My deer roadkill experience, with questions and pics

[Dr. D]

Found a young deer on the side of the road, checked it out, still seemed soft and warm with only flies on it, took it.



As you can see it was hit on one side and when I got in there he had a broken femur (?) and lots of coagulated blood with yellow pus surrounding the wound. More on that later.



What is that I'm holding there? Its blue and spongy and didn't smell good. But organs don't smell good to me at first anyways.



Guts out, a bit more dressed.



I have no clue how to get into that dome. Neither did my dogs. I kinda wanted the brain.



All the organs into jars. Excrement organs on left (for dogs, intestines, stomach) and mine on the right (liver, kidney, heart)
You can also see some of the coagulated blood on the broken leg there on the left.



That is just some of the yellow pus, which I assume is infection?, those pieces I cut out and left to the dogs. I would rather not eat infected meat. It seems the deer was hit and lived for quite a while.



A better pic of the messed up leg.



Here in my fridge it shall wait and air age as I have been doing recently and enjoy the flavor, plus it gives me plenty of time to eat.



And of course the organs and more meat. I didn't weight it but I'm assuming its somewhere between 20-30 lbs. Pretty happy about it. Will not freeze, let the bacteria grow!

[jessica]

ive cut open a few deer and I cant figure out what that mystery organ is, ha!

the brain is super small on a deer and how I got into mine was to smash the skull from the top with the back of an axe head, I used gradually harder force and had to kind of crack it and jimmy the skull open and didn't do much damage to the brain. 

I think inger or someone has a video of cracking open a lamb skull with tools, might want to try searching for that   

[Projectile Vomit]

I get 10-20 doe heads each fall from a game processor friend of mine, and harvest brains for eating and tanning hides and eyes for eating. I get brains by skinning the head and cutting out the tongue, then splitting the skull from the nose-end with a hatchet head and small sledge hammer. It's taken some practice to get the technique down, but once I did I've been able to reliably get a brain without mushing it.

[Oguy2000o]

Why wouldn't you freeze

[Dr. D]

Experienced RAFs say that freezing makes good bacteria dormant. I have been aging all my meat in the fridge after defrosting and the older it gets the better it tastes. I don't even want this fresh meat to have to deal with freezing. There may be a little nutrient loss through freezing also. I just want this to be at its highest potential for my body.

anybody else have any experience with that yellow pus I took a pic of? Is that infection? I'm assuming if the rest of the meat smells good it should be safe.

[jessica]

I never saw anything like that on my deer...was it right by the wound?  could you have cut near a developing scent gland?