Moose and Caribou for Lunch

Tuesday March 24, 2008: I ate moose and caribou for lunch today.

My boss, Tom, brought some moose and caribou meat that he'd prepared for a conference we were to have this week until Mt. Redoubt Volcano erupted Sunday night. Anchorage was spared any ash fall and as of this writing the threat level has been changed back to orange after being red since the first major eruption Sunday night.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory website is a good place to find the most up-to-date information about the volcano. http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php. There are some good pictures on the site.

Enough of volcanoes, let's talk about moose.

Tom and his wife Shirley (she doesn't hunt) prepare moose and caribou with the exact same recipe so the sampling I had was a great taste test. Moose meat is lighter in color than caribou and is milder in flavor. Caribou is more the color of beef but with a little tint of red to it and I detected a very, very slight beef liver taste to it. I preferred the moose.

Here's a picture of Tom with the moose. It was the first one he ever shot and says it will probably be the last...hunting moose is a lot of hard work because of the terrain (muddy, lot and lots of walking...).


Tom did not hunt the caribou I sampled, it was from a friend of his. When I was here last summer I had wonderful sourdough pancakes and caribou sausage at Gwenie's. Now, that was good caribou. Very low fat and very flavorful. I might have to take my caribou in sausage form from now on.