The Republican journal., 1908-11-12
Bear Meat And Venison.
Walter I. Neal, Names Game Warden,
Tells Just How They Should be Cook
ed to Make Them Palatable.
New York Sunday Herald

blank game warden, anu uoWH duouI
Bangor his duties are those of register
of vital statistics for the large game OF
Eastern Maine.
The stamp of "Walter l. Neal, game
warden" attached to any tag of deer or
moose or bear or game BIRDS gong tnrougn
Bangor toward the west is certlfcate
to the world that the game was legally
killed in open season, and that the terms
of the law have been complied with re-
garding manner of tagging and making
shipment o
Game that does not bear the Neal 80.
X" is subject to forfeiture and the ship
pers may be fined or imprisoned, or both
fined and imprisoned, according to the
findings of the court.
During October, November and Deem
Der of every year for the last fifteen open
seasons Walter Neal has visited from
three to five incoming trains every day
and inspected from ten to more than two
hundred and fifty carcasses. While on
duty he has certified to more than eighty
thousand carcasses of deer, to seven
thousand bodies of dead moose and num-
~.berless bears, caribou and lynx.
THE GAME wARDEN's WORK.
If all the bodies of game animals which
} iSNNANN
in box cars until every car was filled to
the roof they would form continuous
train reaching from Bangor to Newbury-
port about one hundred and sixty miles;
a mass of dead game five times as large
as all the game living in the United
States would make if it were slain and
loaded into cars today.
While Walter Neal has controlled the
shipment of more venlSOn and moose
meat than any other man living on earth
TODAY. and probably more than any other
man who has ever lived, he is not enthu-
siastic over his record, saying he is SIM
DIV game warden who has worked tor
salary, and who has been continued IN
employment because he has performed
his work to the satisfaction OF the Game
Commissioners, and with the approval OF
the returning hunters, thousands OF
whom meet him in business way every
wear. He is not famed Shot with rife
or shotgun and has no wonderful tales to
relate of the hunting trips he has taken
or the hardships he has endured. he is
a short, stout and very fieshy man, fifty
wears old. who cannot walk two miles in
the rough woods without closing his
wind" on account Of his surplus adipose
tissue.
BEST COOK OF GAME MEAL
There is one branch of the hunters
calling that interests him more than all
Others. and about which he is glad to
talk all day and all night. His chosen
speciality, in which he rules supreme and
is admitted to be the only master, lies IN
the fact that he is the most accomplished
cook of venison, moose and bear meat
that lives. Those who have eaten venl-
nv, aool,o1 nv, tho Mail opthnd will never
consent to have it served after any other
fashion, and should he ever lose his job
as game warden at 81, 800 year there
are scores of wealthy men who stand
ready to pay him from $4,000 to 5000 a
year as meat cook.
AS rule, ways of cooking game differ
from one another in variations as to the
amount and kinds of seasoning employed,
in the quantities of fat and in the slow
ness or fury of the fire used in the pro-
cess. 1t is in these details that Neal
comes out strongly and with emphasis.
He has. for example, one recipe for cook
ing venison, from which no money con-
sideration could induce him to change.
He has also recipe for roasting bears
meat, which makes it tenderer end
sweeter and more palatable than any
roast pig that was ever served.
Duf1lg CAM IRE Chat De1oie q NoLCli
or more hunters at Southwin Dam, at
the beginning of open season this year,
the skilled warden Invested himself of
cooking information as follows:
THE vENIsoN RECIPE.
There is but one way of cooking veni-
son steak-there never was any other
way. Get al old-time cast iron spider
that is thick and big and heavy. Put it
into blazing fire until it is white hot
not red hot, but white-and then place
the white hot spider on a very hot stove,
cut off thick slices of round venison steak
and lab them against the blazing spider.
Use no butter or fat of any kind-just
let the raw and cold meat lie close against
the raw and hot iron and sizzle and smoke
and burn and smell until it is crusted
over with animal charcoal quarter OF
an inch deep and until it smells like an
old feather bed that is burning.
Nov flop the round of steak over and
repeat the process on the other side, by
which time the spider is ready for another
round Throw the hot steak upon large
platter, scrape off the burned surface
slightly, score the meat deeply with
thin knife and then pile on the butter;
heap it up until it melts and runs down
and overfiows every pore aud opening in
the meat and almost floats the steak
away.
After this has been done there is
nothing left to do except to eat the steak,
and me- s.. anybody knows how to do this
without recipe. Bear in mind always
that there never was and never will be
any other way to cook venison steak
and cook it fit to eat.
with bear meat the method is con-
siderably different. The flesh is porous
and streaked with loose fat, so it re-
sembles fresh pork spare rib more than
anything else. You cannot fry or
smother or broil bear meat with any
satisfaction, but when a spare rib cut is
taken off close to the backbone and the
bake pan is paved with slices of fat salt
pork, with peeled onions and halved
sweet potatoes standing about in groups
to catch the fat, a man should make
good job of it at baking bears meat,
provided the cooking is done slowly and
the basting is performed often.
1.-The fresh water mussels of Maine
are more valuable for their glossy shells
than they are for their pearls. In the
same way baked bears meat is more
priced for the stuffing and sweet potatoes
and onions that are cooked in its company
than for the intrinsic worth Of the meat,
which in old animals is coarse and fatty
and favored with wild tastes and odors