After harvesting an animal the most important thing to a hunter should be getting the meat from the field to the freezer. This can be quite a chore on some hunts, but thanks to a company called Wild Game Guardian this task is now easier and safer. Citric acid has been used in the past as a similar solution to save meat from spoiling, and WGG has citric acid as a main ingredient, along with malic acid, tartaric acid, and sodium acid sulfate. The difference with WGG is it comes as tablets that are very lightweight and easy to pack, along with an empty spray bottle. Once an animal is harvested a couple of the tablets are dissolved in clean water and then the solution is sprayed onto the meat. This creates a crust on the meat that prevents the growth of bacteria, even in warmer temperatures where unprotected meat would spoil. WGG can also be applied to capes and hides to provide a short-term substitute to salt to prevent the hair from slipping.

In just ten days Justin and I will be headed to Nevada for a mule deer hunt. We will most likely be taking some of this product into the backcountry with us. If there was just one of us hunting it wouldn’t be necessary since we could just head out right away after getting an animal. With two of us hunting the plan is to hopefully get one animal down early in the week-long hunt and apply WGG to the quartered out meat. This way we can together while the second person tries to fill their tag, instead of taking a day to pack the one deer to town. Once the second deer is down or the hunt is over the first deer will be boned to reduce the weight and both boned out deer and camp will be packed out the final day of the hunt. Doing this way will also save at least one of us from walking the round trip from where we will be hunting to the trailhead and back, which will probably be about a 15-20 mile trip on this hunt.

-Ethan Starck
starckbros@adventurousbowhunter.com