Souse your steak to ward off cancer
After spending all day leaning against an abandoned shed in the woods with just a rifle and a 
flashlight, my husband got his doe.
That means lots of deer burger, a few roasts and several steaks are now stuffed in our freezer to feed us cheap for a while.
I’m new to the taste of venison and really hate the way it smells when it's browning, but my husband makes a delicious teriyaki marinade that covers the gamey taste of those deer steaks perfectly.
He leaves mine on the grill until it's well-done. That’s how I like it. I think more rare meat has a stringy/gummy texture that is most undesirable.
I know my preference is among the minority, though.
My food microbiology professor boasted of eating his steaks near raw: As long as the steaks haven’t been pierced before cooking (which would allow any bacteria on the outside to get inside the meat), the cook only needs to sear the surface to be rid of most things that could make him sick.
Some people shy away from well-done steaks because meats cooked to high temperatures form heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAs). These HAs are thought to contribute to some types of cancer.
There is hope for the devout well-done crowd, though. Food chemists in Portugal have found that the formation of HAs is significantly reduced when beef steaks are marinated in red wine or beer for six hours before being pan-fried.
I wonder how it does with venison?
Girl almost dies from E. coli after helping dad slaughter deer
Demonstrating once again that dangerous E. coli like O157:H7 exist in all ruminants, 7-year-old April Lambert of Beckley, West Virginia underwent a horrific yet typical encounter with E. coli as her kidneys shut down and doctors scrambled to save her life.
The Charleston Daily Mail reports that April’s father, Red, had shot a deer the Friday after Thanksgiving and she helped him skin it and prepare bigger cuts to send off to a local butcher, but Red cut the tenderloin himself.
April placed the pieces of meat into freezer bags, handling the meat with her hands.
The family and the doctors concluded that April likely hadn't washed her hands afterward as well as she could have. In fact, April recalls she may have rinsed them and not used soap.
Dr. Amana Nasir, a West Virginia University pediatric gastroenterologist who was on the team that treated April in Charleston said she and fellow doctors have treated four similar cases traced to handling of deer meat, adding,
"Deer harbor infection - it's estimated that 17 percent of the whitetail population harbors E.coli.”
The natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7 and other verotoxigenic E. coli is the intestines of all ruminants, including cattle -- grass or grain-fed -- sheep, goats, deer and elk.
Summer sausage is tasty, maggots and all
I grew up in a deer hunting family, and although my own deer hunting career started and ended when I was 13, I was so used to eating venison that beef tasted weird. I still remember one deer my family butchered at home, and my brother chased me around the house with an eyeball. We packaged and marked the cuts, but they stayed in our family freezer. Perhaps we had some guests over for dinner or gave some to a friend at church, but if anyone got sick, it was us. In Omaha, apparently, things are run differently. Deer processor and poacher extraordinaire Jack McClanahan was finally put out of the summer sausage business.
According to the Omaha World-Herald McClanahan processed and sold tons of tainted summer sausage, much of it from poached deer. McClanahan told federal undercover agents that he sometimes shot deer at night with a rifle from the bathroom window of his home in Omaha's Ponca Hills and then would retrieve the carcasses in the morning. He baited the deer with corn, used a spotlight to blind them, and then shot.
McClanahan is a retired butcher who sold summer sausage in 5-pound casings at $3.50 a pound. He also made salami, jerky and snack sticks, and authorities estimated annual production at about 10,000 pounds.
Mark Webb, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent, said mouse droppings, maggots, deer carcasses, dried blood, deer hair and other contaminants littered the commercial-grade meat processing equipment that filled McClanahan's three-car garage. There was no running water for cleaning. When wildlife agents seized the equipment and cleaned it with hot water and soap at a carwash, they discovered two lead bullets the size of a man's thumb lodged in the grinder. The blade had been shaving lead into the meat.
The butcher-poacher was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of probation Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
My family and most deer hunters I have known have a strong conservationist ethic. I was raised to respect wildlife and have a deep appreciation for nature. McClanahan, and other poachers, are appalling, but making humans sick and putting their lives at risk with filthy processing conditions is even more disgusting.
