You made the shot. Now what?

Most beginners learn how to take an animal long before anyone teaches them what to do with it. That gap is where meat gets wasted, and where a lot of new hunters quietly give up.

Eat My Meat closes it. Step by step, animal by animal, from the moment your hand touches the fur to the moment the meat goes in the pan.

Pat Gatz is Algonquin, from Eagle Village First Nation - Kipawa. He has been field dressing what he takes since he was six years old. In his tradition, wasting an animal is not a mistake, it is a failure of respect, and that is the standard this guide is written to.

Inside:

• the tools that matter, which knives, how to sharpen them, and what you can safely skip.
• Rabbit and hare - skinning, gutting and quartering, start to finish.
• Squirrel - the fastest clean method, without tearing the meat.
• Grouse, wild turkey and upland birds - plucking versus breasting out, and when each is right.
• Field hygiene: cooling, blood, hair, gut taint, and the mistakes that ruin a carcass.
• Handling the hide and fur, saving what most beginners throw away.
• From field to freezer - ageing, portioning, wrapping and storage that actually keeps.
• Nose to tail, including the organs, bones and cuts most people never learn to use.

No jargon, no assumed experience, and no shame if you have never done this before. Plain instructions from someone who has done it a few thousand times.

Three hours, and you will not be guessing next season.

Hunt to live. Live to hunt.