Turkey meat precautions

[Grubby]

A tom I recently harvested with my bow had what looked to me like a puncture from a spur in his breast that had green slime around it. It didn't look terribly bad or over a large area so I generously cut around the area, trashed it and froze the rest of the breast. Yesterday on another forum I saw someone had asked a similar question and few guys said it was gangrene and to not eat any part of the bird. I am now having second thoughts and am interested to hear others thoughts on the subject. Thanks in advance.

 

[Hsmaross]

Dont know....Not sure if I am willing to take the risk...just my opinion

 

[Rjack]

I have cut out green spots before and ate it. I didn't get sick, but that is not a guarantee.

 

[HorseDoctor]

Trim as you did and it'll be fine. See same thing frequently. More so in deer with old fight wounds, wire cuts or gunshot/arrow injuries. If the critter was acting normally they had the injury localized and you threw that away. Good to go!

 

[muddy]

Eat it, see what happens, but if you start the zombie apocalypse I'm gonna be pi$$ed.

 

[Grubby]

Ha! I've thoughts on how to survive one, but never thought I'd start it.

 

[Mike311]

Took a small buck late season bow who’d been hit with a slug in the front shoulder, looked fine except it wouldn’t put any weight on the leg. It had plenty of gangrene, butchered it anyway and the rest of it ate fine. On the other hand I had a shotgun deer, healthy when shot but didn’t get cooled properly after field dressing that went rancid. Smelled bad when I went to butcher it the next day so it went to the coyotes. Cut out the ugly stuff and smell test the rest and you should be good.

 

[muddy]

On a serious note, I always adhere to "when in doubt, throw it out". With birds at least you'e generally safe because they need to be cooked all the way thru. If you'e really concerned I'd chunk that bird up and deep fry him. That'll kill anything and save us all from the ZA.

 

[Grubby]

Thanks for the replies gentlemen. I like the idea of some hot oil for this one.

 

[Blaster]

This happened to me years back. The Tom had multiple puncher wounds with puss in them. I cut around them and got to the good meat. I spelled it and the meat smelled fine so I ate it with no problems. But like Muddy said. I fried it in hot oil.