Some high-school biology classes require you to dissect a frog. In Alaska, the stakes — and the steaks — are a lot bigger.
The following video, shot at Chugiak High School, shows freshman science students field-dressing a bull moose. Well, mostly field-dressing it: The animal had already been gutted before being transported to the school.
Warning: If you can’t stand the sight of a dissected frog, you might want to skip the video. It’s not gruesome — no guts, remember? — but it’s graphic.
Chugiak is an unincorporated community about 20 miles north of Anchorage. Technically it’s part of the municipality of Anchorage, but both it and nearby Eagle River have their own identities (and zip codes). One of the Chugiak High School’s science teachers decided to go beyond preserved (or plastic) frogs to teach, uh, gross anatomy.
My guess is that the students had a chance to self-select, since no one is screaming “Eeeewwww” or looking green around the gills. Anyone who didn’t want to participate could no doubt sit in the office or a study hall and work on an alternate assignment.
My other guess is that at least some of these teens have done this before, because their own families have a hunting tradition. A good-sized moose can provide up to 500 pounds of meat, to say nothing of the bones that could be cut up and boiled for broth if you wanted to go to the trouble.
Personally, I consider this class to be what my dad would have called “a useful life skill.” While I understand that some students (especially the vegetarian and vegan ones) would not want to take part, knowing where your food comes from — and knowing how to get it onto the plate — is a gift.
They might decide never to hunt, just as they may never play volleyball again after high-school gym class. But if they choose to get some of their food from hunting, or if a neighbor who hunts offers a moose quarter, then they’ll know what to do once the meat is in their hands.
Readers: Is game meat a part of your diet?
I wish I had had this course in high school. I butchered my first moose using an old edition of Joy of Cooking that had drawings of how to do it to a steer. I was so proud of my results and only after a lot of experience did I look back and realize that I wasted a lot of meat. (The first moose was a road kill and I worked for a non-profit that was allowed to get the meat if we did the butchering and cleaned up the road. We were mostly a young bunch of employees and I was the only one willing to take on the chore the day the troopers called to say we were next on the list. List? What list? But if we didn’t do it, we would be taken off the list and we needed the meat. I think the troopers knew I was an idiot when I showed up wearing an all white outfit. I had seen butchers at Safeway dressed in white, so I thought that was what you did…) This was over 40 years ago—God, I am old!
What a story! Thanks for sharing it.
I wish game meat were a much bigger part of my diet, given the amount of venison on the hoof (aka Eastern white-tailed deer) that’s roaming around my neighborhood and making vegetable gardening next to impossible. And I think this moose class is a grand idea. I wish that deer classes were taught all over the U.S. and Canadian East.
As it is, the one time I’ve had really local venison was a few years ago, when five deer jumped one neighbor couple’s wrought-iron back fence and only four made it. Fortunately, this happened (a) when the temp was just below freezing, and (b) in the yard of the one guy on this street who knows how to process a deer. So the rest of us ended up getting frozen packages of venison at the next Neighborhood Watch meeting!
You’d certainly know the deer had been fed well. Too well.
Well that’s not something you watch every day!! I was so impressed with this! That teacher and those kids did such a good job. So much to learn from that experiment. There are so very many life skills that could be and should be taught in schools but just never enough time for everything.
Thanks for sharing! Ann J
I am happy to see this. What a great life skill and tradition to have. I’ve grown up in a family of hunters in NE Pennsylvania and my husband continues to hunt and butcher his own white tail deer each year. We really enjoy eating venison. It’s a lot of work to process deer though.
Moose being the biggest member of the deer family, you can imagine how much work it is to process.
Here’s a joke for your husband:
Q. What’s the difference between beer nuts and deer nuts?
A. Beer nuts are $1.79 a package, and deer nuts are under a buck.
I just told him that one!!! Brhahaha, he got a chuckle out of that. Thank you for the morning laugh, great way to start the day.
Now he can share it with other hunters.
Thanks for the warning. I didn’t watch it. When I was around 10 or so, my parents took me to a chicken slaughterhouse. God knows why. I quit eating chicken, and then I figured out that cattle and pig slaughterhouses were worse. I’ve been vegetarian since! Still, I appreciate that many people depend on animal food, and game hunting isn’t at all like factory “farming”.
Fantastic thing for high schoolers to learn — and MUCH more useful than the dates of various European wars. Wishing more “educators” would spend time teaching kids about how to navigate real life. How many kids think chickens come in plastic-wrapped pieces?
What a great idea/lesson!