Cut through the skin deep into the neck, exposing the critter’s tough, rubbery, almost corrugated windpipe. Cut the head off, leaving as much of the neck as possible. Pull the windpipe free of the neck up to the brisket. Using a carpenter’s saw, cut through the brisket, continuing straight down through the bottom of the rib cage.
Cut down to, but not into, the stomach and intestine area. Puncture of the gut or stomach is messy but a thorough washing later can salvage the situation. General aesthetics and cleanliness are better served by not cutting into the guts. This becomes progressively more difficult the longer the critter is dead. Gases collect in the stomach, pressing it out against the wall of the critter.
Forcibly spread the two rib sides. Pull the windpipe, still attached to the heart and lungs, out of the carcass. Cutting around the diaphragm muscle separating the heart and lungs from the intestinal cavity will be necessary. Try to pull all—heart, liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines—clear of the carcass. Other than salvaging the heart and liver, most of this is left for the coyotes and birds. Notice we did not bleed the critter. By now it is obvious that quickly dressed animals will bleed profusely without special attention.
Feel for the Achilles tendon immediately up from the heel. Carefully poke your knife into the space between the tendon and the bone on each leg, making a hole into which you can put a hook. Be very careful not to cut the tendon. Hang the carcass up by its two hind legs. The legs should be spread-eagled and the carcass clear of the floor. Starting with a knife at the bunghole, cut along the top edge of the skin on each leg aiming toward the heel. Cut the skin clear around the leg just below the hook—again, be careful not to cut the tendon by which you are hanging the critter—and start cutting and peeling the skin away from the body. Done carefully, you should be able to do this without nicking either meat or skin. Leave as much fat and muscle on the carcass as possible. Experienced skinners—my wife included—do a cow, goat, deer, or horse in 10 minutes or less. First timers may take as much as an hour. Survivors are generally quick studies. Next time the process won’t be so time consuming and bewildering.
After skinning is complete, examine the inside of the carcass for anything that looks like guts that you may have missed the first time. Kidneys, especially, have a habit of hiding in the fat immediately under the ribs. Saw down the middle of the carcass from neck to bunghole along the backbone. Cut through the center of the bone, not the meat on either side of the backbone. Halving these critters is probably the most physically demanding part of the process, but necessary if they are to be chilled out properly. Wash the critter down, preferably with cold running water from a hose, if you have it available. This is particularly important if there were punctured guts or stomach. If you do not have access to running water, try hanging in the cold open air. In hot Africa, we hung meat overnight to chill, but had to eat it or jerk it the next day.
Cutting the critter up into much smaller “butcher shop”-sized pieces of meat is controversial. Everybody has his own way of doing it. Certainly I have butchered thousands of critters and I do not believe I have ever cut two out exactly the same. Wash down the floor at this point to deal with the debris and blood and keep the area tidy. The critter will continue to bleed some, but this blood on the wet floor can be dealt with later.
Look at the butcher-shop schematic above for ideas regarding various cuts of meat that can be taken from a halved carcass.
Everything down to goat- and dog-sized critters is handled in much the same fashion. Rabbits, cats, and rat-sized animals are much quicker and easier to process. I have often, for example, skinned and gutted five rabbits in 10 minutes. But I have been doing this work since I was 11.
Smaller animals are always skinned first and then stripped of entrails. Cut off the head unless it is a mink or coon-type critter for which the skin is saved. Hang it spread-eagled by the hind legs. Cut from the bung to the top of the legs, through the skin, along the top edge. Carefully cut and peel the skin down over the head in one great tube, resulting in what the trade calls a “case-skinned critter.” Other methods are workable, but this one is as simple and easy for beginners as it gets.
The entrails are exposed and removed by cutting up from the top of the rib cage through the body wall to the bung. Simply strip everything out that looks like guts. Be certain to look up clear into the chest cavity for the heart and lungs. Left inside, they can quickly sour the meat.
How to dress poultry? Most neophyte survivors take the simple expedient of summarily pulling the weak skin from the bird by grasping and tugging on the attached feathers. Professionally, birds are almost always plucked, leaving the skin—which most people consider tasty and nutritious—intact. In my opinion, birds destined for the smokehouse are best left with the skin on.
Plucking is fairly easy when done correctly. Heat water to between 140 and 150 degrees for such birds as chickens, turkeys, quail, pheasant, and grouse, and between 160 and 170 degrees for ducks and geese. Add a small bit of detergent to the water to dissolve the oil in the feathers and allow the hot water to soak in. Time of dipping depends on the size of the bird, with a minute being about right for chickens. Swish the bird up and down, allowing the heat to penetrate to the skin. Test by pulling a few feathers. When the bird is perfectly dipped, the feathers will pull easily from the body and legs, though you will have to tug a bit on the long wing feathers. If the bird is dipped for too short a time, or if the water is not hot enough, the feathers will not come out. If the bird is dipped for too long, or if the water is too hot, the skin cooks and comes off with the feathers.
After plucking, singe off remaining hair-like feathers (pinfeathers) on the carcass. Cut a small hole in the rear of the bird—two or three fingers for small birds and fist-size for larger birds—through which the entrails can be removed. Slide your fingers in over the top of the guts and pull the whole mass out in a lump, going back in to probe along the back ribs and up into the chest cavity to be sure you have all the pieces. Be careful of the bile sac on the liver—puncturing it will allow the green liquid to spill, souring the meat. Salvage the heart, liver, and gizzard. The bile sac can be cut or peeled away and thrown away with the guts. The easiest way to deal with the gizzard is just to cut off the two protruding ends where the meat is, taking care not to puncture the inner sac containing the stones, which is tossed with the guts. There is also a plump sac called the crop that is between the neck and the top of the chest cavity. If full, you can find it easily. Approach it from the neck when you retrieve the windpipe. If you are careful and don’t puncture it, it all comes out in one neat piece; puncture it and you get seeds, grass, bugs, or whatever the critter was eating all over the meat. All birds have crops, although they are less well developed in ducks and geese. When pulling the windpipe, be sure to get the larynx.
First-timers are usually shocked and discouraged to discover how little edible meat remains of a once large, plump critter.
PRESERVING MEAT
Processing now depends on what prior preparations have been made and what tools and materials are in your inventory. The simplest way, of course, is to crank up the generator to power a freezer. But we already know there won’t be sufficient generators for all city survivors.