Cheap Meat?

One last post from the elk hunt.  This post is all about the meat and what happens after we shoot the elk.  Because that's when all the hard work begins.

After we take a photo and honor the elk we cut him/her up.  This is actually REALLY hard work.  While cutting I always feel like I am doing yoga poses.  I have to hold poses while holding and cutting up the various parts of the animal.  There is the front leg pose, the back quarter pose, the backstop pose, and the hardest of all the rib removal pose.  By the time we have our packs filled up with meat and it is time to leave the carcass I am generally exhausted.

The pack out to the beach with 100 pounds plus on the back is next.  We like to get all our meat out in one trip so as to limit encounters with bears.  But we do carry an electric fence to protect a meat stash if need be.  And once at the boat the job does not end.  We need to put all the meat into clean, and dry  game bags and hang it up under a tarp to cool off.  And it is a constant monitoring job to keep it dry and cool.

And then finally back in town there is a day of meat cutting.  This is usually fun for an hour or so - but after five hours of cutting meat off of bones and trimming up roasts it gets a little tiring.  That said, because we take care of our own meat we KNOW the quality is the best.  And this is especially true of our burger.  All pieces of meat that seem even a little off goes to the dogs. Of course the doggies get the bones too.  They are very happy, and so are we when we finally finish and all the meat is in the freezers.  This year each person got 80 pounds of elk meat.

In 2013 I did a blog post about the 'Cost of Meat' (click here for post), and in the comments I actually priced it all out for that year and came up with around 2.30$ per pound of packaged meat.  And that included 100 dollar depreciation of gear cost for every hunting trip (10 that year).

For this year the figures would be 7 deer (560 pounds) and 2 elk (600 pounds) - so 1160 pounds total of packaged meat.  This is the exact same figures as in 2013!  However, unlike 2013, in 2017 I did some expensive hunts - only one road system hunt (as opposed to 9 in 2013) , 2 remote fly outs and the boat based elk hunt (as opposed to only the elk hunt in 2013).  Total costs for this year (road system hunt: 50$ gas and food, 100$ gear depreciation - 150$ total)(fly in hunt near town: flight 700$, food 300$, gear depreciations 100$ - 1100$ total)(remote fly in: flight 3400$, food 500$, gear depreciation 100$ - 4000$ total)(Elk hunt - gas guesstimate 1000$ and this is probably high, food and beer 500$, elk tag 150$, gear depreciation 100$ - 1750$ total).  So total costs ends up at 7000$ (divided up amongst 10 people), and that divided by 1160 - comes out to 6.03$ per pound.  Not cheap, but not bad either.  Certainly within the realm of what organic, free range meat costs at Safeway.

And for just the elk hunt the meat is about 3 bucks a pound.  Really what made it an expensive year was the remote fly out hunt to the south end.  But that hunt was also the most fun!

The cost analysis certainly indicates that hunting from your car is far, far cheaper than using a boat or airplane to get to where you start the hunt!  I also wonder if gear depreciation cost should really be 100 per day instead of per trip?

Still 6 bucks a pound is cheap - especially when you consider the quality of the meat and the adventure of obtaining it.  Our meat is certainly higher in quality than the stuff that comes in a styrofoam platter covered in plastic, and hunting is a lot more fun, if less convenient, than driving to Safeway and cruising the meat bins.  Patrick