Smoked Sausage the hard way.

Wait for your local volcano to pop its top then hang the sausage out the window.

Notice the steam venting. It can pop any time now.

So What Happens On The Side Of The Road?

This is a calf that was hit hard (who also starred in my video)Here we are skinning him

More skinning

The spine is broken and the abdominal cavity has been punctured.

I didn't show good pictures of it, but I removed all 4 quarters before opening the abdominal cavity (any more than it already was).

On a small critter like this a tailgate makes a good table, and then it is really easy to dump the guts into a wheelbarrow.


After the guts are out we need to clean up the chest cavity (wipe out the blood, it's easier now than later).
What a mess.


Looks like the terminator moose.

I Hit a Moose!

We had some excitement last night. On the way to a kids activity in town, a moose trotted out in front of us (the whole family). I got on the brakes hard and kept the van straight, but we hit her pretty solid. It came up on the hood a then skidded 15' into the ditch on its butt.


Fortunately we were not hurt. The older boy saw it happen and said it took his breath "half away".


As for the damage to the van...





Dang it!!!

She bent bent my fender where antennae mounts! (see the ellipse)

And I'm not too happy about those hairs in the lock nut either...

Actually the Trooper was impressed that there was so little damage to the vehicle.

As for the moose...


I bet her butt hurts this morning.

I Did It!!! I made Haggis!

I started with these meat products. I couldn't a sheep's pluck (if you don't know... you may not want to). So, I used some moose tongue, moose heart, moose roast, and beef tripe. I also used bacon fat instead of suet (hey it's what I had)




These are the spices I selected. Don't ask me how much, I just added until it looked right.




Here I have cut up the meat and tripe, and I am about to boil the meat for 30 minutes.




Now the meat has been boiled, the tripe added, spices added, onions added, oats (7 grain cereal) added, and bacon fat added. Looks yummy.





This is what the whole mess looks like after I ran it through the course plate on the meat grinder.






As there is a distinct short shortage of sheeps' stomachs locally (and in particular, my kitchen) I am substituting fiberous casings (intended for summer sausage).






These are haggises (haggae? haggisaurus?). Ok, here are six haggis. Notice that I didn't stuff them super tight (the oats will double in volume as they cook and I don't want to bust a gut).





Here it is boiling. It ballooned up quite a bit. Now I have to wait 3 hours (or three days, and not a minute more...).

Haggis

I've been dreaming of making haggis...

Processing Roadkill Moose

This One Was A DLP

If you are wondering, DLP means "defense of life and property".



This little one charged an 88 year old man in his back yard, so he shot it. In cases like this the Troopers call someone on the roadkill program to recover the meat.




Not real big, but plenty of meat. Since it was shot and not hit by a car there are no broken legs or road rash. A little meat damage near the exit wound, but not bad.




HELLO!




Who are you?




This is the mama. She is not too thrilled about this whole process. I worked quickly to winch the calf up into the truck (took about 10 minutes). Mama kept circling around, putting her ears down, and just generally looking menacing. Fish and Game expect she will hang around for 5 days or so until she gives up and moves on.