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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
Expert Butchery Tips for Hunters, with Hines Meat Co
Meat processors have almost had it with hunters. The skill in field dressing and meat processing has dropped to such a level that custom shops are increasingly closing their doors to hunters.
I sat down with Jake Hines, a friend and professional butcher, to talk about ways hunters can get the most and highest quality meat possible. We cannot let these skills fade away.
We cover tips and techniques for keeping meat clean and getting it cooked down quickly, the right knives to use, and many other important details. This show is for folks who want to learn and do a better job.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
Check out Hines Meat at their WEBSITE, FACEBOOK, and INSTAGRAM
So the tenderloins basically start at your hind hip socket and taper down smaller as you move forward on the animal, along the spine, on the inside of the spine.
Speaker 2:These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. For those of you out there that are truck guys like me, I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, decked. If you don't know decked. They make bomb proof drawer systems to keep your gear organized and safely locked away in the back of your truck. Clothes, rifles, packs, kill kits can all get organized and at the ready so you don't get to your hunting spot and waste time trying to find stuff. We all know that guy. Don't be that guy. They also have a line of storage cases that fit perfectly in the drawers. We use them for organizing ammunition, knives, glassing equipment, extra clothing and camping stuff. You can get a two-drawer system for all dimensions of full-size truck beds or a single-drawer system that fits mid-size truck beds. And maybe best of all, they're all made in the USA. So get decked and get after it. Check them out at deckedcom. Shipping is always free.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're here at the Heinz Meat Company with the man himself, mr Jake Heinz. We're upstairs in the butcher shop and we just got off your meat cutting floor and broke down a quarter of a beef, which was super cool. Awesome. Thank you for having me. I learned. I learned several valuable things just in the couple minutes right there that I haven't been doing that are going to make my life easier. Oh, perfect. And I think one of the biggest ones, man, is when I've been hanging hindquarters and I think by now people pretty much know that they're hanging like by the Achilles on a hindquarter, yeah, and when they're hanging a whole deer or a whole elk or beef or whatever, that's pretty much what they're going by. You're actually putting that hook through the tendon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we kind of split that tendon lengthwise just a little bit like a two-inch, three-inch cut.
Speaker 1:I mean with a beef it's a little bigger than with a deer or an elk or something, but just enough to get your hook in it. Whichever way you're going to hang it in the cooler that you're going to use or just outside, whichever way Just going to pull on that meat, opposed to just hanging on the bone, where it helps drop that moisture content quicker, where it just helps the start of the aging process and stuff the other thing that I really like about that from my perspective and I do like to age stuff.
Speaker 2:but when I'm breaking down a hind quarter which on hanging animals, kind of the last thing that I'm working on as soon as I start to get to that shank and and cut that shank off, then my hind quarters falling to the ground now I've got to move it to a table. You get a little bit disoriented. That's a whole, whole, nother extra step that you've got to do. But with the hook going through that tendon it'll still hang right there, right, exactly?
Speaker 1:I mean that's, that's huge like you don't drop out pulling that shank meat off of there.
Speaker 2:Boning that out just helps tremendously yeah, so um hinds meat company is where I've taken um all my clients game meat for a long time, many years now and you guys have done a superb job. I've never had a negative complaint from any of these guys and their standard their expectation is amazingly high.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:We try to do our best. Yeah, you're doing awesome. What I've heard from you increasingly over the years is that it's harder and harder for you to take wild game in, and I think that this is a problem that is nationwide and there are skills that are being lost as far as field craft with hunters, and the product that they're bringing you oftentimes is unacceptable. Bringing you oftentimes is unacceptable. So, yeah, I want to. I want to talk through that a little bit and use this as an opportunity to take your expertise in meat cutting and bring it out to that audience so that they understand what they can be doing better that is going to ultimately serve them the best and the meat product that they're getting back from whatever custom cutter they're taking their critter to. Okay, sounds good. So, starting from the shot, uh, you know you're, you're a hunter yourself. Somebody shoots, shoots an elk, um in the lungs, down it goes. They walk up to it. What advice do you have to that hunter from that point forward?
Speaker 1:Well, most of the time you guys we always do like a final kill shot. Make sure that it's not going to get up on you or whatnot, but if you can, the quickest way to get it bled out as fast as you can and people want to slit the throat or whatever you're going to do with that but the quicker like when we're talking about beef, pigs, sheep, goats, whatever it is is trying to get the blood out of them as fast as possible. It's just going to be very helpful for the meat quality and so you can cut it up like the bottom of the jaw. But basically, if you can get down there to like the brisket or the neck where it meets the chest cavity and cut a cut, that's the length of the neck, not full length. I'm saying like that direction instead of across.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Those veins cross in there with most allisket area or where that chest meets or clavicle or whatever you want to call it, and pull towards the head like two and a half inches, three and a half inches, and usually you'll see a pretty good rush of blood. But unless the animal has been sitting there for a long time that you're trying to find it and everything else, then it's going to be a little more difficult to get the blood out. But getting that blood out is really number one. And then the next thing is hopefully you have a plan on how you're going to start getting your off all or guts removed from it as quick as you can, just to keep any meat from spoiling and whatever there I think there's a lot of information out there that is just dead wrong about how long an animal can lay out there in the field with the guts in and the hide on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so many variables. Is the problem in anywhere? You know, wherever you're at, the temperature, the temperature of the animal? Has the animal been running around? Was it sleeping when you shot it? I mean, there's so many different things that are just going to, you know, change that aspect of things, so it's a difficult thing for anyone to say what is okay and what is not okay.
Speaker 2:And how much food is in their stomach. If they've got a big belly full of food, that stuff ferments and gets hot really quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy how warm it will get that fermentation process and it'll just start swelling up and bloat on you so it gets so tight and then it makes it a little more difficult even yet to roll the guts out.
Speaker 2:by doing that and the composition of hair on an animal during September, say, archery season, versus now, beginning of November, totally different. Right, they have this huge undercoat now. Um, one of the bulls that that we just killed out on the Prairie last week, um, I didn't have any game bags with me, so I did the gutless method I quartered it out in the field, but I left the hide on those quarters to keep them clean, and I knew that I was going to be able to have this thing broken down in under an hour and then another 30 minutes later I was going to be able to take that hide off. So I was balancing leaving the hide on and keeping it clean versus taking the hide off and getting it to cool off fast, quickly.
Speaker 2:What was interesting about this is that the last load out I went ahead and skinned it because I could put that quarter directly on my pack. It was never going to touch the ground or anything like that we get back. So now we're an hour and a half after the shot and we hang all these quarters up and I skinned, skinned them all out real quick, no problem there. And then I said guys, come, feel the difference in this and the temperature difference between the one that had been skinned for half an hour, versus the one that had not been skinned still hide on it, yeah it was massive.
Speaker 2:You know it feels like a heater. There's a blanket holding. That on totally.
Speaker 1:But, like you said, if it's so much cleaner, if you can do that, if you know that you're going to get to a place fairly quickly that you can skin it out, I don't see any problem with it. I think it's an awesome idea. I've seen places where it is super cold where people have that opportunity to do that. It doesn't seem like it's affected it as much. Even when you do uh, I'm taking that ham, if you will, off or whatnot, the back quarters and opening up that femur bone, even where that'll hugely help. If you can cool that bone off, then everything else is going to cool off so much quicker. So even just getting the end of that knob exposed up three inches will be huge on cooling something. Or even if you're going to hang something whole, you can hit those sockets and open those up. I mean that's a huge deal for us when we get animals coming in hot that I'll open up the front.
Speaker 1:Shoulders and the neck on these big bulls are so thick and wide. Open that neck up and don't be afraid to use water Cold water if you have it, and get it from a creek nearby or somewhere. It's not going to hurt a thing. Everyone has like a, a false uh. Just worry that the water is going to taint the meat or anything like that. But with any of our uh beef and stuff that we do, um, we rinse everything off. Cool helps cool it off, but also just keeping bacteria off and everything else and so and keeping your meat clean.
Speaker 1:We want you to get more back.
Speaker 1:So the cleaner, that you keep it, the yield is going to be higher and I mean that's really the ultimate reason why we probably should have been hunting. Maybe it was the trophy, but we need to think about that past the antlers or horns, or you know. Like what are we going gonna do now that we need to be respectful of that animal and try to utilize as much of it as possible, instead of just being like, oh, I've got this big old rack now and I don't really care about anything else, that's just a bummer sometimes yeah, and that's.
Speaker 2:That's a gross minority like that yeah totally the people we're talking about. I've been hunting elk for over 30 years now, and I've been guiding for 24.
Speaker 1:That excitement takes over.
Speaker 2:sometimes, though, it does, it does. But what I was going to say is, like throughout a career, the things that are the most important to you change. Oh yeah, and what was really important to me back in 2000 is really different from what's important to me now. Really important to me back in 2000 is really different from what's important to me now.
Speaker 2:In the past really four or five years, the meat cutting has become my favorite part of it like I absolutely love it, yeah, and I get better at it each year and I'm always looking for efficiencies in meat cutting and whenever I'm, whenever I'm processing with people, even though, compared to you guys who, this is what you do day in and day out like this, is it Like you cut meat? Like you know, I might be doing 20 animals a year, right? You might be doing that every 12 hours you know Well, sometimes you're thinking man is it ever going to end?
Speaker 1:But that's all right. That's why we picked what we're doing, right, yeah, but I'm always looking for efficiencies, ever going to end, but that's that's all right.
Speaker 2:That's why we picked what we're doing right, yeah, but uh, I'm always looking for for efficiencies, and even if I'm talking to somebody that might only be cutting up an animal every year or two, I'm still going to talk about every single efficiency that I've found and I want to reduce the number of cuts that I do every single year. Um, have a better plan for everything from skinning to quartering, and you're masterfully efficient Like you're making basically the same cuts over and over again. You know there's no freelancing. You've always got a plan as you're moving through each, each piece of meat and you know where you're going, where you're going next. I mean it's, it's an, it's an amazing thing to watch. What are some efficiencies that you think hunters could pick up in the field? Just at like the basic 101 level that would help them, you know, be faster and safer.
Speaker 2:The Six Ranch Podcast is brought to you by Nick's Handmade Boots, a family-owned company in Spokane, washington. For many of my listeners, you've waited and prepared all year for this. Whether your pursuit is with a rifle or a bow, early or late season, big game or birds, another hunting season is finally upon us. Nick's Boots and the Six Ranch want to wish you luck as you head out into the field. This season I'm wearing the Knicks boots Game Breakers, beginning with the archery elk season.
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Speaker 1:Well, I guess, real quick, before you go in, when I'm training my guys, is I really really work on them with one piece at a time and making sure they handle it the same way every time. And showing them my way doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right way, it's just the way I am, and if they can do a good job and doing it a different way, then then great. But it's trying to grab something. Doing the same way consistently gets you more efficient at anything, right? So instead of just keep flip-flopping a piece of meat back and forth, trying to decide what you're going to do with it after you've done it, enough, you're like okay, I know what I need to do, I don't need to keep turning it over and deciding what am I going to do with this, but I guess so from field dressing start with, I would like to ask some but the kind of challenge people to try something out.
Speaker 1:Um, always, as I was growing up, you know, we split open from the pelvis all the way to the chest and then roll your guts out right off the bat. Well, doing this for a living. Now I, if you can find a chunk of wood, a couple, two pieces, block something that's laying around there, rock something and prop it up on its back and put those underneath like the shoulders, just on the edges, just so it doesn't roll over. If it's rolled a little bit, so be it.
Speaker 1:But if you see any of these mobile slaughter guys or we slaughter here on site as well, that that's the way they're doing it always, and even their take off that first section of a leg and using that as a block, but they're not cutting through that belly meat right off the bat is what I'm getting at is get underneath that skin at first and just start skinning it, first down the sides a little bit and leaving that belly meat intact just till you get down halfway down the sides a little bit and leaving that belly meat intact just till you get down halfway down the belly. Then you can open that belly meat up. But it makes it so much easier for skinning for one you know after you do it once you're like man this thing skins so much better. Like this is amazing how easier it is because you have you're not trying to get that meat that's wanting to stay right there on the hide, opposed to when it's staying all closed up as one unit. They're still intact.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that makes sense what I'm saying, where you're not opening that stomach up yet Right?
Speaker 2:No, it totally makes sense. So you're skinning the hide down the sides before you're cutting through that, the abdominal muscle, and actually pulling the guts out, which, honestly, I mean, you're only talking about a couple minutes of work there. Um, even if you're going slow to get that skinned out and just gives you space.
Speaker 1:After you do it once, I mean you're like, oh, I gotta hurry get these guts out.
Speaker 1:But in reality if you just take and just hold up for a minute and don't get all, jacked up and just like okay calm down, yeah, and first of all, and let's, let's do this and um, it usually will turn out a lot better for people and you can salvage so much of that. I mean, if on a beef that's where your flank steak comes from is that that belly meat? And there's some thick meat right there, and an elk and one on deer, there's a little less for sure, but if you can keep that clean by doing that, it's so much easier to keep that meat clean with all that hair and also cutting from the inside instead of the outside makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:So if you, instead of just whittling, talk about on the hide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you whittle at the outside of the hide where you've cut a million hairs in half, and when you try to split that now, um, it's all. The hair is going in your meat and whatnot. Well, if you put your knife, get it started and then put your knife on the inside and use your fingers to kind of guide it through it, it'll split so much cleaner and the hair is just like, uh, splitting itself, if that makes sense, because you're just cutting the leather inside meat, I guess. Instead, Yep.
Speaker 2:So there's a knife from Outdoor Edge that has a blunt tip and sort of a reverse curve on the blade.
Speaker 2:They're cheap. I think you can get them for $20, $25. That knife is with me every time, like I use that a lot. Guys like you who are like you wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and feel like there should be a bony knife in your hand. You don't necessarily need that, but this is a dummy mode knife that works really well for cutting that skin from the inside out and making all those initial cuts out and making all those initial cuts. And if you're going to be keeping a cape or or the full, full skin for a taxidermist, it's huge, huge, very, very good way to do business. You're going to make nice, straight cuts. You're not going to cut hair. You're not going to get stuff all over the meat. That's just going to save your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, check that out and then, uh, it's hard for people to think about, but you gotta we call it butthole on it.
Speaker 1:You got to cut the anus, you cut around that and do that right away. And then, once you've skinned it down and you've opened that belly meat up, you can actually, when it's laying on its back like that, it gives a gap for those guts, kind of like an air gap, if that makes sense, because all the guts are more in the chest cavity and laying down up against, like your tenderloins or your back strap when it's laying on its back. So you have that little bit of room where you're not going to hit any guts. That way, when you open that belly meet up so you're not worried about hitting the paunch and then again all over your tenderloins and everything else. And when you cut that butthole out, and then you can reach in there and actually grab it and pull it out and also the bladder right there and get it where it doesn't taint your meat and get that cut out right first of all, and then you keep it way cleaner that way I've also found that people get a little bit.
Speaker 2:They get a little bit precious when they're cutting around the anus and it's like they're trying to, like you, get as close to it as possible. It's a pretty big cavity in the pelvis right there, like you can get a good fist or better yeah you can go ahead and like not try and save me, but we're not, we're not eating that, totally yeah and then that also, that cut that you're talking about on the neck, when you're cutting into that thoracic cavity at the base of their throat and cutting forward.
Speaker 2:You're not wasting any meat by doing no, no, just like the.
Speaker 1:I mean it's the windpipe or guzzle, or whatever you want to call it. You know that you're not really hitting meat around the very front side. I mean, and that's what we try to hit. It is directly in the center, on the front, not to the side or whichever way. But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, going back to that, is there for hunters like it's a little bit different deal, but is there an ideal shot placement for hunters so that that animal is going to get rid of as much blood as possible? If you know, say we're shooting 300 yards and it's going to take us a minute to get over there, like are you? Are you aiming for lungs when you're hunting?
Speaker 1:I'm still aiming from behind that front shoulder, but I guess I try not to hit right in the shoulder.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go behind that front shoulder where I'm not getting a lot of meat off of my ribs necessarily, especially if the way that animals come to us, to be honest, it's dirty and the bloodshot usually and so if you get behind that front shoulder you're still going to hit heart and all vital organs. Just trying to stay just behind it a little bit, just crowd your shot just backwards, just a little, and I feel like you're going to, overall, end up with a good kill shot and I mean all your angle and everything is gonna make a big difference. But try to think about which way. Where's it gonna exit at? You know, and maybe for sure also, that you know you're gonna ruin a shoulder sometimes it's just part of the way it goes. I mean, I see a lot of guys doing a neck shot, that that have done it a lot, but it always sketches me out like I'm not gonna shoot something in the neck, it's a tiny target.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just like, I just don't feel comfortable with something dying shooting them in the neck. And if you're an inch and a half low and you hit him in the windpipe, you won't recover him. But you did kill and I don't want to waste that.
Speaker 1:so I'd rather stick to behind that front shoulder, but just back a touch where you're not into that front shoulder too much, where you can save as much meat as possible, that way where you're just hitting those ribs a little bit, then it's not too big of a deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can see that with rifle shooting, more so than with archery. But the reality is, with archery, uh, if we, if we make good shots, you're gonna get a lot of blood shot in those shoulders. Yeah, um, it's just the reality of it. Part of the deal, part of the deal. I, I lose a shoulder on almost everything that I shoot. Um, not not the whole thing, but part of it, yeah, just, but where it goes, it's not a tickling competition.
Speaker 2:I've got to kill this, so that it just is what it is okay. Um, so we've got the, we've got the guts pulled out. We, we put prop the animal up on its back, um sort of like it's sitting in a in a cradle, and uh, we, we skin down the sides, we open up the abdomen, we pulled the guts out, we we cut around, cut around the whole anus area, we've got the bladder and all that stuff out. Now we've kind of got the diaphragm to deal with. Um, so how do you, how do you go about that? Are you ever trying to save diaphragm on a wild game animal?
Speaker 1:you know I I don't usually get much that's intact here to save Um. There's not a lot there. It's pretty thin, it's super thin. So I'm I'm not as worried about saving diaphragm meat your skirt steak, if you will, for elk or deer Um, opposed to just after you're that far getting the. I mean your diaphragm basically is a separation between the stomach and then your actual like organs where your lungs and heart and everything else would be. So I'm not too worried about it, as much as I want to just get it cleaned out as well as I can and making a plan on how I'm getting back off this mountain yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2:so, okay, so we. We cut around the diaphragm pretty close to the ribs all the way around, and now I'm going to cut through the mediastinum, top and bottom, reach up and cut that windpipe and I can pull everything out at once. There you go. Yeah, is that about what you do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I split that. It depends on, like you said, what you're saving for hide. But yeah, I just cut that all the way down. As I split that hide all the way and then I'm cleaning that off where it's just attached to the meat just a little bit as you go all the way to the voice box or whatnot, and peeling that loose and cutting around where the sternum is opposed to where your neck meets, and then usually you can pull it right on out from there.
Speaker 2:I love heart. On deer and elk, I'm not a huge liver guy, but I will eat it from time to time. As far as saving those organs for the people that want to, should they pull them out and put them in a game bag? What's your recommendation?
Speaker 1:So on that liver is. The gallbladder is attached to the liver and it's it's a real, you know, like a dark green liquid and that will taint it. So the liver is a big organ on on elk or beef or anything like that, and even on the deer is decent sized. So don't be afraid to cut into that liver a little bit to not have that bile get on your liver. I guess is my two cents added to that just to. I think it's better to save it and cut a little bit of liver away than it would be to actually cut into that sack and get it all over your meat, and just as rough that stuff is.
Speaker 2:So when I was in africa and got my cape buffalo the yeah, oh no, I'm scared.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's going?
Speaker 2:on the messiah cut that gallbladder out and they cut the kidneys out and they squirted the bile on the raw kidneys and ate it like that. And uh, you know, I'm young guys, my first time in africa yeah um, it's not for me, jake, it's not did you hold your lunch down?
Speaker 1:that's my question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did, I did I think I read somewhere that they're that those chemicals in in the bile um tend to make it safe to eat raw kidney like that. But uh, it's not for me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, I think it probably cooks it, to be honest. I mean, it's like ceviche and lime, you know just, you're basically cooking it with that acid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what it is, the stomach acid that you um got to learn from. He worked at a big kill plant and they said that they would save. They kill a couple hundred beef a day and save all the gallbladders from them. At the end of the day they dump it down their drain to clear the drains out. Really, and just because the that stuff was like a drain cleaner when they had that much of it all to dump down and I was like wow, so that was just kind of an interesting little bit of knowledge that I got to gain from those guys. It was kind of cool.
Speaker 2:That is cool and like talk about efficient right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like let's waste absolutely nothing from this. And you know, some crazy person was like yeah, let's try this and see if it works.
Speaker 1:And it did, so they kept doing it Melted all that fat down and cleared out the drain.
Speaker 2:Wow, Interesting, interesting. Okay, so now we've got all the organs out of the animal.
Speaker 1:What are we doing next? So I guess this is where I'm leaving my hide, down along the edge, trying to keep it spread out, keeping it clean as clean as I can, and making the decision, like, do I have a tree around that? I'm going to hang these quarters in real quick so I can keep dealing with it. If I'm going to quarter it out or'm gonna, you know, get it back off here, if I'm gonna put them in game bags, in that case I'm still in my opinion. I'd want to hang them, and then game bags are a huge deal too. You can buy there's so many brands of game bags now, but try to get something that's a tight knit is all that I have to say about that and what I mean by tighten.
Speaker 1:It is like a cheesecloth. Those blowflies can still just blow those eggs right through that netting, and it's just a bad deal when sometimes you open that up and you've got baby maggots basically all over. It's gross. You know, no one wants to eat that, no. So try to keep it as clean as you can for that, I guess, to get that quartered out, and, however, your plan is to do so. So I split off those hindquarters first and then move into my front shoulders and then start deciding what I'm going to take for ribs or knot or bone on the mount. And then my back straps my tenderloins right there first. But I prefer to pull my tenderloins out before I pull my hindquarters out, just because that hip socket is right there close to your tenderloins. So I get those tenderloins out very first thing, and that's where the guts are usually is right up against those tenderloins, so that's the place that can go bad the quickest, I guess. So getting those tenderloins out is important.
Speaker 2:Now I've seen elk that I'm getting to the tenderloins probably two hours after they're dead and they're already starting to get a little bit soft. Yeah, just in that amount of time. It's crazy. And there's a lot of heat in that area because that's, you know, where all the lower intestines are coming through and everything else, and it's just it's, it's in the middle of the animal's body yeah, part of the deal definitely, definitely a high priority priority area to get those tenderloins pulled out there's.
Speaker 1:So just some. I give a lot of people that don't understand, I guess, where the tenderloins are. So the tenderloins are basically start at your hind hip socket and taper down smaller as you move forward on the animal along the spine, on the inside of the spine. So many people think that they got their tenderloins out and they're actually pulling like a a shoulder tender on the inside and they thought that or or when they're they cut their elk in half, they cut right through those tenderloins. Well, it's so simple to to pull those tenderloins out and make sure you go all the way up to the hip socket to get them, because that's the biggest thing already where a lot of people pull out.
Speaker 2:I just even see lots of guides that just weren't aware that how much more that they're leaving in those back legs or hams or whatever you want to call them yeah, so I use an eight inch breaking knife and after I've taken out everything that I can see, then I kind of scoop it around in there and go back towards that, that pelvis area, and get as much of it as I can. But that was again something that I was doing wrong for many years and it wasn't until I came in here and uh, and talked to one of your butchers that he's like hey, just so you know, you've been leaving, like you know, six or eight ounces of tenderloin on each side of this animal and I was like, oh, really, like tell me how to fix that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was dinner, yeah so, yeah, okay, so we've got the, the tender ones out, we've got, uh, we've made decisions about everything else and uh, yeah, all the all the meat is hanging. I also really agree that, like as soon as it comes off the animal, you want it to hanging, even if it's only for a few minutes before it goes onto a pack. Getting the air circulating around it is huge, yeah.
Speaker 1:If you decide you want to carry a tarp or something in your pack or this queen small piece or something like that and setting that down on there, I don't see a problem in that. I mean, I understand that the ground is still going to insulate it a little bit, but at least you're getting them off there where they can cool out, and I don't if there's no trees around. Sometimes you're in sagebrush country or whatnot and there's some big sagebrush but it's still hard to hang stuff sometimes. But that provides a good space to to put something, so that you don't just set it on the ground to while you've just took a long time to keep it clean and just to throw it back onto the dirt or whatnot.
Speaker 2:The next time, folks, you're rolling past a construction site and you see that they just got done wrapping a house, yeah, um, tyvek works really well. Go go ask if there's a piece of Tyvek laying around. That stuff is incredibly tough. You can throw it in your washing machine, yeah, so you can clean it off season to season. And it's incredibly lightweight as well. It's so tough that some nations use it for their currency.
Speaker 1:Like that's what they make their money out of is.
Speaker 2:Tyvek, because you can't tear the stuff. You know it can go through a wash cycle. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:But that makes for a great ground tarp, totally, um and uh, yeah, you usually if you roll past that construction site and ask, they're like yeah sure, here's a piece, we don't care, go away I just like to give, keep it, uh, fold it up or in a ziploc bag or something, just so it keeps it quiet as well, just so it's not making noise in your pack if you're moving around, totally because this any kind of tarp material, seems like it can be kind of noisy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I run it through um through the dryer on on low heat and then soften it then it yeah, it ends up feeling like a dollar bill and yeah, then I fold it up and throw it in a gallon ziploc in my pack we're out of.
Speaker 1:ziploc bags are awesome, just to have anyway. So it's like oh well, I'm not going to put the Tyvek back in there, or I am, but I'm going to throw my Tenderloins in there instead, or whatever. Yeah, just keeping them separated.
Speaker 2:But on that subject, I do still see people packing out quarters in garbage bags. Yeah, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:I think it just depends on how far you're going to pack them. Yeah, I mean, that's like you said, it's all those variables. If it's cold outside, I mean if it's late, you know season, elk, season you're in an area that it's super cold, then I don't see it being that much of a problem because things are going to be freezing on you, right, well, but opposed to early archery season, then it's dirty hot and you're going to be hoofing to get this baby cooled off somehow, whether it's crick, or hopefully it's cooling off at night or getting into a cooler or even, uh, boning it out, it's going to help hugely. And getting it into even a cooler that's down at camp with some ice in it, just something to get it cooled off as fast as possible so that that plastic is going to hold that heat, in opposed to the open air blowing on that meat for sure, and it's gonna get sticky, yeah, and you're gonna be all like, oh, what's going on?
Speaker 2:but yeah, what I've found is that the moisture that's evaporating out of that meat is what is helping it to cool off so quickly. And there's days, you know, that's been high, 80 degrees and I can hang a quarter up in the shade and it'll be cool to the touch because there's so much evaporating off of it. But if you put it in a plastic bag, it can evaporate right and it it'll get slimy on you pretty fast.
Speaker 1:But I guess I'm not opposed to it if you're going to put it in a cooler with ice, right, because I do not like the water, like it to be floating in water. Yeah, that's a big, that's a bad deal. It's for one's going to take all the color and flavor out of the meat and it's just going to be like, maybe tofu, I guess, if I was a tofu eater. But being being that I'm a butcher shop, I'm not a tofu eater.
Speaker 1:Anyhoo, I guess that's my two cents on tofu. But if you put it in a plastic bag and then you have ice in that cooler, then you're not going to be so concerned about the loss of that.
Speaker 2:And that's another mistake I've seen people make is they'll take a hot quarter and they'll set it on ice inside their cooler and it's going to melt that ice immediately and then it's going to be sitting in that water and, like you say, once you pull up that thing is just gray and it's not good. It might not even be me at that point that a shop is going to be willing to accept.
Speaker 1:Stay away from scented bags. I'm so many times that I see people bringing stuff in in a garbage bag and they're like well, I got the mint center, I got the oven or I don't know tropical what have you? Yeah, I mean it just it's like oh man, this is not going to be good. No one wants to spray perfume all over their meat before you decide to cook a steak or whatever. That's not a chemical we want to eat.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, so stick away from the scented bags yeah, my favorite game bags are our golly game bags. I've got our gollies that I've used for many years and they're still still taken um. But anything that feels like almost like like a silk pillowcase, like that's kind of what I want. It's still breathable, but it's not going to let a bug in, it's not going to tear. And then I really like bags that have some reflective stuff on them, because I've spent some uncomfortable hours of my life stumbling around in the dark trying to find that kill site.
Speaker 1:Reflective seems to make a big difference oh, if you can see it with your headlamp from a long ways off, like yeah it's good but even so, if you mean just for expense reasons, finding pillowcases the second hand store is not a bad way to go pillowcases for saving money yeah, it's not going to hurt anything for buying pillowcases at all, so yeah, yeah pillowcases at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pillowcases work great for deer.
Speaker 1:It'd be a mighty big pillow if you're trying to deal with an elk or a moose or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about knives. Yeah, there is some malarkey going around in the hunting industry about knives and I'm seeing like $350, $400 butcher knives.
Speaker 1:That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:No thanks so like you're a professional. You've got all kinds of gear in here that's incredibly expensive. You're using the best stuff that you can use. What knives are you using?
Speaker 1:Well, nothing that costs $300, I'll tell you that I mean so. I even sell the knives here, just because we do have so many people asking those questions. But I have multiple different brands of knives that my guys tend to use and we're not necessarily particular to one. But all of mine are the Victorinox Forstner knives. And I think the biggest thing is is, first of all, starting with a sharp knife. Before you go out, make sure your knife sharp. I mean, that's kind of a simple prep thing to where doesn't happen a lot. Someone gets so excited. But but I'm telling you we're um high 30s, maybe mid 40s at the highest for the bigger knives, for it's all you're going to be for dollars yeah, yeah, 30 or 40 bucks, and with you cutting meat every day like let's, let's use like a sheep skinner, for example it's one of my favorite knives.
Speaker 2:How long does a sheep skinner last for you, cutting all day, every day well.
Speaker 1:So I guess skinning is a little different. Where you're gonna be hitting hide and stuff is is a little bit more. Um, I sharpen my skinning knives a little more than I would my boning knives and whatnot, and I can go through, uh, sometimes a couple, multiple days without sharpening a knife. And what I mean by a couple days it could be 12 beef, 15 beef before I sharpen my knives. Yeah, but the I think a good steel is is crucial to that as well, and and um, you're not talking about the steel of the knife blade.
Speaker 1:You're talking about the sharpening steel exactly sharpening steel, where, um, if I'm in the the field doing it, I prefer the diamond steel, to be honest, and because not only is it going to be like straining that edge out, but it's also like honing, where it's actually sharpening the knife too, where it's almost like killing two birds with one stone, where I don't need to bring a stone right there also, because my steel is pretty aggressive, it's actually sharpening my knife as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, so hardness of steels makes a big difference. So the victorinox that I use is like a medium hard steel and you're not gonna like be able to ask the knife manufacturers, probably, these questions on hardnesses, but it's uh, basically it's quick to sharpen, but it's a it's hard enough where it doesn't dull super quick either. So a lot of these knives you know are custom made or whatnot, are super, super hard. Well, they take a lot to sharpen them, but they should stay sharp for a long time too, and you should be able to tell that when you're playing with the stone doing that stuff. But I really don't see any sense with anyone spending $300 on any knife. Even a very nice quality chef knife is difficult to spend that much money on. I couldn't imagine myself.
Speaker 2:So back to the skinny knife thing. You might be going through 12 or 15 beef before you've got to sharpen it. How long before you're throwing that knife away because it's it's no good anymore, oh man.
Speaker 1:So, um, some of these guys like to sharpen with like a belt sander and even that, um, there's a couple of knife sharpeners that that you can buy at your local hardware stores that are like a belt driven sander and I don't see any problem with those um doing that and you're still gonna last for multiple years. Um, if you're using just for hunting, I mean, I still have. I probably only go through one boning knife a year even here, but I'm not using. The only thing I use to sharpen my knives is a tri-stone, and just tri-stone means I've got a coarse, a medium and a fine stone. I don't use any electric sharpener per se.
Speaker 2:Are you doing it by feel or are you trying to hit a specific angle?
Speaker 1:No, so I don't think, in my opinion, I don't feel like the angle is that big of a deal as long as your muscle memory. If you can get your wrist locked, the same angle every time, the angle doesn't matter so much as if you can get it locked there. I mean, if your knife is sitting super flat, then your edge is going to be longer, if that makes sense. So it's easier to roll that edge. So, opposed to a super sharp, steep angle is going to be less deep of an area that you're taking meat off of that steel. So, but with all of our guys and seeing where, where I, you know, grow up, hunting and everything else, and I think that you have sharpening down like, oh, I can sharpen a knife, you know, no problem. Well, after doing this for a living, it's a big difference on learning that muscle memory and staying that same angle over and over and over again and literally after you can figure that out for yourself. Now I can sharpen one knife in less than a minute because you've holding that same angle. You're not like trying to refine it, because you're used to the angle that you're holding it at and don't do one side of the knife once and then flip it over and do the other side of the knife once, because that's difficult to keep that muscle memory and learning that angle. So stay on one side and you're hitting it, you know, five, ten, fifteen times if you need to, and usually with the with a stone, you can feel where it's like grabbing and kind of like for lack of better words kind of chattering. Just a touch and you know, okay, I need to hit that area a little more and and buy a stone that's big enough at least three inch stones where I don't know how you can get very much sharpening done. So I I tend to buy like a 12 inch stone and I love a norton's tri stone makes an amazing stone. Um, victor knox makes a stone too, but it's super soft and stays gritty. So I like their knives but I do not like their stone. So the Norton's tri-stone is the one that I've.
Speaker 1:I've stuck with over and over again. I have multiple in different locations home, whatever, and to be honest, I use the coarse and the medium. I don't even the fine's, just like whatever. It's not necessary in my opinion, because usually if you're needing to sharpen it, you're needing to actually be a little bit aggressive with it to begin with and so keeping that angle I'm sorry I'm jumping around a little bit, but keeping that angle and hitting it 15 times and flipping it over. Hitting it 15 times if you feel like it's chattering in a certain area.
Speaker 1:Well, now I'm just going to work that tip for a little while. I'm going to get that cleaned up. I'm going to flip it over, get my tip on that other side. Now I can make a couple full sweeps on that knife and getting there good and sharp, and now I can flip it over, get a couple more full sweeps on the knife. I'm good to go. And so then I can move on to my next knife. Or, and then I'm ready for a steel, just a little touch up and and go where I like an oil stone compared to my water, like using water, cause it just seems like you're. If you're going to do a water, you just need to like keep the sink on and keep the water going on it Right To keep the, the stone debris and the metal debris washed away from it, so that grit doesn't help anything.
Speaker 2:So your Victor Knox boning knife, which is going to be around, you know, 30, 35 bucks. You might be going through a thousand animals or more with that before that knife is done.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So for a hunter um, they're never going to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that one knife will last you forever. I mean ever going to do that. Yeah, I mean that one knife will last you forever. I mean if you take care of it. I mean sometimes things happen, um, I got guys that um their work right here next to us in different businesses and they buy uh was buying a bony knife like every couple weeks and I thought what are you doing? And he says, well, this one's dull, so I just come get another one.
Speaker 2:I was like, just bring it in, I'll sharpen it for you, buddy, like this is like your sixth knife. So anyway, yeah, um, so I, I bring a straight up knife roll with me in my pack now, because you know, I used to use you know, quote unquote hunting knives and they're really hard steel and they'd start sharp and you know, by the time I'd knocked legs off and had the animal skinned and was getting down to quartering. I, I kind of had a dull knife and at that point to sit down and resharpen was a pain. And then then I went to like the little tiny, you know, ceramic, uh, like you know sharpening steels that, uh, you know, would be like the size of a bick pen and those don't do much.
Speaker 2:And the more that I was cutting me inside the shop and like trying to do stuff as professionally as I could, I was like these are the knives I want, like I want this system. So, yeah, I'm gonna carry three knives with me, right? So I carry two bony knives and a lamb skinner and and a uh and a ceramic steel, because I'm I'm not as good on a steel as you are. So I feel like with the ceramic I can, I can straighten up the edge of the knife. I'm going to hone it a little bit, but if I'm in a hurry and I don't have my angles quite right, I'm also not damaging my blade very much and that's the same, I guess.
Speaker 1:So just hitting what you're talking about when you're using a steel, you keep that same angle that you would with a stone, when you get that muscle memory of learning that that you should be able to use it also with the steel. And there's no necessarily right or wrong way to use the steel, where if you want to pull the knife towards you or push it away from you, just trying to be safe with it. But I mean, that's what the finger guard usually on all those steels are for, so that you don't hit your fingers. So but um.
Speaker 2:The one I use has a 20 degree ramp on both sides so we can kind of tell if you're liking that angle or whatever yeah, so everything I do is 20 degrees now, so I set it on there and then I really slowly and lightly drag it across with my wrist locked. Same thing on the bottom, and I'm not in a hurry, but I I do it pretty often, you know I'm probably stealing my knife every couple minutes, yeah, and and it'll stay sharp through a season like that, you know.
Speaker 1:After you, you uh, get used to. I mean, you've hunted for a couple years and try to get used to the bone structure. I guess is the main thing that I have to say, because if you're not whittling on a bone, that's what's really dull in your blades is when people are having a hard time and they're really putting the whittle on something, trying to bone something out. So, instead of whittling on something, try to roll your knife around like we were talking about that path of least resistance, and you're going to end up keeping your knife a lot sharper like that, instead of trying to keep hacking it. That bone is really going to just dull your knife.
Speaker 2:Talk to me about the difference in hardness between wild game and domestic livestock as far as bones.
Speaker 1:You know it all depends on the domestic livestock. We get some older cows or older beaver bulls that are super, super hard boned and even the bandsaw you can tell it's like bogging down, going through like whoa, like easy there. So, um, uh, I think that the hardness you're gonna have a lot of the same um in that and I just really think that the definitely wild game bones are super, super hard. But I also like what I'm talking about. If you can, you hit, you find that bone, as long as you're not putting so much force. If you're having to really put the force, like um, like as you're cutting, then your knife's probably dull. Usually you're just trying to like let it follow that bone so you can peel it away from the meat, from the bone. And that's what I've talked to you before. That always my opposite hand that's not my knife hand has a hook in it. Right, look for one. It keeps my what is the?
Speaker 2:what is the hook?
Speaker 1:so the hook goes in between my fingers and, like, sits in the the palm of my hand and then I hook whatever uh chunk of meat that that I'm trying to like pull away, whether it's a peeling apart, a hind quarter or a back strap or tenderloin where I'm able to take that hook that.
Speaker 1:I prefer a shorter hook, like a three inch hook, and I get into that meat where um try not to damage it and tear out of it, but put a little bit of pressure against it, where when I touch it with the knife it opens up or seams out. It's like a perforated check, I guess. So you're just trying to. Sometimes it doesn't rip where you want it to, but when you touch it with a knife it's helping open it up instead of you forcing it through, and I guess it also keeps your fingers out of the way. So you're not too worried about you getting a little more confident with the knife, opposed to having your fingers there, and you're more worried about hitting your fingers than you are learning where that bone structure is and how to get it out.
Speaker 2:I was cutting a sirloin tip out of a bull and I posted a video of it and you text me and you said you need to get your fingers out of there and use your hook and I had a. I had a hook on me, you know.
Speaker 1:I had one.
Speaker 2:I just wasn't using it.
Speaker 1:It's hard to get used to.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's so important and so valuable, Um, so valuable, Um. But I think, I think that that's something that that I really appreciate. Uh, and I don't think I know anytime that my friends are pointing out something that I can do better.
Speaker 2:I know that they're being good friends, right, the people that can see you struggling and don't say anything cause they're afraid that they're going to offend you or they're whatever. Don't care, it's like that. That's not as good of of a friend. So for, like you, to take time out of your life and be like hey man, I'm worried about you cutting your fingers off.
Speaker 1:I love what you do too, and I'm just like man if people can get used to using that hook, you're gonna feel more confident and not hitting your fingers and it's gonna to make your life so much easier, using that, that opposite arm, to put a little bit of weight and force against that joint of meat and then when you touch it with the knife it's able to peel open it. So an old boy told me, a good friend of mine that has a meat shop in junction city farmer's helper and his good friend. But he said either you're going to have good and sharp knives that day or your other hand you're going to pull like hell. So you need to do one or the other. So the opposite hand is the one that's holding onto that hide. You're going to have to keep it stretched tight and your knife's going to be working in between between that, that sinew, that meat and that skin. So I guess that was a big thing to hear from him like you might have a dull knife today but you're going to have to be pulling like heck with the other hand and I keep that in my head with um bone and stuff out too.
Speaker 1:Well, let's use that hook and you don't have to pull with your arm. Use the actual weight of your body, just kind of lock your arm, just kind of lean against it. Whether it's on a table or hanging from a tree or a meat pole or whatever it is, you can still use a hook. I use it on the table a lot too. I just try to use it as an extension of my hand to keep my fingers out of the way and the last time I bought them I got a two pack on amazon for 11 super cheap yeah, they're basically free.
Speaker 2:They're very lightweight. Um, I don't. I don't carry one in the field with me, I don't have one in my pack, but I for sure have one in my pickup and I've got one in the meat shop. Yeah, yeah and uh. I also want to talk about scabbards. Um, scabbards are a really valuable uh gain in efficiency. They they keep your knives on you and uh and keep them from from falling and, you know, stabbing yourself, like all these things. They're also again in that 30 dollar range. They're not not expensive.
Speaker 1:So if you are back in your shop and you're in your skinning or you're, or you're quartering inside like, or you got your family and they're cutting meat with you just just doing, you know, cutting steaks and roasts and you throw a chunk of meat down and you got the knife sitting on the table. Well, your son, your son or daughter, or whatever mom or grandma, somebody reaches and grabs that piece of meat. Well, you just put your fingers into that knife and cut the heck out of your hand. That's a big no-no on our meat block down here at the shop. I'm on people, you don't leave your knives on the table. You keep them in your scabbard unless you're using it. Because someone throws a piece of meat down and doesn't see that your knife was there or they're, you know, staying busy and keeping moving. Then someone else goes to pick it up and ends up having an accident.
Speaker 2:So so what kind of things do you do you look for in a scabbard?
Speaker 1:um, I want to make sure it's long enough for my longest knife that I'm going to put in there. And with wild game, to be honest, I use a six inch bony knife or a five inch bony knife Either way is completely fine and, um, I use an eight inch breaker they call it and those are the two main knives I need to cut meat for, for, um, and then for skinning. What you talked about is a lamb skinner. So, yes, they usually call like a. I want to say it's like a 4.5 or 5 inch knife that has a rounded nose to it, what we refer to as a lamb skinner, opposed to a beef skinner, which is a little bit longer, which is just not necessary necessarily, just because it's so big. We just don't need that much knife to be skinning in a wild game, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll reach for my beef skinner sometimes when I'm like working on the big flat sections of an elk yeah. Big sides of exciting an elk out, yeah when I'm working through ribs and stuff like that. But as soon as I get back down to the shoulders I'm back to my lambskinner. I just talked about them on the show last week. It's an ugly knife. It's a really unattractive, unassuming knife. It's like a butter knife.
Speaker 1:Looking almost it is. It's a dirty sharp butter knife, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's really hard to poke through the skin with it because it's completely rounded on the front and you know you don't see them in in the the hunting knives and I I think it's because it's just an ugly ugly knife yeah well, whatever works, I guess.
Speaker 2:But you know, when I talk to butchers I say, all right, if you can only bring two knives with you to the field, almost universally they say, well, I'm going to bring you know, a five inch flex bony knife and, and my sheep skinner, my lamb skinner, I mean, is that what you? Yeah, totally yeah, definitely, all day long. Yeah, talk to me about flex and bony knives, because none of the hunting knives out there have any flex at all.
Speaker 1:They're too thick so they they sell different, um, I guess, like grades of flexibility and they have like an ultra flex is, uh, more of like a fillet knife to me and is sometimes in big fish can be too flexible. Um, so I do. We call it a semi flex is what I keep here at the shop all the time, where it you can still go around bones and still when you put the mash on something it'll flex really well, where you are surprised at how much flexibility it does have, but it's not. But still rigid enough to it, doesn't? I guess you'll hit a bone instead of prying it. Enough for it to go around a bone, I guess. So I prefer a semi-flex over a super rigid knife all day. Yeah, for sure. The big, super heavy, thick, you know, tanged knife is more like a survival type style knife, I would say, where you're going to be trying to split a chunk of wood or something, right With a rock on the backside of it.
Speaker 2:But not necessarily for hunting. Yeah, so yeah, I agree. Talk to me about vinegar and water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in the industry it's called acetic acid and it's the same thing. So we mix when we slaughter or whatnot acetic acid, which is white vinegar and water. If you can only get apple cider vinegar, it's not going to have a problem at all. So it's an antimicrobial carcass wash, whatever you want to call it. So it's going to help after you keep it as clean as you can in the field. If you can have some, either wherever you're going to be at or if it's going to be aging, put that vinegar and water on it. Mix 50-50 vinegar to water.
Speaker 1:We use a weed sprayer. It costs you $8 at a hardware store for a one-gallon weed sprayer. You can use any kind of sprayer. Just a handheld squeeze type sprayer is going to make a difference. Or you can just put it on a rag and wipe it down. It really doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:But it's going to kill any bacteria on the outside of the animal and USDA's definition of that is the animal should be, after you peel the hide off, as clean as it's ever going to be. So any outside bacteria is what's going to be the concern. So flies or dirt or anything else is something that we did as people that were taking care of that animal, so it should be as sanitary as possible when you pull that hide off of it. Needless to say, it's never that clean, so you have to wash it and then apply this carcass washer, acetic acid, vinegar water to the outside. Helps keep any kind of bacteria growth to a minimal. Also, it's going to help lower the pH where the animal can start setting up and lose some of the moisture, and it helps promote that where it's going to help the aging process start.
Speaker 2:And what does aging do?
Speaker 1:for meat. So aging with meat is basically. It's a controlled rot, to be honest, and that sounds very unappetizing when we talk like that. But um, um, you think about it in terms of we have this big, massive bowl that you shot and it's going to be dirty tough if we shoot. If we are butchering a big bowl here at the shop like a a cow bowl, like a bovine, then that meat is not going to be real good steaks at all. It's going to make really good roasts or stew meat or burger, but that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:So what that natural rot does, or your aging, your dry aging or whatnot, is going to help.
Speaker 1:Slowly those muscle fibers break down where they get tender and and that's a everyone's different on the different moisture is going to make a big difference on how long you can hang it, because somebody over here, joe's gonna say, well, I hang my elk for 20 days or, in this case, say, well, I cut mine in a day and a half. I think the main thing with with aging it and doing this is getting the the meat temperature down, so get it cooled off and then you can decide what you want to do. The problem with aging in a long period of time. It's hard to keep the humidity down enough where you are turning it into a piece of jerky, the whole thing right. And if you get it too up a little bit the humidity higher than maybe you want to, then you're going to get more bacteria growth on it. Um, where you're going to be doing way more trimming than a person needs to be wasting a lot of meat, where you have some mold growth on the outside so what?
Speaker 2:what, in your opinion, is the ideal length of time if you've got good conditions, like what? What would be the ideal temperature, humidity and time if you were going to age your own elk or deer?
Speaker 1:so anything at 32 degrees you're really not aging anything right, it's just freezing and just hanging out there. It's not not really going to age. And anything above 40 is not food safe either. So you need to be below 40 and above 32. And most coolers aren't going to stick and hold that same temperature as you're in and out of them and doors open or shut or whatever that happens. Where they're not going to be inefficient to hold one within two degrees, usually they're going to fluctuate about four or five degrees in there. So anywhere between I try to be, you know, and like 37, 38 to 35 is where I um try to keep our coolers in that temperature range.
Speaker 2:What about?
Speaker 1:humidity. So humidity, percentage of humidity, is difficult to measure for most people, I guess, at home, and even my coolers don't necessarily measure humidity. But the actual cooler itself is a dehumidifier. So that's why the condensation line is there. It's pulling the moisture out of the air. That's that's what it is designed to do.
Speaker 1:Um, so just making sure that that um, I lost my wording my condensation line is not in the cooler or able to get drained somewhere else, so you're not just adding that humidity back into the atmosphere, is a big deal gotcha. Um, I want to say you're probably going to be around like 60 to 75 percent humidity, yeah, and because more than a guy thinks that's for sure. Yeah, um, but with our like smoke houses we're able to control that humidity. Um, those were, um, uh, it is a big deal where, um, so, um, learning the humidity thing, you can get something so dried out where the outside is dry but the inside is completely wet, right, and they call that case hardening. So you kind of need some humidity in there for it to drop the moisture that needs to, or the outside dries up so quick that it's not able to like it seals it off from letting the rest of it drop, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Makes total sense. Now we're getting short on time, so I want to give folks some closing thoughts. It you're under extremely high demand, so, uh, not everybody, even even locally, is going to be able to bring their animals into you. However, if they're bringing it into you or bringing it into a shop, um, what is the one piece of advice that you would give to hunters for how they should be taking care of their meat in the field so that their shop is going to be able to do the best product that they can for them?
Speaker 1:I really think it just. I mean it's it's uh simple, but cleanliness is super, just, super important. Most all the wild game. We have to re-skin every bit of it. We won't. I feel bad giving back anything that I don't skin because it's leathery, dirty, whatever, and then I don't. I understand, um, but that what your situation is, and we're out in the field and doing that, but I've only had one or two elk ever that I was able to not have to reskin the whole thing in eight to ten years. So it's a big deal, but I think that would be my main thing. And then getting it cooled off as fast as you can is a big deal, however that looks to you. I've had people put them in a sleeping bag and put ice bags in a sleeping bag or go buy a kiddie pool and doing it that way somewhere to contain it. But it's super simple. Most of us have three or four coolers laying around. If you can quarter it out and get it in there or even bone it out.
Speaker 1:But, even if you're going to leave it in quarters, if you're super concerned about the heat and getting it cooled out, is opening up that femur bone not open the bone but open the meat. To expose that femur bone it doesn't have to be off the bone, but if you can get that bone cooled off then that's going to really help the quality of that meat.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. Now you're a custom meat shop, but you've also got a meat counter downstairs where people can come in and buy jerky or snack sticks and um, you know what? What all do you sell here?
Speaker 1:so we, we um try not to outsource anything where we make everything in-house, whether it's any kind of pepperoni or snack sticks, jerky summer sausage, lunch meats, bolognese, um, bacon ham. I mean, we do a lot of odd things, for even like bears, we do a lot of bear hams. It's a pretty popular item that we can make, so, um, but we, and then fresh meats as well, and try to even pull in some fun exotic stuff, some alligator here and there or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got seafood and all kinds of stuff down there.
Speaker 1:Where can people follow along and what you all have going on. Yeah, so check out our website at Heinz Meat. It's H-I-N-E-S Meat dot com. Or we're also on Facebook and Instagram Heinz Meat Company or Heinz Meat Co.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate the time we got to hang out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. I dream about coming over here and like being an intern for a couple weeks, come on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, okay, all right, I'll get my hands ready.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bring a hook. Oh, we'll have lots of hooks for you. So, thank, hook. Oh, we'll have lots of hooks for you.
Speaker 2:So thank you very much, jake, and thanks for all your support over the years and everything that you've done for me and for my clients. Like you're doing an incredible thing here, awesome. Well, thank you very much, james. All right, bye, everybody, bye, bye. I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who sent emails, who sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander, was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.