Hunting & Trapping: Taking Game Without Wasting It

Animals are not randomly sprinkled in the woods. They bed, drink, feed, and travel the same lines. FM 3-05.70: look for runs and trails, tracks, droppings, chewed or rubbed vegetation, nests and roosts, feeding and watering areas. Then trap there.

• Trail vs run. A trail is obvious and used by several species. A run is narrower, fainter, often one species. Snares on a run beat snares on a highway of mixed traffic — too many sizes, too much caution.
• The triangle: bed → water → food. Place sets on the connecting lines, not in the middle of a field with no tracks.
• Freshness: shiny mucus on droppings, sharp-edged tracks in mud, green chew on stems = last night. Grey crumbly scat and collapsed tracks = last week. Do not build a line on ghosts.
• Time of day. Dawn and dusk for most mammals. Night for many rodents, cats, and pigs. Midday sits waste hours unless you have a known watering hole in heat.
• Wind. Still-hunt into the wind. Your scent going ahead of you empties the next 200 metres. Smoke on your clothes is better than soap; most mammals already know woodsmoke and ignore cold ash.
• Water edges, saddle notches, fence corners, orchard edges, and the first dry bench above a swamp concentrate travel. Start there.

Small game is how you eat between rare large kills. It is also how you practise dressing meat before you have 40 kg of deer going off in the sun.

Rabbits and hares

• They freeze, then bolt. A stout stick as long as your arm (shoulder to fingertip), thrown sideways, is the field tool FM 3-05.70 calls a rabbit stick. Sidearm increases hit chance.
• Hunt the edge of cover at first and last light. Do not waste a chase into brambles.
• Gloves on before you gut. Rabbits and rodents are the classic tularemia hosts (CDC). Skin contact with blood or tissue infects you. Cook the meat through. Frozen rabbit can stay infective — cooking is the control, not the freezer.
• White spots on the liver, or an animal that was already slow and “tame”: discard the whole carcass. Do not feed it to dogs.

Squirrels

• Watch one tree for 20 minutes. They loop. A squirrel pole (below) beats hours of missed throws.
• Gut at once. The scent draws more squirrels — useful for the next set, bad if you leave guts in camp.

Birds

• All ordinary birds are edible. Flavour varies. Skin fish-eating birds if the taste is oily. FM 3-05.70: boil scavenger birds at least 20 minutes before other cooking to kill parasites.
• Roosts at night: a noosing wand (wire loop on a long pole) and patience. Do not throw your only knife.
• Eggs: take extras from a clutch, leave two or three marked. Many birds will lay more to refill.

Mice, voles, rats

• A bottle or pit trap (hole wider at the bottom than the top, cover held 2–5 cm off the ground with pebbles) catches night rodents. Check with a stick — snakes use the same holes.
• Cook hard. Urban rats are a last resort (poisons, disease). Country voles in a clean field are better protein than pride.

Reptiles and amphibians (only if you already know them)

• Cook all reptiles. Salmonella lives on the skin. Wash hands after handling (FM 3-05.70).
• Do not eat toads. Some secrete toxin through the skin. Do not eat brightly coloured frogs. Do not eat box turtles — they can store mushroom toxins cooking will not destroy.
• Snakes: cut off the head plus 10–15 cm to take the venom sacs with it. Bury that piece. Skin, gut, roast or stew. Dead snakes can still bite on reflex — use a stick.

Traps crush, choke, hang, or entangle. The trigger is the heart of the set. You do not need twenty designs. You need three you can build cold, plus the discipline to check them.

Check at least twice a day — dawn and late afternoon. In heat, check more. An animal dead at midnight is spoiled by noon, and a live one suffers. Unchecked traps also catch pets and people. If you cannot check a line, pick it up.

Simple snare (trail / den)

1. Use wire if you have it. Cordage loosens. A slip noose on a firmly planted stake.
2. Hold the loop open with grass stems or twigs. Loop slightly larger than the animal’s head, at head height — not low enough to catch a foot unless you meant to build a foot snare.
3. Place it on a proven run. Funnel with brush so the animal must pass through.
4. This snare often holds rather than kills. Carry a club. Dispatch at once. Do not “let it calm down.”

Squirrel pole (FM 3-05.70)

1. Lean a long pole against a tree with heavy squirrel sign.
2. Set several wire nooses along the top and sides, about 5–6 cm (2–2¼ in) across, standing ~2.5 cm (1 in) off the pole.
3. Keep the top and bottom nooses ~45 cm (18 in) from the ends so the squirrel cannot brace on a solid surface and chew free.
4. Curious squirrels climb it. A struggling animal draws others. Multiple poles beat one clever trap.

Figure-4 deadfall (small game)

Three notched sticks lock in a “4” under a killing weight (rock or log heavy enough to kill at once). Vertical stick, diagonal stick under the weight, horizontal bait stick. Practice with a light log before you depend on it. Tolerances are tight. The Paiute version (cord + small catch stick) is easier to set in the field. Too light a weight means a broken back and a ruined, terrified animal — that is wasted meat and a bad way to live.

Twitch-up snare

A springy sapling, stripped of branches, bent over and held by a two-fork trigger. Head noose on the run. When the animal hits the noose, the forks separate and the sapling lifts. Do not use green wood for the trigger — sap can glue it. This is a killing snare. Never set it on a path used by people or children.

Bait

• Use food the animal already knows, but not so common it can eat the same thing two metres away.
• Salt, nut butter, guts from a previous kill, grain. Scatter a few bits in front of the set so the animal samples before it commits.
• If the wrong species steals bait, build the next set for that species.

What not to build near camp

Military manuals describe bow traps and spring-spear traps. They kill humans as easily as pigs. Do not set them on any trail, water point, or camp approach. Prefer visible deadfalls and snares you can disable with a stick from the side.

A bad hit does three things: the animal suffers, you spend the afternoon tracking, and gut contents paint the meat. Wait for a clear broadside. If you do not have it, do not send a projectile.

After the shot

1. Watch the animal down. Mark the last spot with a broken branch. Listen.
2. Wait. A lung-shot animal often goes 30–80 metres and beds. Pushing immediately can run it for kilometres. A gut shot: wait longer (an hour if you can) unless weather or predators will take it.
3. Read blood. Bright frothy pink = lung. Dark red, heavy = muscle or heart. Watery with gut grit or green = paunch. Hair colour in the bed tells species and angle.
4. Approach from the rear. Touch the eye with a long stick. If it blinks, it is not dead. Finish with a precise shot or a firm blow — do not start skinning a dying animal.
5. Large dangerous game (pig, wounded deer in thick cover, any predator): another shot from a safe angle beats heroics with a knife.

If you have no firearm

• Rabbit stick, spear used as a jab (do not throw your only point), simple bow. FM 3-05.70: scrape a bow from the belly side of a knot-free hardwood stick; dead dry wood beats green.
• Close shots only. A wounded deer you cannot track is wasted food and a slow death.
• Night roosts and trap lines still beat heroic stalks.

USDA: bacterial action starts as soon as the animal is shot. Dress at once. Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s three words are the whole job: cool, clean, dry. Heat is the greatest threat. The hip joint in the rear leg sours first.

Before the first cut

• Gloves (or a plastic-bag barrier). CDC: especially for rabbits, rodents, and deer in CWD country. Do not use the kitchen knife if you still have a separate camp knife.
• Move the carcass to shade if you can do it without tearing the gut. Head uphill helps guts fall away.
• Have bags, cord, and a clean tarp or hide side ready. ADF&G: bag all meat before you pack the first load — do not leave a pile for flies while you walk to camp.

Small game (squirrel, rabbit)

1. Confirm dead.
2. On rabbits, pinch and cut the musk glands on the inside of the hind legs if you can find them — they taint meat if ruptured into the cavity.
3. Blade up under the skin so you cut hide, not gut. Split the belly, hook a finger in, and pull entrails. Get the chest organs too.
4. Case-skin: cut around the feet and the neck, slit the inside of the legs, pull the hide like a jumper. Keep hair off the meat.
5. Rinse only if you have clean water and can dry the meat after. Dirty river water is not a wash — it is a marinade of germs. Wipe with a clean cloth if that is all you have.

Large game (deer-size) — cavity method

1. Position on its back. Prop with logs.
2. Cut around the anus and free it so it will pull out with the guts. Do not puncture intestine.
3. Split the hide from breastbone to pelvis. Then open the body wall the same way, two fingers under the knife, blade up.
4. Cut the diaphragm free from the ribs. Reach up, cut the windpipe and gullet, and roll the entrails out in one mass.
5. Pinch the bladder off and cut below your fingers. If urine, bile, or rumen hits meat, rinse that spot with clean water and trim. ADF&G: rinse contamination off; keep hair and debris off.
6. Save heart, liver, and kidneys if they look healthy (see disease section). Prop the cavity open with a stick. Get the hide off in warm weather — the hide is a winter coat and will keep the meat hot.
7. Quarter: front legs slice off (no bone joint to the body). Hindquarters at the ball-and-socket hip. Backstraps off each side of the spine. Break ribs, then cut. Work the knife as little as you can — a dull, hair-flecked blade infects more meat.

Gutless quartering (when you cannot open the gut)

Used on steep ground and in heat. Skin one side, remove the top legs and backstrap, roll the animal, repeat. Take neck meat. Leave the gut sack unopened if you do not need organs. You still must cool the quarters. This does not skip the race against heat.

Cooling and hanging

• Hang in shade with air around every piece. Bags must not touch each other.
• Cotton or breathable bags, not plastic. Plastic sweats and sours meat. ADF&G: the only common exception is a short dunk in cold creek water in weather over ~16 °C / 60 °F (30–45 minutes) to pull heat from the bone, then dry thoroughly and bag in cloth.
• Keep it out of sun always. A tarp for rain must still let air move.
• Hang far enough from camp that a bear is not in your bed, close enough that you can see the pole.
• Do not pile boned chunks in one bag in heat — they cannot cool in the middle. That is why some regions ban boning in the field.

USDA/FSIS cold storage (when you still have a fridge): game birds and ground game 1–2 days; other game meat 3–5 days; cooked leftovers about 4 days. Frozen meat stays safe from microbes while frozen; quality drops. In the field, treat uncooked meat as today’s food unless it is cooling toward drying or smoking.

Hunger argues. Microbes do not. WHO’s five keys still apply in a woods camp: keep clean, separate raw from cooked, cook thoroughly, keep food out of the temperature danger zone, use safe water. CDC’s four steps are the same idea: clean, separate, cook, chill.

Tularemia (rabbit fever)

CDC: rabbits, hares, and rodents are the usual hosts. You get it from ticks, flies, skin contact with infected animals, or undercooked meat. Wear gloves. Do not dress a rabbit that was already dying in front of you. Cook thoroughly. This is a medical illness — this guide does not give drug doses. If you get a fever and an ulcer at a cut after dressing rabbits, that is a reason to seek care, not to “tough it out.”

Trichinellosis

CDC: people get it from raw or undercooked meat of meat-eating animals — especially bear, wild boar, walrus. Even a taste of undercooked bear while cooking has caused outbreaks. Homemade jerky and sausage from those meats have caused cases because drying and smoking did not kill the larvae. Cook first. Then dry if you want jerky.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD)

CDC: a prion disease of deer, elk, moose. It has not been shown to infect people, but CDC still says: do not shoot, handle, or eat animals that look sick or act strangely; do not eat meat from animals found dead; wear gloves; avoid brain and spine; do not use kitchen knives; if an animal tests positive, do not eat it. Bone out meat. Do not saw through the backbone. Avoid brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, and lymph nodes.

Other hard nos

• Polar bear and bearded seal liver — toxic vitamin A (FM 3-05.70). Muscle meat is a different question; the liver is not food.
• Animals found dead of unknown cause — leave them. CDC CWD advice and basic hygiene agree.
• Yellow, bitter, or chemical-smelling fat — trim it. Wild fat often tastes bad; rancid fat makes you sick.
• Meat that smells rotten, is green-black, or is fly-blown deep in the grain — trim only if spoilage is a thin surface and the rest is sound and you will boil it hard. If the bone smells sour (hip), that quarter is a loss. Do not feed spoiled meat to the group “because we cooked it.” Some bacterial toxins survive heat.
• Gall bladder, urine-soaked meat, thyroid — discard. Bile on meat: trim wide.

Wanton waste is how hungry people stay hungry. If you take a life, take the calories and the materials. Alaska’s salvage rules exist because wasting meat is both unethical and stupid. In a collapse, it is also a group-morale problem: people remember who shot a deer and left the hams.

Food parts people throw away

• Heart — dense muscle. Slice, inspect, stew.
• Liver — if healthy. Strong taste. Do not eat polar bear / bearded seal liver.
• Kidneys — split, peel the membrane, stew.
• Tongue — skin after a boil; good meat.
• Blood — if you can catch it clean in a pot, it is food in soups. If it spilled on dirt, skip it.
• Marrow — split long bones after cooking; fat you cannot afford to waste on a lean deer.
• Head meat and neck — hours of stew meat. Do not saw the braincase if CWD is a concern; take the cheeks and tongue instead.
• Ribs and backbone scraps — stock. Boil. Drink the broth. That is calories and salt.

Non-food parts that keep you alive

• Hide — clothing, tarp, bag. Flesh it, dry it in shade, or tan later (see textiles / leatherworking). Keep hair off meat while you skin.
• Sinew — backstrap tendons. Dry and separate into thread for bindings and bowstrings.
• Bones — tools, needles, arrow points, broth. Green bone splits badly; cook or dry first for tools.
• Gut — cleaned, rinsed, turned inside out: cordage, sausage casing, or a crude bag. Only if you will clean it now, not “later.”
• Fat — render slowly into tallow for frying and waterproofing. Trim bad-tasting wild fat if it greases the meat; render separately and taste a drop.
• Teeth and claws — awls, fasteners. Not decoration first — tools first.

Preserve what you cannot eat in 24 hours

Slice with the grain into strips about 6 mm (¼ in). Sun-dry with airflow, covered against flies, until the strip is stiff and not cool to the touch (FM 3-05.70). Or smoke over hardwood — not pine resin smoke — thin slices, no pieces touching. Overnight smoke might buy about a week; two days of smoke, longer. That is field preservation, not a sterile cannery. For bear and pig, cook the meat through before or as you dry. CDC is explicit that drying and smoking alone do not reliably kill Trichinella.

Full methods — salt, smoke, dry, confit — live in the Food Preservation guide. Do not shoot a second animal until the first is in the pot, on the rack, or in a cool hang you can defend from dogs and weather.

• Hunting all day with no water and no trap line at home
• Shooting at a running animal “to see”
• Leaving a gut-shot animal without marking the last spot
• Opening the gut with the blade down and spilling rumen into the hams
• Leaving the hide on in hot weather
• Piling hot meat in a plastic sack
• Walking the first load to camp and leaving the rest unbagged for flies
• Tasting undercooked bear or pig “to season it”
• Making jerky from raw carnivore meat and calling it safe
• Dressing rabbits bare-handed, then rubbing your eyes
• Setting neck snares on a path people use
• Not checking traps because it rained
• Shooting a second deer while the first is still in a heap
• Eating a stumbling, skinny deer because “meat is meat”
• Washing a carcass in stagnant pond water and calling it clean