How to Eat A Damn Moose

BY OWEN MORRIS

Shortly after Sarah Palin was announced as the Republican vice presidential candidate, I started searching for all the pictures information I could find on her. I was particularly interested to see that Palin likes to claim her favorite food is moose stew.

First, I have nothing against stew but I do not know a person under 75 years of age who claims stew as their favorite meal. In fact, I don’t know anybody over 75 either. Stew is a good dish but it’s a side-course dish. To each their own.

How do you eat a moose? (The answer to that is one bite at a time.) Surely you don’t put all the moose into the stew, so what do you do with the rest of it?

I found answers an article on Outdoor Canada called The Edible Moose. A 1,000-pound moose will have around 650 pounds of meat. From my limited hunting and butchering knowledge, it seems as if butchering a moose is basically like butchering a very large deer. The tenderest meat is on the loin, near the spine and hind. The worst parts are the ones that go into stew.

Small pieces, trimmings and boned necks, ribs, shoulder cuts and parts of the round steak section (toward the back of the beast) are great for sausage, stew and ground meat… not needed are about 40 pounds of lower legs and hooves (unless you’re interested in making thin soup or glue)

After reading the article, it’s tough to figure out why anyone would voluntarily eat moose. According to the writer, “Moose, like all members of the deer family, scratch out a fairly tough existence.” This makes the meat especially tough. But if you’ve grown up in the wilderness eating Gorp, Glop and Glue Stew, moose stew probably doesn’t taste that bad.