Fresh wild kill meat gets hard

[FloridaRanchero]

Hi. After shooting a wild hog and processing it within an hour, I put the shoulders, back straps, tenderloins and hams into a cooler with chunks of ice from ice blocks that I make in my chest freezer. The processing takes me about 45 minutes and when I bring the cooler into the kitchen to trim up the meat, many of the edges have turned beige and are hard to the touch, especially on the edges that don't have fat. I can cut the bad parts off but I'm doing something wrong like not icing the cooler more ahead of time or not having enough ice. I have searched for this problem but I haven't had any luck finding anything on the topic. Any guidance from someone whose seen this before would really be appreciated. BTW, this is in S Florida with a few 120 - 160 lb wild sows with heart shots.

 

[mike243]

I would hazard a guess is that the ice is bleaching the blood out and its not bad meat, some hunters here in E Tn like to put the deer in a cooler loaded with ice with the drain open and let them get the blood/wild taste out before they process them, there's nothing wrong with your meat other than loosing blood. Good job on getting some wild meat and wear gloves, wild boar can carry several diseases and can be transmitted to us.

 

[Kevin DeShazo]

We soaked our game in salt water instead of ice to help draw the blood our andd some of the gaminess. You could try that also but as said above, ice is probably bleaching the meat.

 

[flatbroke]

Doesn’t getting hard have something to do with the Gore brothers ?

 

[mike243]

Salt will toughen meat up I have read ymmv

 

[Kevin DeShazo]

Soaking in salt water is as basic a brine as you can get and we never had tough deer

 

[sawhorseray]

I've killed right about 70 wild hogs in my career. I always used to take a 165 quart igloo cooler with a half dozen gallon jugs of water that I froze in my freezer from leftover orange juice. That way the cooler was already cooled down and when the field dressed hog was ready I'd just toss it it surrounded by the frozen OJ jugs with a couple of jugs in the cavity. Once in the cooler I've kept the hog in 100º weather for three days before with no problem, and the meat never gets wet, just cold. RAY