Where to Buy Exotic Game Meats


“A happy hunter. Bear hunting is an important recreational sport on the refuge”
 11 May 1957 US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Digital Library
Exotic game meats were once  much more commonly available in New York City than they are today.  Below, a few suggestions on where to get your own hands on a serving of bear, moose, or beaver (although you won’t be able to find moose mouffle anywhere).
Go  hunting.  New Jersey has a five-day hunting season for black bear, which usually falls in early December.  The Division of Fish and Wildlife posts on it annually here.  Read tips on how to cook the bear once you’ve bagged it here.
A whole raccoon, cooked by the the French Culinary Insitute blog.

Order from Czimer’s Butcher Shop, in Illinois.  I found out about this place from Cooking Issues: the French Culinary Insitute blog who ordered up and cooked beaver,  yak, a whole raccoon, some bear, and a lion steak.   We both went “bonkers” for beaver; read my write-up on eating beaver here.

Dinner at Henry’s End: Elk chop, venison sausage, and wild boar belly.

Dine at Henry’s End, a restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, who have an annual winter “Wild Game Festival.”  The menu is generally available October through early spring and currently includes Turtle Soup, Elk Chops, Wild Boar Ragout, Buffalo Hangar Steak, and Kangaroo.  I’ve eaten there; read about it here.

All game meats sold in shops and restaurants in the United States is farmed, not wild.  Wild meats do not comply with FDA regulations.  I find store bought meat to be generally milder than the real wild stuff, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Does anyone know any other game meat resources?

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