Peppering your Meat

Hunting the early season can be some of the best hunting of the year here in Utah. We always put in for the Muzzleloader season, which typically runs for 8 days at the end of September. Since we are in Utah it is either going to be blazing hot or freezing cold. There is never any in between and if you don’t like the weather wait 10 minutes, it will change!

One thing we have always struggled with on years where it is warm is the flies. They are so sticky that time of year and I swear every fly in the state of Utah finds our harvest before we do. Game bags help but there are still a bunch of flies on the outside of the bag after we apply it. We have tried double bagging, not rinsing, hanging it inside, pretty much any trick we found and nothing helped.

Then we heard about peppering your deer. Pepper you ask? That’s right, regular old ground black pepper! It did the trick! It even helped keep the bees away! The best part is, the pepper just washes off and doesn’t change the taste of the meat.

To pepper a deer, or any animal, you of course need to harvest one. That’s the hard part, then get them skinned. We hang ours head down but you can hang or lay however you like. Next rinse the animal really good. This not only washes off any hair or dirt on the meat but it also cools it down, which if it is hot, it will help tremendously! Now you can either pepper the deer before you put on the game bag or after, total preference. We pepper before and dust a little on after the game bag is on. Just to double up. If you are out in the field quartering, you can pepper in the field before bagging them as well!

The trick is to pepper while the animal is still wet from rinsing or right after skinning and quartering in the field. Just dump some ground black pepper into your hands and then rub it all over. A light coating will do, you can always add more later. And that’s it! Easy way to keep the flies off that doesn’t ruin the meat! Happy hunting!

By ReelCamo Girl ProStaff member Chelsie Wilkey