Home Meat Curing

Trying to get back to our roots, my household has upped its involvement in home meat-processing projects in the last few years. Fall chicken processing, dove and pheasant hunting, whitetail deer hunting, plus aspirations to process lambs and eventually pork and cattle — just like my great-grandparents did on the farm where I was raised — means each year we get some of the best meat available, but it also means we receive a surplus of more and more local and wild meats.

With that abundance, the need arises to be more creative in the ways we preserve the meat and even use it. Just as a youngster growing up on a cattle ranch tires of the same steaks night after night, there’s only so much venison chili and meatloaf a guy can eat before the taste becomes all too familiar.

So last fall, I listened as intently as ever when my father-in-law talked about a yearly occurrence among his circle of friends — one day sometime after deer season a group of six or so people gather to make their own venison snack sticks,