How much biltong / dry wors from a blue wildebeest?

[pblaauw]

As per my hunting story post, I've never shot a blue before. The carcass at the butcher was 76kg. Went to fetch the meat today and sorely disappointed. Wet biltong cuts came to 14kg's? We did keep the fillets and the sirloins whole, but I would have thought there would be more meat on a blue.

Anyone with more experience that can let me know if this is a true reflection, or if the butcher took too much to grind up for dry wors?

[414gates]

From the animals I'm familiar with, an adult male in good condition should be skinned and gutted at around 140kg, a female at 100kg, of which at least half is meat.

At 76kg, was yours an adult ? Around half of that is meat.

How many kilos of fillets and sirloin ?

[pblaauw]

Sirloins were around 3kg, fillets in total 1kg... It was an adult cow, not the biggest I've ever seen, but hunting is awesome when you've been under ANC 'Stasi' lock-down for way longer than any other democracy.

[knipmes]

The quality of biltong depends on the quality of the meat, the cuts, etc The shoulder meat makes for poor biltong. Full of sinews and not good for old peoples teeth. Keep that in mind when you look at the amount of biltong you get from a animal.

[Sean KZN]

Ja but there is dry wors as well, no need to be fussy there. Then butcher is going to add at least fat, maybe even some pork or beef and spices. So should gain some kilos there.
Normally the ones I have used give a detailed breakdown of what went where, even down to packaging costs.

[414gates]

18 kg from a bw cow is a bit skimpy. Don't use that source again.

[DeVilliers]

Sounds a bit light. 2 years ago a BWB cow I shot was 74kg on the hook. 14kg wet drywors, and probably another 18 or so biltong. Can't remember exactly, but I know biltong was more than wors.

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[Bonedoc]

14kg wet biltong from a 76kg carcass seems right, esp if you kept sirloins/fillets whole. You are left with only the two hindquarters for biltong, minus bone and offcuts as shoulders usually don't have decent biltong meat.

HQ will be roughly half of carcass weight minus 40% for bone leaves you with about 22kg of meat before it's cut.


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[pblaauw]

Thanks everyone for the input, much appreciated!

[treeman]

You will not be the first to be disappointed and have to say sorry for thinking wrongly of the butcher. Take the bones out of the clean carcass and there is a lot of weight gone, I often feel bad about how much I kill for so little meat.
Cody shot two pigs a while back (as per post - look at smaller one) the smaller pig was not flea by any means.
He so wanted to "make my own meat" I said we can debone the little pig for potjie meat. That smaller pig did not fill two 2 lt ice cream bakkies of clean meat.