the mountains, processed, and in our freezer, and then ultimately on the dinner plates of our family or friends that we're sharing our kills with? But how do we do that to the best of our ability? So what I do, just in general, I've learned this lesson and made this mistake myself. but have a knife at all times. I remember in 2007, Roy and I were moose hunting. This bowl was coming in. It wasn't 50 inches with wide or didn't have the three brow tines.

So as a non-resident, I couldn't kill it, but Roy was a resident. So I said, hey, do you want to kill this bowl coming in? Came into like 16 yards. I said, you can use my bow. We shot kind of the same setup. He took my bow and my release and smoked that bowl and got it down. point is we didn't have a knife. Somehow we got out of our camp, had our packs, how whatever, I don't know if we had knives from eating in the tent and we took our hunting knives out and we're

using it to cut up. I don't know what. But the point is we didn't have a knife. So we had to use a broadhead to gut that moose. Not perfect. We got the guts out. We went back the next morning after, you know, it was cool up there. So the meat was fine. But gutting a moose with a broadhead, very, very hard and not very efficient. So always have a knife. And when you have a knife like this one here, this is what I have just basically on my, this is my binoes and range finder.

And I've got Allen wrenches here. And I have all sorts of goodies in here, like a toothpick. I put my phone right there. But part of this little kit is, I've got a Montana knife right there. And it's just, it's not like the one I use all the time, but it's something I can at least open up an animal and get those guts out if I need to. And then, and then work on the animal here.

It's super light. Holds a good edge. What I, so I'll have a few different knives in my pack. That one's going to be on my bino harness because you never know when you need a knife. But, uh, this, uh, pack out skinner. This is available right now. This is like pretty much my go-to knife. Did somebody use this and not clean? So I need to, Montana knife needs to come get these knives and sharpen, sharpen them up and clean them. But yeah, so if I have these three knives, I can do pretty much anything, right? Because this one, this is the skinner, which is, this is amazing, because if you think you got this whole blade angle here,

so you can utilize that whole blade, get that skin off, and it works great for that but this is pretty blunt right here so when you're when you're trying to start the cut to get the guts out if you're going to gut the animal sometimes we do gutless method also which i'll explain but that's a pretty blunt tip to try to get in there and try to go up generally you come from the genitals up to the sternum you open that up that's where you pull the guts out that's pretty blunt to do sometimes it's better with it with a good point like that to get get that started and get that opened up And then when you get down to where you're trying to get the bottom jaw for the cutting the head off, where the spine attaches up there, sometimes you need this knife, this blade is very durable. You see how thick that is right there.

And you can kind of get in there, whittle around. I think you and I worked on that on my bowl and got that head off. But you want a durable blade because this is very thin. I'm not saying it's not tough, but you could snap the tip of that off pretty easy when you're trying to get that bottom jaw off or something like that. And then this is just kind of like a mid-range. A little thicker blade for sure. These thick blades, they're going to be a little, you're probably going to lose the edge a little quicker than on this blade here. This one is so slight that blade will, I think it'll last a long time.

These thicker ones, they're more durable, but it makes that, um, it makes that a little more susceptible to getting dull or quicker, but it's going to be stuck. Yeah. Yeah. But you might have to just, you know, run it over a stone or something like that. But these are the three knives I use. So a sharp knife is key.

Always having a knife on you, having the right knife for the job. Again, we've done it with the broadhead. So could you do it with something other than these? Yeah. But, and a lot of people are using the like the replaceable blade knives, which are very sharp. They're like scalples, but God, they go through a lot of those blades

and they're always breaking. I know. And to me, there's, there's something about using like a fixed blade, old style knife. Yeah.

You know, it feels better. But yeah, something I always bring to in my kill kit is a little ceramic sharpener. I mean, you're not going to get a perfect edge, but it will make it sharper.

Oh, yeah. Make your life easier while you're back there. I mean, I got an old green handle one. Yeah. So light. but you just do like five of those,

you're back in business. Exactly. It doesn't take, you don't have to be like leather strong. You don't have to get crazy. But yeah, so that's the key. Knives,

again, so once the arrow hits the animal, time is of the essence. We don't want to get on the blood too quick in case it's a poor shot, and we don't want to push that animal. We're just assuming we make all decisions there correctly. But it does make it,

difference on how quick you get there and how fast the animal dies or how much time you're giving it. Because say, it is kind of a hard one. I remember last year in Oregon, my bowl, I was unsure of the, you know, we went back and looked at the shot. I'm like, God, it looks pretty good. It's a little bit back, but I didn't, as warm days like, or warm night is going to be like almost high 50s, 60s. I didn't want that bowl dying. Say, I shot in a. the evening. So if he would have died in an hour, so if you would have died, say, nine at night, um, wouldn't it got in there to like get slide of six, maybe by the time you get in there, you'd seven, that's 10 hours. Yep. So if that bull would have died, if that, that arrow would have

caught lungs and liver or he would have died in an hour, there had been 10 hours before I got on them. And 10 hours in that temperature would have lost all that mean. So I'm like, no, let's give it a couple hours. Let's go back in there. See, if that bull's dead he wasn't dead um jumped him had to back out again and what this was this was terrible we talked about this and i hated this part of it but um we went back in the morning the bull was still alive he was so weak he couldn't get up i shot him and and killed him um the the only benefit to his suffering was that the meat was perfect because he stayed alive and while i felt I mean, I don't, you know, probably had, I were pretty emotional about it just because I don't like

animal suffering. But, yeah, and I don't even know if I'd choose that over the meat. I'm sure I would because the alternative would be like the animal would die and we lost the meat. So then what was the life of the animal for? So I didn't want them suffering, but I guess that's better than losing the meat. A point is sometimes there's going to be decisions that you have to have. to make based on the blood you're seeing, the shot that you, you know, thought you released

and how the animal reacted and the weather conditions. You know, if it was a cold night down in the 30s, you could still lose some of the meat on the ground that was laying on the ground side of that, but you'd probably be all right. So you have to consider all that. Point is like, yeah, you just can't ignore any factors. So when we're, when, aside from all that, considering all all that, you get to the, up to the animal. This last bull I killed, and it makes a difference too on where the animal dies. The last bull I killed in Winah, bottom of the canyon, shade, water, cool, perfect place to work on a bull.

If the bull dies up on a sunny hillside, whole different deal. Now it's like, now it's time is of the essence. You got to hustle. Or you got to try to get that thing out of. of the sun. The sun, that's why that drove me crazy that video the other day with, you know, the lesser Ronella's video. I don't even know what he's doing, but the meat's sitting in the sun with flies flying around. And it's just like, I just don't even get it. So the sun is your enemy. The sun is your enemy in hunting and meat care and everything. The sun is stay out of the sun.

So whether you've got to get that bowl, somehow drag it out or just get to work on it, as soon as you can get some meat off that bull, you do it. But to start off, you walk up to the bull. You might take a couple photos, whatever. We're assuming that's going to be quick. And then, okay, let's start breaking this thing down. So what I do is I usually do one side at a time. the bull is laying on, you know, it's left or right side.

And I always start, like, lift his back leg, go from the knee inside the leg to the genitals, basically. And then you go up the belly type thing. And up to the front leg, whoever's working on the front leg, you're from the back of the knee there. You're down on like, so you're coming here. And you're coming here right at the right here. And then you're coming straight across to the chest. this line will come up here. And essentially you're just skinning all that, that hide off.

And you're getting off. You can pull the quarters off then once you get that done. Once you get all that hide off, you don't need a saw or anything. The front shoulders don't have a socket. So you can just go right here. I try to go and get a lot of this neck meat at the same time because that's just like such a good chunk there. So I get a lot of the neck meat. All a bunch of the meat here off the chest.

and then pull it off because to get the backstrap to the to its full potential you have to pull that front shoulder off because the shoulder covers part of the backstrap which that's like the premier cut on a on any big game animal but uh so you can pull those front shoulders off no joint but I try to get a lot of extra meat there we put that in a bag and we set that either on a rock or a log or hang it

get some air circulating around it you can get the back leg off same way you go down to the to the ball on socket um you have to be careful there because your knife can go in and hit guts um so you'd be careful on that inside cut especially coming up towards the top of the back from that ball on ball socket but you can get that whole back half off or back quarter off and then get it in a bag so now assuming we got the the two quarters off on that side and then i pull the back strap off you can really get to it once you get all that out of there um And then this is where some people, like with the gutless method, you don't have to necessarily gut the animal to work on it.

When you're by yourself, sometimes it's easier to get the guts out of there because it's, you know, a lot lighter to move around. But if you wait, so if you can do the gutless method, which means you don't gut it, you don't split it and take the guts out, you still have to get the tenderloins, which are basically right under the spine in the back. To get to those, you can get them from the top. You come in, you've got to push the guts down, and you kind of get that, it's a big chunk of really good meat,

that tenderloin there. But to get it out, you'll have to hold the guts down. The longer you wait, the more gas fills up in that stomach, and it makes that tighter. It's really hard to push the guts down and get that tenderloin down. So if you're not that dialed in or you're not that quick or it's going to take some time, you might just want to pull the guts out.

Leaving them in makes the gut the site a lot cleaner. And what a lot of people do, where they still screw up, and when I talk about these guys that lost some of this elk mate, some of it is you put so much focus on the hunting and the shooting and whatever is great. It's great. You got the animal killed.

You've got to put just as much focus on the meat care. And you've got to care just as much focus on the meat care. as much. And I think a lot of times people shoot this arrow. They walk up to the bull. They look at it and they're like, I don't have no idea what to do. Never thought about that part. Never thought they were actually going to get a bull killed. I mean, they might have thought, yeah, I want to kill one. Well, what does it mean when I do? And it's tough to pull up a YouTube video at the middle of the mountains when the day's getting warmer and you got this dead animal here. That's not the time to do it. So do your research beforehand. But what I see a lot of guys do is they've heard this gutless. They've heard like

pulling the guts out. But they don't know exactly what that entails. So you start pulling the guts out where people screw up and taint some of their meat is when they're cutting the intestines, things like that out, this meat or this blade goes and it hits the bladder. You hit the bladder. There's urine going all over the meat. Right. So that's not good. They're hitting, I mean, you just have to be careful where that blade goes. They're hitting the guts, the guts themselves, which has, you know, got the green shit in the stomach that comes out. That'll taint the meat. So you have to be very careful on where this blade goes when you're gutting those animals.

Why I do like pulling the guts out sometimes, even if I have help, but I get all the meat. I mean, you've been around. You've seen how, you know, I take all the rib meat, all the meat. the stomach lining meat. There's even like some tenderloins up, I call them the front tender loins up in the chest until you pull all that stuff out, it's tough to get those front tenderloins. So I go, I take so much meat off. Like on the last bowl I just killed, we got 304 pounds of bone-down meat, which is so much. Normally people get a little lazier when they're miles back. That's a lot for bone-in. Yeah.

for yeah for you yeah even yeah even if the bones were included this was all boned meat so it's just solid meat but people don't you know is good bad whatever you can say whatever you want they they're not as thorough in the wilderness in the miles deep as they are maybe like if they took it to a shop and they got the bowl out hole and they could spend their time on it I get the same amount of meat out no matter where no matter where it is but um so I'm taking all of them out in the Mountains, there's no room for wheat gear. When I'm packing out meat in the heat or loading up for a long-range training trip, I need a cooler that holds the line every time. That's why I use grizzly coolers. These things are bareproof, rugged as hell, and keep ice locked in for days, literally.

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And with hunting season right around the corner, I've got to mention one of my favorite black rifle items for Elkamp, the vanilla bomb instant coffee stick. Super easy, super good, and perfect for those early mornings in the mountains. Black Rifle coffee is America's coffee. Veteran owned and operated and they give back big time to the hunting and conservation community and especially to veterans. Right now, they're offering listeners 20% off of your first purchase of the coffee club or any order on their site. Just use code keep hammering and check out and get America's coffee today. To get all of it, sometimes it's easier to have those guts out. I'm just saying that if you're going to do that, just no anatomy, know what you're keeping that blade out of.

No, you don't want to taint that meat. So yeah, then we get up to the neck. The neck, as we know, a super thick hide. It'll dull up these blades in a hurry. That's why I think multiple knives help. But you're pulling, not to yourself, but you're pulling through that neck meat or going through that neck meat up the back of the back of the neck there. And then we skin that out so we can get the head off. But also there's 40 pounds of meat on that neck. And people will say, oh, some people, they like talk down on the neck me i don't talk down on any meat because i can turn any of that meat into something good yeah buroni sausage jerky i don't give a fuck i'm taking all of it right that's what we owe it to that animal to respect its life and take everything we can um so yeah we we pull that out

get all the neck meat off and uh by the time it's it's set and done that's a bear carcass i take pictures of every carcass that that I kill just to verify just because people talk all sorts of shit but I also just want to show that this is if it's done right this is what it looks like. So I have that too

but you know I mean the last thing I ever want to be accused of is one waste of a game animal which leaving meat out there just because you're tired or you don't care or you know you're you want to make a social media video to bully a woman

I don't think that's a good answer. Yeah, I mean, especially clearly being at home where you have all the means to have already processed that animal if you choose to do it yourself is pretty wild. It's just, I mean, you can say whatever you want. Action speak louder than words. You do know you could have taken the same video with all that meat packaged up, right?

You know, it's like. He was so excited. to bully a woman who, and you think about this too, it's like Lydia, she was showing how much the hunt means to her by sharing her emotions, a vulnerable state basically or vulnerable time because she just overcome so much to kill a bull after 16 days on public land by herself, hunting solo, so struck by emotion. The hunt means that much to her that she was just crying. So that you get somebody who's being a detractor of that behavior while they're disrespecting the kill. The very, the most important thing of why we do what we do, so clueless, so quick to want to make a social media video to bully this, this girl who busted her ass.

And it's like showing how much hunting means to her and how much that animal means to her. the exact opposite of that is some clown bullying that girl while their meat rots in the sun. Yeah. That's tone deaf. That's that you're such, your ego is so out of control. You're so fucking lost. You don't get it. Yeah.

So I saw someone that was, you know, oh, why does she have to record it? That's not the, the foot we want to put forward for hunting. And I'm like, no, it is. Yeah. That is. You want some, you want to look like some bloodthirsty dumb fuck who doesn't care and disrespecting the animal? Or do you want somebody who's just like, wow, this hunting means a lot to this person? Yeah.

I mean, because people who don't understand hunting, they would think that we don't care. We're emotionless. We don't give a fuck about anything. I would bet you everything that if you take someone who doesn't like hunting, they're going to use the video that the lesser Rinella took more to prove their point that hunting's bad than they would Lidias. Yeah, for sure. So what do you do? What does that say? What do you do? Yeah, crazy. Fucking clown. But when you're hunting, how much does kind of the scenario in which a bull might go down play into kind of your game playing? Because I know you talked about with Winnihaw, the first couple days you went in

there was like, if I kill a bull down here by myself, it's hot. What am I going to do? Yeah, I went in for that scouting trip is season though i mean i could have killed a bull and i had a 350 bowl at 50 yards and i had a 360 bowl at 20 yards but at that time i didn't i couldn't guarantee that i would be able to get that meat taking care of ethically and quickly enough to to ensure i wouldn't lose any uh to me it wasn't worth killing that bull when that question was still there it's the meat is everything and people you know they turn it into all sorts of stuff it's like you know and you can you can get tricked and saying well are you a meat hunter or trophy hunter i'm both i mean i have trophies here all these animals mean a lot to me but the meat means just as much or more at that time this is just for for history right this is just to

share you know this is just for to remember the incredible adventures we've had but the meat is what sustains me that's what matters that's that the meat of the kills i make is as valuable to me as gold is. If somebody said, here's 10 pounds of gold or 10 pounds of the, of the bull you just killed, which do you want? I'm taking the bull. Right. That bull means everything. In gold, I don't care. So, so I'm, I'm both. The trophy is very important. That having these memories is important. I look at these antlers. I remember everything, but I eat the meat every day. So it's, I would never kill a bull by myself in a situation like that because I didn't know for sure how I was getting it out. I had to figure that part out before I was

going to kill a bull down there. So that's just, I think that's what it means to be an ethical and honorable hunter. Right. Well, I think too, it's like, okay, take one of these bulls. And if you lost the meat to it, you know, you'd be devastated. Every time I looked at that bowl, I would think about that. Yeah. But if you, if you lost the rack, you know, but got to keep the meat, it wouldn't be as devastating. I wouldn't. Yeah. I mean, there's plenty of racks I don't have. Yeah. I mean, I've obviously been on hunts with you and uh you do not relax until the meat is taken care of no i can't it's just like until it's done and in the in a cooler in the freezer and clean and i can't yeah and people who say otherwise or or that's why i see that video like from matt and i'm just like it just makes me sick

yeah because it's like i couldn't imagine doing that i couldn't i couldn't imagine having so the purpose of that video was negative in nature shaming i couldn't imagine shame the the the want to shame somebody overweighed the value of that meat i just don't even i don't get that type of person if you're going to talk shit you better make sure your shit is on lock yeah anyway um so another part that you know i've learned this lesson myself. As I said, I haven't lost, I've never lost meat,

but I've went unprepared or less prepared than I need to with the knife, sometimes at game bags. I know I've had to put a bowl. This is with South. We were hunting the Eagle Cap, I think, in 1999. I killed this bull, and I didn't have any meat bags. So all my camo clothes are the meat bags.

I had predator to camo. It was all full of the bone dot meat. My shirt was like a whole person laying there and the meat was in all my clothes. So I had no clothes. But you want to have good meat bags. We had a shitload of meat bags on the Winaha one because Tanner had some. Wayne had some. But they were good, lightweight meat bags.

We had eight of them, I think, eight or nine at that time, which we had eight people packing. So it made it perfect for putting in, you know, we had all that bone down meat. Like I said, three and four pounds. But when you have it divvied up. between eight bags it makes it pretty manageable but also those more bags means that meat isn't stacked on top of each other and in trying to cool if you put so say for example you have a one giant meat bag and you got both quarters all the neck meat all the scrap meat all the rib meat and it's all one big wad that's going to stay hot for a long time so you have to be able

to separate that meat more meat bags help that and And then another key part is this is air. You just got to get air around it. As I said, sun, shade, that's all important. You'd be surprised how long meat can last. Say if it's 80 degrees out in the sun, but the bottom of this draw and there's water down there and you're on the north side of the timber,

it might never get above 50 in there. And then if you have a little wind, that meat's going to be fine for fuck probably a week. If you get that hide off, you get that meat off the bone because bone can sour meat. So you get that meat off the bone. You know, Wayne, he boned out those back quarters, which we were fine on time. But generally, if you were by yourself and you're worried about how much time it's going to take,

you get that meat just like he did. He boned those back quarters. You get that meat off the bone so the bone can't sour it. And it's going to last five days back there. Yeah. If you get good bags around water, get a little breeze around. it and it's in the shade and the north side timber, you're good. Another tactic people do, people take garbage sacks.

And this, you don't want meat in a garbage sack in the heat, but we've done this before where you put the meat in a garbage sack, tie it up, then you can put that in water. And that could be in a creek. Or last year, I think it was last year, Truitt killed this buck down over on the coast and a big old buck right at dark, broke that whole buck down and I laid it, there's a clip on my Instagram, but laid it on a log over water.

And it was just in the morning. It was just like it'd been in a refrigerator. But yeah, so it's like there's a few key things that we have to do. And then everything else is, there's a lot of variables. Yeah. What about kind of keeping the meat as clean as possible as you're taking it off the animal?

and that's something that you'd find really important. Yeah, I get, I get mad. When if there's hair, if people are cutting through the hair and it's getting on the animal, or this is what drives me crazy. You're working on the animal. You go to step over the animal to get to the other side and you just kick in dust and dirt and shit. I'm like, what the fuck? You just kicked all this dirt on it.

So I'm psycho about keeping. meat clean. And as I said, when you do the one side, then you have to flip it over. So I'm always like, okay, we flipping this over. I don't want to, you know,

have this other side backstrap that I hadn't pulled out yet, rolling it over in the dirt. Right. So like on this last one, we laid a game bag down so we could flip it over. But yeah,

it's just being intentional about what's going on with that meat. What decisions are you making? Let's keep it clean. Keep hair off of it. Keep dirt off of it. Keep it out of the sun. let it get cooled down, get the bone out of there.

All of this matters. And my other question is, you know, we've heard a couple stories of which, you know, whether you believe them or not, but people losing, you know, a whole elk to a bear or whatever, might come in and open one sack or whatever. But what's a, I mean, what's a tip to help keep bears away if you're taking a load or whatever it is?

Taking a load? No. I didn't. I don't know if that's what you. you said. But yeah, so what I do, like on that one we just did, I like camping right with the meat. If a bear's going to come in and get in the middle of the night, it's going to have to go through us first. But most people don't want to camp out where, you know, a bear could potentially come in. So leave a coat, leave a hat, leave some scent, leave a shirt, get that meat

up off the ground, make it tough to get to. You know, a coyote can come in and, you know, If it's low, can get it pretty easy. A bear can climb, but the harder you make it, and the more obstacle, or not obstacles, but the deterrence you put out there, like human scent, you could piss around. I don't know if it makes any difference, but all the stuff, if it gives animal a little pause

to coming in to be like, God, I smell this, I smell that, I don't like this, I don't like that. I don't like that thing waving around, like, you know, a flagging waving around. animals don't like stuff like that because it's different. That might buy you some time as you're taking that load. And so you pack out a load to the truck, you come back during that time, those little deterrents might have kept them off the meat.

But yeah, it's generally bear. I mean, I think people, I hate to think about it, but there could be hunters who kill and wouldn't be upset if a bear got, got into the meat so they could say, oh, I lost it. Would have packed it all out, but Bear got it. I don't get it. Yeah. But there's scumbags and everything, even in bo-hunting.

Yeah. I mean, I know one of my buddies had a bear get into a game bag, and he just, you know, was like, okay, well, this meat's probably touched, but we'll take the rest of this in the game bag. It's like you don't throw away the whole game bag for meat. No, no. It's, uh, I don't know. People do make interesting decisions every day.

I can't speak to that. All I can share is the lessons I've learned and kind of my approach and hope that people consider it. And it, you know, it just makes the experience, A, more memorable and just knowing you did it right. I think that's what, you know, when you're, if you lost me, meat, whether it's on your own or, you know, or poor decision on your part or not or maybe a

victim of circumstance, whatever, when you're looking in the mirror at yourself, you know, you're the one who has to live with that. You know, I kill that animal and lost that meat. I don't want you to have to deal with that. People get used to ignoring all sorts of flaws in theirself. But I just know, I can say a bunch of BS, but when I'm looking at myself and I'm just like, I know if I didn't do things to the best of my ability and it doesn't feel good. So I just want to share this. And I just want people to be able to look at themselves in the mirror after they kill and be like, I did it right.

I did it right. And I honored that animal. I honored what it means to be a bow hunter. And I can sleep well tonight. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, it's the reason we do it. Yeah.

It's the only reason. It's a, you know, man is hunted forever. People don't get hunting. You know, in some ways nowadays, because I guess it's not technically necessary, but man is hunted as long as we've walked this earth. So this is as natural as it gets. And since we're born hunters, born bred, this is what we're designed to do. Taking care of that meat is a huge part of that.

We've got to do it right. Yep. Yeah, and I will say, too, it's, you know, if you've never done it, your first animal is going to take a while, you know, which is fine. As long as you're, like you said, you've got it in a good spot, but just watch a video or something. There's so many out there. Yeah, there is. Learn how to do it. Watch a couple. Come up with a plan before. Yeah. I mean, I know, you know, you might feel like you're never going to kill anything and it's hard. I mean, success on bull elk is 6%. It's like 94% fail.

So I understand not going out every time thinking about it. Okay, I'm this. It's going to happen this time. And then when it does happen, you're sort of unprepared. So just prepare. Yeah. Like, it's going to happen just so you're ready. Yep. Yeah, I remember the first mule deer I killed by myself was getting dark.

And I was like, well, I'm f***. But then, you know, I could fall back on the videos I watched. And it was fine. Yeah. You know, I sure I made a mistake and I cut the backstrap a little short, but it's, you know, I still got the meat off of it. So it's not a big deal. It's not the end of the world.

I remember like, oh, my stepdad. killed a buck i was a kid he's just like wasn't the greatest teacher at this time but he said go bone that animal i'm like oh i don't i don't he's like all you do is you you follow the the lines of the muscle to the bone and and get it off there and i'm just like i had no i didn't even know anything so i cut all this meat off this deer tiny little chunks did not know what i was doing

probably you know normally when you're cutting meat you know you got the grain of the of the the muscle you you know it makes a difference on how it's going to chew right when you're actually processing it to cut for packaging well when i cut tiny little chunks off that whole deer there's no grain is going everywhere so then yeah i was i was always in trouble for something but definitely in trouble for that one i just didn't know so i've been the i've been the kid who like I'd have no idea what to do with this thing. I'm going to try to figure it out though. And then I've been, I've also taken Taylor on his first buck or I think I kill or I mean I got it a few of his first kills.

But finally one time he killed this buck and I'm like, no, I said, I said, you're, you got to do this yourself. You're going to, I'll help you. First thing he did took this knife, jammed right into his thumb. He seemed like almost cut his thumb off. And I'm like, all right, get the. So point is that's we all, that's how we learn. Yeah. It's trial and error, but we didn't have videos back then. So I even had, me and Tanner were talking about this, I had a video breaking down a buck on my Boning Trophy Blacktale DVD.

And when I kill Blacktail this year, I think I'm going to bring it here. And I'm going to break it down just like I would in the elk out here in the driveway. We can just film it. Yeah. Because it's the same process. And I'll just go through on a deer how to do it. And that'll be out there. I mean, but there's a million things out there for people.

It's a just watch it. Just try to, just try to like, just like our hunting skill set. We're trying to improve. Try to improve your meat care skill set. And take that to the next level too. Because as we've mentioned a couple times, that's as important as anything. Yeah. Well, if you're, you know, confident.

your butchering skills and your processing skills, maybe it'll make you more confident in your killing skills. I mean, it all helps. Yeah. It all helps. But yeah, I don't know. Is there anything else you think of? That's it for questions.

Yeah. I mean, I guess someone might wonder, you know, what, if there's any kind of particulars you ask for when you take it to a meat processing place or anything like that. No, I mean, I just. you know, I want all of it. I put a little fat in, usually with the pepperoni and the hamburger, just to hold it together because that stuff's so lean. It won't stick together generally without some suet in there.

But, yeah, it's, no, I mean, most I just want to, I let them do what they do. They're the pros at cutting it up. I tell them what I want, steaks, hamburger, jerky, pepperoni, all that stuff. It's what we live off of. It's what I like to share. But no, just trying to get it there in the best condition it can be in. And I just want the butchers to see it and just be like, yeah, okay, this person took care of it. You know, you can tell.

You can tell when somebody drag something that's all dirty and fucked up or with something that's clean. And yeah, I just want to leave a good impression on who's ever processing it. Yeah. And then I think the other thing is, you know, people get their meat into a cooler with ice and they don't protect it at all. And it gets soggy, you know. Yeah, I mean, having the meat sit in water is not good. So you let that ice melt. I guess wet meat is better than rotten meat, but still not great.

Drain that water out. Try to keep the meat above the ice. Try to put a barrier if you can. And maybe a garbage sack might help in this case. But yeah, don't let, you know, having the meat sit in the water isn't great. It's not good for it either. But yeah, a lot of little things to consider, but having a cooler, having ice, having good game bags, having getting it to the process for as quick as you can. Some people, you know, they got a long drive and that meat's sitting back there in the

sun. That's not good either. So think about all this stuff. Yep. I think that's it. Oh, yeah, that's what I was going to say. Tanner said, you do a great job on the podcast. He said your questions, and your insight are like, he said, James is actually smart. Oh, that's, I've got him fooled. He goes, you can tell him if you want to. Because I'm like, I go, I don't know if he's ever heard a compliment. But now, I think he really liked, you know, the discussion on,

well, shit talkers is joking around, but like the hunt recap and stuff. And you had some, even talking about that it didn't feel good to be the weakest link, but it's important. I think just how just insightful that was. I think that's stood out to them because people could look, think of that situation and perceive it as all negative when.

Yeah. Some negative, but it's a lot of positive. So I, this. I mean, the negative is only self-imposed, right? Yeah. So what do you get? I know. Whatever.

Anyway, yeah. You do, you do a good job. And I just wanted to acknowledge that because Tanner mentioned it. I'm like, Okay, well, yeah. That's nice of Tanner.

Yeah, that was good. Someone did say, I saw a comment that said, Cam is the man, fuck, Gideon. That's another shirt. Another shirt. Yeah. So we got, now we got four shirts. Yeah.

I didn't see that one. Where was that? It was on YouTube. She, come on, guys. Well, someone responded to that and said, fuck you, Gideon for president. Okay. You got some comment wars.

Yeah, we'll take the middle of those two. Yeah. No. But anyway, just wanted to get this out. We had a couple, I had a couple thoughts. I wanted to do a couple of quick podcasts, one on equipment, one on meat care, just on the heels of season while it was fresh. And I thought we'd share this and hopefully it can help others. Yeah. All right. Have a good day, guys. Keep hammering. Someone to blame. They said that hate it fuels my pace. I am Roy tough. I am the change. The fuel in dirt feeling like Cam Haines. Oh