Is wild game really as good for you as everyone thinks?Here is a comparison....You decide!!!!
MEAT - FAT - CHOLESTEROL - CALORIES

(GRAMS) (MILLIGRAMS)

Beef - 2.7 - 69 - 158
Pork 4.9 - 71 - 165
White-tailed Deer 1.4- 113- 153
Mule Deer 1.6- 85 - 151
Antelope 1.0 - 113 - 148
Buffalo 3.2- 45 - 146
Squirrel 3.2 - 83 - 149
Cottontail Rabbit 2.4 - 77 - 144
Chicken (domestic) 0.7- 58 - 140
Turkey (domestic) 1.5- 60- 146
Turkey (wild) 1.1 - 58 - 158
Pheasant 0.6- 49 - 149
Canada Goose 3.9 - 105 - 171
Mallard 2.0 - 143- 154

Don't get me wrong...I'll be a huntin as long as I can get out of bed but this is very interesting to those whom does not need to much Cholesterol.Other than Chicken..Beef has less cholesterol than the rest according to this chart?

Jayco

Interesting. When a co-worker had a heart attack and quad bypass a few years back, his doctor told him he could eat something like 2 oz of beef or 2 lbs of venison a week...

If you are worried about cholesterol you should check out seafood, especially shellfish sometime!

I've read about this before...it has something to do with the cholesterol in wild game being the "good" cholesterol, and beef having more of the "bad" cholesterol. I'm sure somebody will be able to explain it better than I. All I know is wild game is healthier.

I forget where I found this tidbit (Bugle?), but they have identified the beneficial component of wild game to be the same as fatty fish.

The problem with domestic animals is not the fat, it is the fat profile. You need the "mono-unsaturated fatty acids", of which omega-3 is one. Poly-unsaturated creates free radicals (i.e. cancer precursors), saturated fat clogs you up (heart disease, stroke).

So, eat you fish, eat your game, and for once, we can have our cake and eat it too. The last time I had my cholesterol checked, the "good" was borderline high, and the "bad" was borderline low. FWIW, Dutch.

Uh, according to your chart bison has the least cholesterol. For what size serving are these numbers for? What makes for an interesting comparison is the nutritional profiles between free range raised animals and agri-business feed lot raised animals. True free range raised beef is just about as healthy as wild game. Not as tastey though. You can find nutrition data for most wild game here.

nutritiondata

I read in a NAHC book that elk is the most nutritious and least fatty of all game meat. Something about how they store fat in their liver and not marbled throughout the meat.

I don't know if it's true, but I know elk is the tastiest game meat I have eaten, so far...

Here's a great link with lot's of good info. on the subject,

PaleoDiet.com

Eating as your ancestors did is a pretty healthy way to go.

Did you ever stop to question why it is that almost half of all people that have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels.

Did you ever wonder why there are some people who have extremely high cholesterol levels and don't have any atherosclerosis, and some people with extremely low cholesterol levels that have severe atherosclerosis.

You might want to read a book written by Kilmer S. McCully, M.D., a former Harvard Medical School Professor.

Arteries can either clog up and stop blood flow or they can clog up and break open (split)...both with very bad results. Eat spinach, run a lot, or eat vytorin and metamusal, beef, caribou, moose and goat, and hope for the best. If you have bad genes, your SOL.

quote:

If you have bad genes, your SOL

Add stress to that, the modern urban kind not the stress of physical effort.

My relatives all live to a ripe old age, particularly the outdoors working ones.

Put em' inside at a desk and it kills em.

Compaired to Beef I don't get to eat near as much wild game especially deer. A lot of my friends turn there nose up when I tell them I had venison for dinner and ask my why I want to hunt Bambi. I tell them yea he walked up to me and while he was eating out of my hand I shot him. They often look at me in horror to stupid to know the difference. I would rather have a good venison steak than beef anytime.

Idaho used to be mostly if not all a Mule Deer State and you got used to the taste.But now the Whitetails are taking over and there taste is much much better than a Nasty old Mule Deer Buck in my opinion.The Does arn't bad and we did and still do take the Does if there is a choice of the two for food.

A friend of mine whom is a butcher(He hates that)/Meat Cutter tells horror stories of the game people bring into him to cut up..Nasty untakin care of Wild Game and theres not much he can do about it.

He also states that some meat cutters/proccessors don't even change or clean the blades on there saws from one animal to another..In other words you get the marrow from someone elses kill into your meat.

I do my own.

Jayco

quote:

He also states that some meat cutters/proccessors don't even change or clean the blades on there saws from one animal to another..In other words you get the marrow from someone elses kill into your meat.

I do my own.

Jayco

I have never taken any of the Deer I shot to a meat processor I do all of my own butchering.

I did give a shoulder to a friend once that helped me find a wounded Deer that I shot in the neck. He walked up to it and it got up and tried to run him through with its antlers. He shot it in the shoulder. Another friend finished it off with a shot to the back of the head. When I handed this blood shot shoulder to him he deboned it and ran it through his hand crank grinder blood shot and all. Not my way to process but he ate it anyway.

The University of Colorado ran some tests on Elk, Mule Deer, and Antelope. They found it lower in the bad cholesterol and higher in the good (didn't know some of it was good?) cholesterol. Also found it healthier than chicken or salmon. The report is somewhere on the internet and has been published by the Colo Dept of Wildlife.

I'm with jayco and swede on this one. I have seen commercial game processing. I cut and wrap all my own vension at home. So far I have been able to fool the most picky of eaters who would never eat "deer meat"..............JJ

It depends a little where that Mule Deer spent the summer.

A couple of years back, I had the good judgement to pop a nice little buck as he walked off the alfalfa pasture. That was the finest wild game I had eaten up to that point.

I have one in the freezer now that's kind of so-so, came out of the mountains. I fully hold to the "you are what you eat" adage, even with deer. One that's been browsing sage shoots, I think I'll pass next time. White tails have more sense than to eat sage brush.....

This year, I have two kids that need to shoot a doe off a friends hayfield..... FWIW, Dutch.

There is more to it than just looking at cholesterol/fat levels. On our ranch we immunize all the calves with 3 different shots within the first 3 weeks of their life. Then, if one calf gets sick, we will doctor it with medication. In the fall, the calves are sold and are put into a feedlot. The calves receive a pellet in the ear which produces a growth hormone, so the calf will grow faster and bigger. The feedlot mixes medicated feed with the grains/hay.

Now that muley or elk has never had a shot, never had a growth hormone. Most likely he is healthy (but each hunter should examine the animal looking for signs of disease or infection). I would rather eat a wild, non-treeated animal than an animal pumped full of hormone and medicine.

Talking about the flavor of Whitetail deer; I hunt deer on Maryland's Eastern Shore, east of the Chesapeake Bay and also in Virginia's Peidmont/Shenandoa Valley. The Eastern Shore is primarily an agricultural area with winter wheat in the late fall, winter and spring, corn or soy beans in the late spring, summer and early fall. Relatively small wood lots and the whole area has lots of creeks and marshes. Where I hunt in the Peidmont area is primarliy cattle country with some crops, mostly corn and larger woodlots.

The deer taken from the Eastern Shore are much milder in flavor than the deer from where I hunt in Va. The beef I've eaten in Argentina is very similar in flavor to the Md deer and I prefer the stronger taste to your run of the mill store bought beef steak. The Va deer can't compete and I use it for sausage and for ground meat for tacos and chili etc. The areas are only about three hours apart by car so it really comes down to what they're feeding on.

JPK

Interesting thought just came to mind. Most people eating beef get their meat at the market, which came from a feed lot somewhere. While at the feed lot, that beef was pumped full of chemicals to make it fatter, chemicals to prevent disease due to the overcrowding, and God knows what else. So what's my point? Consider this. Those weight gain hormones are still in that meat, and I'll bet a big chunk of change that no matter how well you cook it, those hormanes stay. Makes me wonder if that isn't a big part of the obesity problem we have in this country. Now range beef doesn't have the high fat and cholesterol crap in it that feed lot beef does, so is there a connection?
The poor (?) rancher claims he cannot get a decent price for his beef, and cannot sell to me a single beef without having a brand inspector there to check the brand.
Years ago, I lived in Nevada, in a small town. (Sorry I ever moved too.) I got pretty friendly with several rancher by shooting coyotes and pocket gophers on their land, for which I was given deer hunting priviledges. When I approached them to see if I could buy a steer for butchering, I was told that it was against the law, that a brand inspector had to be there to check the brand. The rancher could kill a steer to feed the hands, but he couldn't sell me one. IIRC, it was some kind of federal law to prevent "rustling". Methinks the greedy owners of the stockyards got that run through.
Now, if I am right, and the crap they stick into cattle and other livestock does promote obesity and higher cholesterol levels, maybe a serious class action law suit like they hit the tobbaco companies is in serious order. After all, we do all eat beef, right? Just something to think about.
Paul B.

Paul- The brand inspector must inspect the animal when it is purchased. In Utah, the brand inspector charges $3.75. Not too bad.

I agree with the hormones being a reason for both obesity and early onset of puberty we are seeing in young girls.

There is a difference between "bad" cholesterol and "good" cholesterol. I don't know if this is involved here, but maybe the wild game has good cholesterol not the bad cholesterol?