What is Your Wild Game Worth?

We eat a lot of wild game around here, sometimes as often as four nights per week. We also raise our own beef and pork from time to time and do our own processing. But for those times when we aren't eating meat we harvested ourselves, we head to the grocery or local butcher shops. Know what? That stuff is expensive.

And that is just the standard supermarket meat department. Start getting into grass fed, organically raised meat (you know, the same conditions the deer you killed this year grew up in), and that price doubles or triples, reaching the $30 or more a pound range. It doesn't take long for the money saved by eating wild game to add up.

High prices aside, for most of us, that meat is worth a lot more than the money. Each carefully sealed package represents time spent doing what we love. They represent the weeks or months of preparation and work we put in before and after the actual hunt itself. They epitomize the joy we feel after a successful hunt, the comradery shared among friends and hunting partners.

When you serve wild game to your friends and family, you can take pride in knowing that the meat on your table was raised in pristine conditions, free of the chemicals, hormones, and antibiotics often found in domestically raised meat. Wild game is lower in fat and has higher levels of Omega 3 fatty acids than even the leanest beef and pork. Due to a lifelong diet of wild forage, game meats are higher in protein, iron, zinc and B vitamins than commercially raised meats.

In addition to the health benefits, wild game is absolutely delicious. Hunters aren't the only ones noticing how truly good it can be. Unique Proteins are a hot trend in top restaurants right now. Know what that usually means? Game meat. Be it venison burgers or elk steaks, restaurant chefs from around the nation are going wild, and are introducing a whole new crowd of people to the joys of wild game in the process. Keep an eye on menus when you go out to eat, they can be great sources for ideas when it comes to cooking at home. Encourage your non-hunting friends to try game meat when you go out together, it might just be the push they need to take up hunting themselves.

Hunting got its start as a way to procure meat and sustenance for the family. In its purest sense, it remains that today. Let us know what you think. Does the value of the meat from the game you take influence your decision to hunt?