Bison Harvest

Hello everyone,
I've been lingering here for sometime and finally decided to sign up and start contributing to the forum. My wife and I have been practicing a lot of permaculture stuff that we read on the forums. Thanks you.

I was lucky enough this year to harvest a free range bison besides the ton of meat and a beautiful robe to use I made a salve.

A old trapper told me if I bust up the joints on animals and simmer them down to get the fat, that fat is great medicine. Arthrihitis, sore muscles, scraps cuts and bruises.

So I did what he recommended. I melted in coconut oil and thieves oil for there healing properties. The results were amazing I very nice smelling salve that's leaves the skin feel refreshed.

Anybody else out there have any info on this?

I'm very thankful for the harvest of the Bison this year!

Wow...congratulations on the bison....and I envy your wood cook stove I spent a lot of years cooking and canning on one and miss it, especially over the winter.

Welcome to permies!

Thanks Judith for the welcome!

We love our cook stove! It's the heart of our house. My little one sits on the oven door and eats breakfast on a cold morning. We cook, heat our water, bake, and even make electricity on it using tegs I've been playing with. One piece of wood goes along way.

The cream I made from the Bison works well my wife can't stop using it! The meat is very nice and I can't wait to get the rug back to use on our cabin floor.

So thankful for the opportunity to harvest such a wonderful creature😀

Congrats on the Buffalo! What a monstrous animal! I haven't had the chance to go hunting for Bison but it's on the top of the list! I never would have thought to make a Salve from it. Great idea!

Thanks, been trying to get out this winter haven't had a chance yet.  To many projects on the go.  We're on our last jar of bison suave.  It was really popular and got used up and well loved.  I can pass the recipe on if your interested?

hau Byron, there are many medicines that can be had from the tatanka, the salve you mention is just one, a very good one.

Redhawk

Byron Gagne wrote:I can pass the recipe on if your interested?

Yes please!  Do you think it would work with white tail deer?  

Hau Mike, yes that recipe should work with deer as well.  We use tatanka, all deer species and elk to make that medicine salve.

Redhawk

Yes I agree any animal would do.  The neighbors even used there cows they butchered to make a sauve.  I used the fat from the smashed up joints melted in with coconut oil for the creamy part.  I added thieves oil tincture for smell and such.  I think the key is to render the joints down knees and hip bones to extract all the good lubricants out of the animal.  Let me know how it goes!

Thanks guys, I'll give it a shot this fall.  

Sorry for the newbie questions, but if I have some knee and hip joints from a deer and they have some meat and other tidbits on them, do I have to remove all those tidbits or will they fall to the bottom of the pot?  We're after the joints here, not the marrow from any old bone, right?  I'm assuming you smash them and then simmer them in water?  Am I right in assuming that this is best done outdoors?  

We have thieves tincture so I'm good on that account.  And I'm assuming you just add enough coconut oil to make it a happy consistency?

Thanks!!

You will need to scrape the meat from the bone and joint.
We don't break the bones for this salve but that is because we make a different substance from broken bones (fatty marrow is rendered for a salve for wounds).

If you don't want to separate the two medicines you can speed up the first salve cook time by breaking them up, but you are mostly after the cartilage along with the fat globules instead of the marrow fat for that particular salve.

I cleaned the bones the best I could and then cooked the bones up.

I didn't get to fussy but rather scrapped the scraps into the hamburger pile.

After I skimmed of the fat the remaining broth I made soup with, added a few veggies and rice.  Of course after the bones were skimmed out through cheese cloth.

I broke all my bones open with a axe.  More surface area exposed to the hot water was my guess.  Was a really hard to do but I got it done.

Byron