Get More Yield From Your Hunt
Understanding The Yield
We only return to you meat that we would serve our own families. Steaks and roasts will be boneless, trimmed, free of bloodshot, excessive sinew, hair or dirt. In order to achieve this standard, each animal is processed individually and meticulously. Every effort is made to maximize your return but the condition it is received in will affect the amount of meat you get back.
Best Case Scenario:
You bring an immaculate animal (No hair, dirt, blood shot)
Expect 50-55% of hanging weight in boneless meat
Example: 350lb hanging weight carcass (average bull elk) shot through the ribs. Freshly skinned without hair or dirt. Hung 1-2 weeks. Processed completely boneless. Fat and sinew removed. Steaks, Roasts, and Ground with a final weight of 175-190lbs. of meat.
Reasons for less meat:
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Excessive hair (it doesn’t just wipe off)
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Dirt, rocks, leaves, pine needles (these get under the surface and have to be trimmed off and game bags don’t protect from all of these)
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Bloodshot. High-velocity projectiles create a shock wave that travels through the tissue causing bleeding between and through the muscle. This is the desired effect and contributes to a quick and efficient kill but also destroys the meat. Shot placement is directly related to meat return.
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The physical condition of the animal prior to harvest. We have found previous injuries that had healed and were encased in scar tissue from broadheads, bullets, antler tines, broken bones, etc. This must all be trimmed away and discarded.
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Field dressing technique: Elk are large and hard to handle but how you quarter your meat will affect how much you get back. It is also important to make sure all entrails are removed at the time of field dressing. Hunters frequently miss the rectum, heart and lungs and windpipe and these will speed the spoiling process. The neck and shoulders of an elk are large and well furred. This holds the heat in and speeds spoilage. This is not always evident at the time of check-in but becomes evident on processing and the spoiled sections must be discarded.
We are hunters too. We have killed animals in remote areas and had to pack them out. We have brought home dirty and spoiled meat. We don’t take this personally but understand that this reduces the meat you get back and increases the time it takes us to give you a quality return. As such, we will charge a cleaning fee in accordance with the amount of extra work it takes to process your harvest and will not knowingly accept spoiled meat into our facility based on appearance or smell.