SaltySailor
WKR
I’ve dealt with a good amount of moose over the years, I always do my own processing and the ribs have always been a real pain to deal with. In my game unit you have to remove rib meat on the bone, so the whole rack on both sides has to be taken out until processing. After hanging these on the camp meat pole for a few days then bringing home to hang in the garage while I begin processing the meat, the ribs always seem to dry out and become nothing more than dry shoe leather. After removing outside crust and silver-skin/sinew, we always ended up with little meat to show for our efforts. Last year I proclaimed that I was sick of it, and by golly, next season we will eat the ribs out at camp!
I had made this proclamation known to my hunting partners, and in prep for this one of them brought out a bunch of cinder blocks in his SxS bed to make a fire pit out of. It looked great and we were all excited to bring the first moose down.
A few days later, a fork horn ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was able to bring him down. I will always shoot the first legal animal I see, and a few shots into the boiler room tipped him over. The special part of this was my entire family was able to watch the whole thing unfold! The wife and my two youngest kids had never had the opportunity to see one get shot, so while it wasn’t the biggest moose by any means, it was probably my favorite moose to take so far. They even got to help in the process of breaking it down.
The next day I woke up and after a failed morning hunt to lure a bull down the mountain with a buddy, we got back to camp and I grabbed the ribs off the meat pole. As this was a small forkie, I thought there would be no better time than now to try this out. Luke and I took the ribs down to the creek and started cleaning them up.
Unfortunately for this occasion, I shot him twice behind his front shoulder, and both of these shots passed through and cracked ribs on either side. I lost the middle section of ribs due to bloodshot throughout the muscle fibers there, as you can see in the picture. But bloodshot ribs are better than a hit through one of the quarters, so we couldn’t be too sad. We trimmed gristle/bloodshot and grime off to chef quality (in our opinions), cut them down to manageable sections, and gave them a liberal washing in the creek.
I had made this proclamation known to my hunting partners, and in prep for this one of them brought out a bunch of cinder blocks in his SxS bed to make a fire pit out of. It looked great and we were all excited to bring the first moose down.
A few days later, a fork horn ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was able to bring him down. I will always shoot the first legal animal I see, and a few shots into the boiler room tipped him over. The special part of this was my entire family was able to watch the whole thing unfold! The wife and my two youngest kids had never had the opportunity to see one get shot, so while it wasn’t the biggest moose by any means, it was probably my favorite moose to take so far. They even got to help in the process of breaking it down.
The next day I woke up and after a failed morning hunt to lure a bull down the mountain with a buddy, we got back to camp and I grabbed the ribs off the meat pole. As this was a small forkie, I thought there would be no better time than now to try this out. Luke and I took the ribs down to the creek and started cleaning them up.
Unfortunately for this occasion, I shot him twice behind his front shoulder, and both of these shots passed through and cracked ribs on either side. I lost the middle section of ribs due to bloodshot throughout the muscle fibers there, as you can see in the picture. But bloodshot ribs are better than a hit through one of the quarters, so we couldn’t be too sad. We trimmed gristle/bloodshot and grime off to chef quality (in our opinions), cut them down to manageable sections, and gave them a liberal washing in the creek.
