Alsatian

"I thought of a pronghorn hunt, but ain't they like eatin' goat?"

Au contraire mon ami! Pronghorn can be very tastey indeed. I think it is like any wild game meat -- if you don't take care of it properly before the kill, after the kill, and when you cook the meat, the food on the table won't be very good. "Before the kill?" In the case of pronghorn, I have been told that a pronghorn that has been run hard immediately before the kill -- for example when pot shotting stampeded pronghorn from a recently parked truck -- will not taste very good because the meat is full of adrenaline or the meat has been heated up too much from the running. The proper kill is to stalk the pronghorn and make a clean kill without running the animal. With pronghorn it is important to field dress the animal immediately and to begin cooling the carcasse quickly. I have read that some recommend putting a couple of bags of ice inside the body cavity immediately after field dressing to accelerate this cooling process. In my case, my son and I took two pronghorns on successive days. In both cases the animals were field dressed immediately and were skinned, quartered, and on ice within three hours. I butchered my son's pronghorn, a buck, after a day on ice. I butcherd my pronghorn, a doe, after just a few hours on ice. After butchering -- cutting into meal sized pieces and wrapping first with plastic wrap and then in freezer paper -- the meat was put into ice chests with ample dry ice to flash freeze the meat and keep it frozen. I put about 1/4" thickness of newspaper on top of the dry ice in the bottom of the coolers and 1/4" thickness of newpaper on top of the meat and below the dry ice at the top of the coolers, thereby keeping an insulative barrier between the meat and the dry ice.I've been told not to leave the dry ice in direct contact with your packaged meat, I don't know why. I then taped the lip of the coolers substantially air tight closed with duct tape. Of course, this would not be an air tight seal, but more to the point a seal that would attenuate the rate of off-gassing of CO2 and therefore slowing the warm-up of the CO2.Cooking methods include the usual treatments for good venison. Roasts should be cooked with moist heat for about 3 hours on moderate to low-moderate heat.

My family -- wife, two daughters, my son, and I -- all loved the pronghorn meat from our pronghorns taken in Wyoming unit 23. My wife and oldest daughter liked the pronghorn better than my venison that I bring home from Oklahoma. They like the delicate, subtle spiciness that they detected in the pronghorn meat.

So . . . don't count the pronghorn hunt out. It is a lot of fun, physically a piece of cake, success rates are high (90% in Wyoming, I think I've read), and the meat is tastey.

Not to discourage your elk hunting dream, but you have to really understand the physical challenge involved and prepare if this is definitely in your future. I went on my first elk hunt -- DIY in San Juan mountains of Colorado -- in 2006. I'm 6' 2" weighed about 205 LBS when I started the hunt (lost 12 LBS in 7 days in the field -- 2 days before the season began scouting/setting up camp). I was running 4.5 miles every other day at 5.5 MPH with 6 degree slope dialed in on the tread mill and strength exercises on days I didn't run including lunges and squats and others. It was a big struggle and physically challenging for me . . . and I have been to the mountains a number of times before, and specifically backpacked into my exact area in July before the hunt. I will prepare even more next time (more lunges and squats, my aerobic conditioning was OK). I didn't take an elk, so I didn't have the even greater physical challenge of packing out about 200 LBS of elk meat on my back from about 4 miles into the woods -- 4 loads of 50 LBS each load (that would be about 32 miles all totalled, 16 miles fully loaded). Of course, it isn't just packing the meat out, it would be skinning and taking the meat off the carcass while it lays on the ground -- a process that must take several hours and must be tiring in and of itself; and it would be cutting up these 200 LBS of meat into meal sized portions and wrapping it back at camp, as I butcher my meat myself. And this is at elevations from 10,500' up to 12,000'. Notwithstanding my failure, I loved the elk hunting, I put in for a preference point this year, and I have OK from my wife to go in 2008 (the trick will be finding the money, my son enters college August 2008, but I remain hopeful). I made a lot of mistakes and hope to be a much better hunter next time by having recognized these mistakes.

Frankly, if it is something that you want to do, it ought to be worth investing the time, trouble, and sweat to get into the appropriate physical condition. A wonderful and valuable benefit of this elk hunting aspiration is that you will be much healthier and feel much more energetic and have a much higher quality of life by getting into condition. Do consult your doctor about whether tough physical conditioning is OK with your heart condition. It is worth pointing out that you won't get in good shape overnight, this will be a long term project. Take it easy getting started, and increase your intensity slowly. Pulled muscles or other injuries that come from pushing too hard too fast will slow your progress more than just being patient. You may wish to initially focus on losing weight, but later you will want to focus more on physical conditioning, particularly on endurance. For any given 15 minute time interval elk hunting, the maximum power exerted isn't going to be a big deal. The challenge comes from keeping it going for 10 hours for 5 days in a row. Endurance and stamina. Good luck if you choose this path. If you aren't sure you are ready for this kind of commitment or the doctor puts the kibosh on this program, do seriously consider the pronghorn hunt idea.