I know this has nothing to do with Alaska, but I figured that there were more guys who process their own meat here in the Alaskan section than anywhere else on this site.(and I wanted to get some real answers without the thread getting muddled-up with "guesses" from guys who only field-dress their game before dropping it off at the processor, as would surely happen in the American Hunting section).

I shot a cow elk last Friday. The weather was dry and temp about 50 degrees. She was looking at me, but was not keyed-up yet. At the shot she ran 40 yards, stopped, and then fell after about 5 seconds.

The facts:
-30-06, 150gr Hornady GMX(thanks again Mike Dettore), impact velocity was a bit less than 2800fps.
-She was standing broadside and the bullet hit a few inches behind the left shoulder, hit a rib on the way in, center-punched the upper-rear portion of both lungs passed between two ribs and exited.
-She fell on her left side(the entrance side).
-She was field-dresses and loaded into a rig about 20 minutes after being killed.
-We got her hung by the hind legs and skinned and quartered by about an hour after she was killed.
-She was hanging in a 36 deg. meat locker within about 2 hours of the kill.

The next morning I loaded the meat into plastic bags and loaded her into my truck for the 6 hour drive home. The trip was cold and wet, but the meat was protected in the bags. Once home I hung the quarters for a day and a half(temps were 36 at night and 44 during the day). I started cutting and wrapping meat starting with the two hindquarters, then the right forequarter. Everything went well and the meat seemed extremely tender(I cooked some backstrap and found that it could be cut with a fork-the best meat I've had yet). When I cut-up the right forequarter(exit side) I found almost no bloodshot meat and the exit hold was the sized of a quarter.

The problem came when I started to cut-up the left fore-quarter. Looking from inside the ribcage there was no bloodshot meat around the entrance hole. I started to filet the meat off the ribs(my retired butcher grandfather calls this meat the "rib lifters"). Immediately I began to find massive amounts of black congealed blood. Most of the blood was in between the slabs of muscle, mixed in the membranes that sit between the muscle. I began slicing further and further away from the entrance hole, only to find that the blood extended all the way up into the neck. In some of the meatier portions, such as the neck and brisket, the blood was actually in between the muscle fibers themselves(imagine perfect, pink muscle fibers with black blood in between them).

Here are some photos:
The tip of the knife points at the entrance hole. The first slit was made to trim around the bullet hole. The others were made to figure out how far the blood had traveled. You can see blood where the shoulder was cut away.


This photo shows more meat that has been fileted away from the ribs. The black, congealed blood had traveled into the neck and down to the brisket



In this photo you can see where the blood had traveled into the membranes around the backstrap, down to the brisket and into the neck:




I was pretty upset with the mess and I could see that I was going to have a lot of extra work if I was going to save any of the meat. I cut off the shoulder and found that it was free of blood. I made slices up the neck and found that the blood stopped about a third of the way up. There was black blood in the membranes around the backstrap, but upon cutting it free I found that the meat itself was fine(what a relief!)

As it was after midnight and I had to be up at 6 to teach school I wrapped the backstrap and put the clean neck meat in a bag for grinding later. I wrapped the shoulder/leg in butcher paper and tossed it in the freezer to be thawed and processed later.

I then finished cutting the meat from the ribs and neck. I found that the blood had migrated about 2 feet from the entrance wound(I don't think the bullet caused all this bloody meat). I placed the bloody meat in an ice chest filled with ice. I opened the drain and raised the other end on a block of wood.

This front left quarter was the one that received the bullet, and was also the one the animal fell on and the one that was on the bottom while transported from the field. Of course the blood traveled into the neck which would have been the lower side when the animal was hung for skinning and also for aging.

It froze the next couple of nights and the ice didn't melt much. I took the meat out and found that some of the blood had drained/washed away. I don't believe much blood had actually migrated out of the meat, but it was cleaner now and at least I could see what I was dealing with.

I cut the rib meat into 1" to 2" wide strips and removed the membranes and blood from between the muscles. As stated before, some of the muscle itself had blood between the fibers themselves, this was cut away and discarded. I was left with about 70% clean meat and 30% bloody meat and membranes(which was thrown away).

So, having never seen this, I am wondering what would cause/allow blood to travel so far and taint so much meat? Have any of you guys experienced this?



A side note: during field-dressing I was inspecting the lungs(the bullet had center punched the "lobe" that sits below the spine and above the diaphragm and the ranch owner/guide reached into the chest cavity and said, "man, you didn't leave much heart!" I was confused as my bullet hadn't passed closer than about 12" from the heart. I said that I didn't hit it with the bullet and he replied, "well it sure doesn't feel right." I took the heart and found that it was completely flaccid like jello or a deflated balloon(of warm liver). Once on ice it firmed-up and took on the normal heart shape and rubber-ball texture.

We always cut away any meat that is even slightly bloodshot.

quote:

Originally posted by waterrat:
We always cut away any meat that is even slightly bloodshot.

10-4 on that, but this was not really bloodshot in the traditional sense(ie extending outward from the path of the bullet). Much of this blood seemed to have been gravity fed downward through the membranes between the muscles.

My wife just looked and said it looks Icky to her!! Cook it up and add to you dogs food,,they will love it.

If blood just ran under the muscle sheath then the muscle sheath can be removed and the blood scraped of flushed away. The muscle sheath is just a very thin transparent membrane that encloses the muscle.

quote:

Originally posted by waterrat:
My wife just looked and said it looks Icky to her!! Cook it up and add to you dogs food,,they will love it.

It looks worse than it really was. A couple days on ice drained off a lot of the icky stuff and I was able to trim the rest.

quote:

Originally posted by swampshooter:
If blood just ran under the muscle sheath then the muscle sheath can be removed and the blood scraped of flushed away. The muscle sheath is just a very thin transparent membrane that encloses the muscle.

Some was in the muscle so I trimmed and tossed that. the stuff that was in the membrane was pretty easy to deal with, just trim and discard.

Guys, what really has me confused is that some of the blood was pooled far away from the entrance wound and there was a lot of blood free meat in between.

One year I shot a smaller bull moose with a 250g tsx out of a 9.3. I did a very poor job of taking him and ended up whittling him down at long range. I found meat damage similar to the pictures you posted and attributed it to; a) light for caliber bullet and a premium bullet at that. The bullet hit the animal going fast and performed as its supposed to meaning rapid expansion and lots of terminal performance. All the energy was expended in the animal and the result was tissue damage. I was reminded at the time of a praire dog hunt, meaning lots of explosive bullet destruction. b) Poor bullet placement. I shot him in the fanny, the shoulders, chest, etc,......I hit him all over and it seems all the meat/ muscle groups got some face time with high velocity hole punching. I think all the holes gave lots of opportunity for blood to run and be pumped thru and in between muscle and muscle groups. Possibly the heart not being deactivated gave blood ability to move under pressure to damaged tissue?

Have you considered that maybe that left front quarter was injured/bruised before you shot the animal? With an entrance wound like that it would be pretty unlikely that blood would have migrated clear up into the neck, and very unlikely that it would have happened after death.

I've seen bloodshot meat 3' from the entrance wound. Not unusual.

quote:

Originally posted by vicvanb:
Have you considered that maybe that left front quarter was injured/bruised before you shot the animal? With an entrance wound like that it would be pretty unlikely that blood would have migrated clear up into the neck, and very unlikely that it would have happened after death.

That thought did briefly cross my mind. I doubt this was due to an injury because: there were no broken bones, the pooled blood covered a huge area(from the middle of the ribcage to the neck, and from the backbone down to the brisket, the shoulder itself did not have any blood/bruising yet the area directly under the shoulder was bloody.

I have seen that several times, fairly far from any bullet wound, usually on deer or pigs I have had to drag a long ways, to get them to where I could load them onto a vehicle or horse to get them back to camp.

Since I always butcher my game meat to feed only 2 people at a time it is easy to skim/scrape the blood off it is inbetween membranes.

For actual wound caused bloodshot meat, I discard it, or use it to bait bobcats, coyotes, etc...

Just trim the meat up and it will be fine.
Some people soak it in ice like mentioned previously.
Some go to the trouble of using milk at times.
The blood in the meat like that is caused by the high impact velocity!
It sends shock waves through the blood vessels and arteries and they explode a long ways from the entry wound. This is what causes blood to be in places you dont expect.
Worse case is when you hit one of the main arteries in the hind quarters.
Big slow bullets do alot less collateral damage.
Those frangible bullets are the worst thing for something you intend on eating.
JM2CW

quote:

Originally posted by swampshooter:
If blood just ran under the muscle sheath then the muscle sheath can be removed and the blood scraped of flushed away. The muscle sheath is just a very thin transparent membrane that encloses the muscle.

Trim rinse eat!!