Okay, we've avoided the bears, fought off the wild dogs, and butchered the elk. We have two culinary problems -- cooking the meat for our next meal or two, and preserving the rest. I would probably want to eat at least the liver first, especially if the elk was young, and probably the heart and tongue as well. You should of course check all organ meats for parasites, cysts, or other signs of illness. I don't know what is included in "minimal gear." Ideally, I would slice the liver into thin pieces, dredge the slices in flour, and cook the liver with a little oil along with some onions. Yum! The tongue can be boiled slowly in salt water, with some pepper and vinegar, for ten or twelve hours, allowed to cool, the skin removed, and the tongue sliced nice and thin. Serve the sliced tongue on rye bread with mustard ... oops, I forgot, "minimal gear." You can wash the blood off the heart, trim the fat, and soak the heart in salt water for a couple of hours; then boil it in the salt water for a while -- heart muscle is tough -- and finally slice it into strips and cook it in a little oil until done, about fifteen minutes. I don't have to tell anyone how to cook a steak; knowing how to cook steak is part of the male human genetic heritage.
But keep it rare; wild game muscle meat tends to be very lean, and therefore can be very tough if overcooked. The major hazard from undercooked fresh wild game meat is toxoplasmosis. The toxoplasma parasite is generally not harmful; I would guess that 30-40 percent of adult male Americans have toxoplasma antibodies without ever having been sick. The major risk of toxoplasmosis is to the fetus of a pregnant woman during the first trimester, when it can cause serious nervous system damage.
Methods of preserving the meat include salting, smoking, and drying. By the way, the word "jerky" comes from the Peruvian Quechua word ch'arki (spelled "charqui" in Spanish), which means "dried meat." You can salt and smoke (check out the smoked monkey in Doc Ron's video); you can pickle, or salt in salt water; you can smoke in an improvised smoker or over an open fire. Damn, I'm getting hungry.
Again, limits are imposed by your gear. If you are smart, and always have some nice fresh crushed chile peppers with you, then clearly your culinary options are enhanced. It's hard to boil something unless you have -- or can make -- a pot. But there's always something you can do. Once when my wife and I were hiking in the Cordillera Blanca, the group butchered a sheep, heated rocks in a fire until they were red hot, wrapped the pieces of meat with wild onions in fresh leaves, and buried the wrapped meat and the hot stones together in a pit for a few hours. Absolutely heavenly.
Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. I think that applies particularly to cooking in the wilderness.
