# How much meat out of an Antelope



## wyogoob

How much meat can you get out of the average buck antelope? I'm pretty fussy about waste when it comes to butchering wild game and I would go broke cutting up wild game for a living. *

I got 50# of edible meat out of an average buck antelope!!


* 
Below are the weight break downs of an antelope that was shot in the base of the skull with a .44 mag. Handgun projectiles don't move very fast compared to most rifle bullets so there's just not a lot of trauma, not much loss of edible meat, associated with handgun bullets.
 
On antelope, or deer, I never cut the pelvis or the sternum out in the field. I "ring" the butt hole and pull the rectum out with the guts. I cut the diaphragm, reach up into the rib cage, cut the windpipe, and remove it with the heart and lungs. The cut in the antelope's belly is from the penile sheath up to the sternum ONLY. Less than 10 minutes and I'm done. Little, if any, dirt gets on the meat. So when I drag the animal out it ends up clean as a whistle. As soon as the animal hits home it gets hosed off clean, inside and out, for the traditional photo-op on the south side of the house.

 Here's my version of butchering a buck antelope at home:

Live weight = 110# (a guess)
Field dressed weight = 80# (another guess)
Pelvis and sternum were not cut in the field
2 frozen 1-gallon milk jugs of ice put in chest cavity after placing animal in vehicle
Skinned and quartered 1.5 hours after kill
Quarters, neck, and de-boned meat placed in 37° refrigerator 4 hrs after the kill.
Meat kept in refrigerator for 36 hours before cut and wrap.


Weight of skinned and partially processed animal = 69#:
> 26# - hind legs, including bone
> 13# - front leg, including bone
> 25# - de-boned loins and trimmings, including flank, rib cage and neck


Final weight of boneless meat, including the heart = 50#:
Roasts - packaged in netting
> 1 - front shoulder
> 1 - tenderloin(s)
> 2 - sirloin
6 pkgs - round steaks
2 pkgs - round steak stir fry
8 pkgs - chops
> 4 - loin
> 4 - rib
22# cubed meat - no fat, some sinew
> 7 quarts - bottled, garlic flavor
> 3 pints - bottled, red pepper flavor
11.5# trimmings - no fat or sinew 
1 - heart

Later, 6.5# of pork scraps was added to the 11.5# of trimmings for pepperoni sausage.

Bucks have more fat than doe antelope so the family pet gets trimmings that would just take way too long to clean-up&#8230;.no bloodshot meat though. 
Scraps for dog:
 5 neck bones (cooked and frozen)
 4# - trimmings with some fat and sinew, mostly from the rib cage (cooked and frozen)

For an informative PDF on butchering antelope see: 
www.wyomingextension.org/agpubs/pubs/B565R.pdf


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## GaryFish

Good Goat Grub Goob!


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## izzydog

Goob,
I will by your house on Saturday hopefully with a buck and a doe so you can turn mine into pictures that look just like that!:mrgreen: Truly impressive!


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## willfish4food

Awesome work Goob! 

I've always wondered the yield difference between "commercial" butchering and someone that has the time, patience and desire to save every scrap of meat for consumption. If your live weight and dressed weight guesses are accurate, you got about 20% more than any of the studies I've read about wild game yields. Granted you didn't have much if any loss to blood shot meat... And you seem to be super human when it comes to processing game.


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## wyogoob

izzydog said:


> Goob,
> I will by your house on Saturday hopefully with a buck and a doe so you can turn mine into pictures that look just like that!:mrgreen: Truly impressive!


Good luck, what area?

.


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## johnnycake

Very nice. My dad shot a buck fawn last Friday so I played around with it a bit more. We left one hind quarter whole bone in (I just opened the leg enough to dig out the lymph nodes and glands+silver skin removal), boned out the other hind, did bone in shoulder roasts, made two rack'o'lopes, 2 packages country style ribs, 2 baby back style, and then tenders and the rest of the back straps into steak packages. Pre butcher weight of the dressed carcass was 35lbs, meat packages (bone included as you can tell in a lot of it) weighed 22 lbs in the freezer. I love eating those babies! Really looking forward to the rack'o'lopes!


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## mtnrunner260

Well done and thanks for the article.


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## wyogoob

willfish4food said:


> Awesome work Goob!
> 
> I've always wondered the yield difference between "commercial" butchering and someone that has the time, patience and desire to save every scrap of meat for consumption. If your live weight and dressed weight guesses are accurate, you got about 20% more than any of the studies I've read about wild game yields. Granted you didn't have much if any loss to blood shot meat... And you seem to be super human when it comes to processing game.


Thank you.

I have no beef with commercial meat cutters as a whole and will use them if I am busy. At the moment I have the time to cut up an antelope "my way." I really do enjoy meat cutting and one of the main reasons is I don't have to do it for a living.


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## Dunkem

wyogoob said:


> Thank you.
> 
> I have no beef with commercial meat cutters as a whole and will use them if I am busy. At the moment I have the time to cut up an antelope "my way." I really do enjoy meat cutting and one of the main reasons is I don't have to do it for a living.


 :mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:


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## wyogoob

johnnycake said:


> Very nice. My dad shot a buck fawn last Friday so I played around with it a bit more. We left one hind quarter whole bone in (I just opened the leg enough to dig out the lymph nodes and glands+silver skin removal), boned out the other hind, did bone in shoulder roasts, made two rack'o'lopes, 2 packages country style ribs, 2 baby back style, and then tenders and the rest of the back straps into steak packages. Pre butcher weight of the dressed carcass was 35lbs, meat packages (bone included as you can tell in a lot of it) weighed 22 lbs in the freezer. I love eating those babies! Really looking forward to the rack'o'lopes!


Good job, you did good to get 22# out of a 35# field dressed fawn.

.


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## wyogoob

Here's an interesting video on antelope "gutless" method put out by the WY Game & Fish Department.






They call the process "quick quartering."

.


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## willfish4food

wyogoob said:


> I have no beef with commercial meat cutters as a whole and will use them if I am busy. At the moment I have the time to cut up an antelope "my way." I really do enjoy meat cutting and one of the main reasons is I don't have to do it for a living.


HA HA. "No Beef".

Seriously though, I don't have a problem with them either. If I didn't have time or didn't know how to process an animal, and I had the money to pay for it, I'd take an animal to a commercial place. But like you've alluded to in your posts, for them time is money. So they don't have the luxury of taking their time getting every last scrap.

Again Awesome post!! All you need to do is put the victory shot above the first picture, and something cooked up under the last picture, and you'd have the full cycle.


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## Nambaster

Hori Mori, 
If I used that quick quartering method on an animal like the State of Wyoming recommends I would be picking hair off of meat for days! I prefer to skin the entire animal and use the inner side of the hide as a tarp to keep the hair out of the meat. Everything that goes into my meat bag is just meat tendons or silver skin. When it gets to the butcher table I work out the fat, tendons, and silver skin.


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## wyogoob

willfish4food said:


> HA HA. "No Beef".
> 
> Seriously though, I don't have a problem with them either. If I didn't have time or didn't know how to process an animal, and I had the money to pay for it, I'd take an animal to a commercial place. But like you've alluded to in your posts, for them time is money. So they don't have the luxury of taking their time getting every last scrap.
> 
> Again Awesome post!! All you need to do is put the victory shot above the first picture, and something cooked up under the last picture, and you'd have the full cycle.


That's a great idear. Are you a magazine publisher? 

.


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## wyogoob

johnnycake said:


> Very nice. My dad shot a buck fawn last Friday so I played around with it a bit more. We left one hind quarter whole bone in (I just opened the leg enough to dig out the lymph nodes and glands+silver skin removal), boned out the other hind, did bone in shoulder roasts, made two rack'o'lopes, 2 packages country style ribs, 2 baby back style, and then tenders and the rest of the back straps into steak packages. Pre butcher weight of the dressed carcass was 35lbs, meat packages (bone included as you can tell in a lot of it) weighed 22 lbs in the freezer. I love eating those babies! Really looking forward to the rack'o'lopes!


yeah, cool

Back in the late 80s southwest WY residents could get over the counter up to 8 doe/fawn tags; non-residents 5 tags, I think. The southern one-half of Wyoming looked like the Serengeti for all the antelope, and deer. We shot a lot of fawn antelope back then; game management it was called. For us it was a way to try out new guns, new bullets, different load recipes, and some long-range shooting....and of course to feed a household. Nothing went to waste.

I think the average shear value (toughness factor) for antelope meat is better than beef and fawns were/are like mush. To me fawn antelope have a strong gamey flavor and I would cut fawns up into salami meat or large single muscle-group roasts. And like you, we cooked our share of fawn antelope legs whole.

.


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## johnnycake

Sure helps when you keep shoulder bones, rear bones, and rib bones on the meat! All we threw out was the spine (half), pelvis, and the neck bones.

Gamey? Really? We've probably shot ten fawn antelope and never had a gamey one. As for tenderness, with fawn lopes I will cook medium so that they have some texture to the bite.


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## izzydog

wyogoob said:


> Good luck, what area?
> 
> .


I'll be in 100


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## wyogoob

izzydog said:


> I'll be in 100


I have an area 100 doe/fawn but probably won't fill it.

I'll be out amongst the antelope while sage grouse hunting this weekend.

.


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## 35whelen

i got 40# off my doe last year


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## wyogoob

I got a doe antelope this week - 37# of meat.


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## GaryFish

Thought you weren't going to fill that tag Goob?


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## wyogoob

GaryFish said:


> Thought you weren't going to fill that tag Goob?


Uh....yeah, pick a response:

A) It's called "Game Management" and I'm assisting the Wyoming G&F manage the antelope herd.
B) A small herd of pronghorns were scaring away my sage grouse.
C) My grandkids wanted some antelope jerky.
D) The doe/buck ratio in area 94 is too high.
E) The antelope was going to be eaten by a wolf anyway.

I still have one more antelope tag I'm not going to fill, so stay tuned.


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## wyogoob

The 2003 study www.*wyoming*extension.org/agpubs/pubs/B565R.pdf by the University of Wyoming on the antelope carcass is very interesting. Here's an excerpt:

_*Flavor evaluations*
The influence of skinning on the flavor of antelope meat is shown in Table 5. The averages show a slight preference for roast from the side skinned the day of kill. However, differences between animals were not consistent. The evidence indicated that skinning antelope five to ten hours after harvest does not improve the meat flavor to a very large extent. It should be noted that flavor scores for roasts from both sides were low. Further research is needed to determine if skinning immediately after harvest has a beneficial effect upon flavor. However, research with lamb flavor and the data which follow make it seem unlikely that immediate skinning would have a beneficial effect upon flavor. In addition it is unlikely that flavor differences between boneless and semi-boneless cuts exist for properly chilled and trimmed carcasses. Nevertheless, blood left next to the bones of semi-boneless cuts could result in objectionable flavor, especially in slowly chilled carcasses.

Several attempts were made to associate the odor which is present on antelope hides with flavor. Beef roasts which were aged next to antelope hides and beef roasts that were wrapped in antelope hides overnight did not possess antelope flavor after cooking. In addition, beef roasts cooked with sawdust from antelope bones, beef roasts cooked in the presence of antelope fat, and beef roasts cooked in the presence of antelope lean did not possess flavor different from control roasts. The odor associated with antelope hides during aging and with antelope fat, bone, or lean during cooking was not transferred to beef roasts.

The finding that the odor associated with antelope hides is not in the odor of cooked antelope meat is partially supported by tests on domestic boar meat. The objectionable odor of cooked boar meat when it is warm is not the odor that arises from the contents of a preputial sac or that of an older boar immediately after death (Journal of Animal Science 32: 849).
_
I have an older version of this study, a hard-copy, and much longer version, from the the pre-internet days. Again, these blind taste tests also found that removing the hide from antelope didn't improve the flavor of the meat. They also wrapped antelope skins on beef roasts with no ill effects to the flavor of the beef roasts.

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## Critter

Did the remove the hair from the antelope skin before they wrapped the beef roast and cooked it or did they remove the hair?


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## wyogoob

Critter said:


> Did the remove the hair from the antelope skin before they wrapped the beef roast and cooked it or did they remove the hair?


I don't think so. I recommend you read the article. If you look at the sketches in the article they show how they did the tests on the antelope. The antelope was split longways; one half had the skin on(with the hair of course) and the other half was skinned.

.


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## wyogoob

Here's the summary of the article from The University of Wyoming Animal Sciences Meat Laboratory mentioned above:

_*Summary*
Antelope should be cooled as soon after evisceration as possible to prevent bacterial growth. Skinning in the field is not recommended unless it is necessary to aid in the rapid cooling of a carcass. The need for aging antelope carcasses beyond chilling is questionable. Eliminating aging will help prevent bacterial growth and make the texture of the lean more acceptable. Approximately 57 percent of the field-dressed carcass is semi-boneless trimmed retail cuts while 48 percent is boneless product. If an antelope is shot in the legs or shoulders or if more meat is left on discarded bones, the yield will be lower. The odor of antelope hide does not affect cooked meat flavor. Proper care and processing are the best ways to avoid objectionable flavor.

.
_


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## wyogoob

Weights of 2016 antelope:

Area 94, adult doe shot thru both hind legs: 24 lbs

Area 95, young buck shot in front shoulder: 35 lbs

Area 100, adult doe shot thru front shoulder: 30 lbs

It's worth noting that I usually try to sneak up close enough to antelope to shoot them at the base of the neck, even with a handgun. This year I went with an iron-sighted rifle in ranges of 180 to 260 yards and, for whatever reason, aimed for the front shoulders on all 3 antelope.

Also, I used Sierra Pro Hunter bullets. They're explosive if they hit a bone and ruin a lot of meat.



.


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## DallanC

The thought of pronghorn 6 loins dry aging in a fridge makes my mouth water... :mrgreen:



wyogoob said:


> Also, I used Sierra Pro Hunter bullets. They're explosive if they hit a bone and ruin a lot of meat.
> 
> .


Back when I was younger and first married (ie: Poor) Prohunters and GameKings were all I shot and I had the same experience. When we got to the point my wallet wasn't always empty we upgraded to "premium" bullets, Speer GrandSlams. They were about the cheapest "premium" bullet out there, but they did work, and held together way better than ProHunters.

Thank goodness we arrived at a point in life we can afford Partitions, Accubonds and even a Bearclaw or two. I still have alot of remaining boxes of Prohunters... some from as far back as 1986, we tend to shoot them more as plinkers lately along with GameKings.

Next generation of kids might not even know what a ProHunter or GameKing is... someone will probably invent a iBullet or something like that that becomes the "in thing" in some new wizbang caliber everyone has to have, and of course it needs a 3 letter acronym to really be popular.

-DallanC


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## Karl

My dream hunt is an antelope hunt somewhere. I know they are lean. Thanks for the breakdown.


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## DallanC

Karl said:


> My dream hunt is an antelope hunt somewhere. I know they are lean. Thanks for the breakdown.


Bring ice.

-DallanC


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## wyogoob

DallanC said:


> The thought of pronghorn 6 loins dry aging in a fridge makes my mouth water... :mrgreen:
> 
> Back when I was younger and first married (ie: Poor) Prohunters and GameKings were all I shot and I had the same experience. When we got to the point my wallet wasn't always empty we upgraded to "premium" bullets, Speer GrandSlams. They were about the cheapest "premium" bullet out there, but they did work, and held together way better than ProHunters.
> 
> Thank goodness we arrived at a point in life we can afford Partitions, Accubonds and even a Bearclaw or two. I still have alot of remaining boxes of Prohunters... some from as far back as 1986, we tend to shoot them more as plinkers lately along with GameKings.
> 
> Next generation of kids might not even know what a ProHunter or GameKing is... someone will probably invent a iBullet or something like that that becomes the "in thing" in some new wizbang caliber everyone has to have, and of course it needs a 3 letter acronym to really be popular.
> 
> -DallanC


Yeah. Like you said I'm using Pro Hunters for target practice because they are cheap. Also they are close in shape and BC to my favorite big game bullet, the Partition.

Never killed anything with them so I thought I'd give them a try........and I grabbed the wrong box of shells. :grin:

.


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## wyogoob

Bump


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## CPAjeff

I ended up with 46 pounds off the buck I killed this year. 46 pounds of sheer heaven!!


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## wyogoob

CPAjeff said:


> I ended up with 46 pounds off the buck I killed this year. 46 pounds of sheer heaven!!


That's a big pronghorn!


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## CPAjeff

wyogoob said:


> That's a big pronghorn!


Yeah, he was a little on the chunky side - kinda like me!!  The buck was quartering to me and I slipped the Barnes right in the crease of the neck/shoulder and the bullet exited behind the offside shoulder. Not a lot of meat loss. We had antelope steaks for lunch on Sunday . . . so good!


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## cowboy

Good goat!!!


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