Eat MEAT! (exotic meat shippers online)

You know how sometimes you go to the corner store only to discover that they're fresh out of unicorn steaks?  Oh, wait, no...  I suppose not.

     However, on a more serious note:  have you never thought that it might be nice to get away from the standard beef/chicken/pork/fish (or, depending upon your origins and current locale: frog, 'gator, crayfish, etc.)?  Never craved a change from the "exotic" lamb, duck, or rabbit?  If you're thinking that your shopping list should sometimes include something like venison, 'gator, ostrich, and yak, then this post's for you!

     I found, a ways back (maybe a year or 2 ago, and their shipping prices don't seem to have changed since then), 5 different meat suppliers (I'm sure that a Google would reveal a great number more, of course).  I still haven't ordered anything from any of them (sorry, but I'm more concerned with buying food and paying bills than I am with pursuing the life of a gourmand, extremely tempting though that is...).  That notwithstanding, I thought that it would be negligent of me to not share the data with you.

     Well, here they are, in all of their glory.  The suppliers' names are links which will take you to them directly (at the time of this writing, anyway).  I've also taken the liberty of a preliminary analysis of their total meat-cost: it considers the prices per pound and the shipping/handling costs.  The graph is shown below the link-paragraphs.

     Hmm:  I wonder if there aren't similar such suppliers for locally-exotic vegetables & fruits, tubers,  & grains, fungi (mmm, truffles...), oils & vinegars, herbs & spices, salts, extracts, sauces, honeys & syrups, jams / jellies / marmalades / preserves, etc.?  Maybe I'll look into that for a later blog.  As always, please feel free to add data in the comments (especially if you know of other meat/etc. suppliers, and/or have reviews of any of them to share with the rest of us).

NOTE:  some of the meats (such as venison: deer) can come from more than one of the suppliers below;  just because the graph shows an overall bottom-line higher price for one than another, doesn't mean that a particular cut of that meat wouldn't be cheaper with an otherwise-more-expensive shipper.  I cover that question, at least for deer & elk cuts, in my next blog entry, "Deer and elk meat-cuts' prices".
     Keep in mind:  it seems as if most of the places I'd looked at suggest shipping at least 10 pounds of meat;  less than that seems to make them a bit skittish, presumably due to potential spoilage (I'm guessing that this would be due to potential food poisoning and subsequent law suits).



Elk USA:  Venison, elk, buffalo, & goat;

     Shipping:

     weight     est. S&H

     "small"    $2/lb ice

     18#           $9

     45#           $12

     70#           $15

SMG Foods:  SMG offers a great number of unusual meats to include {antelope, elk, venison, wild boar;  bison/buffalo; duck, goose, guinea fowl, partridge, pheasant, quail, squab, wild turkey; & rabbit}, as well as the more typical meats {pork, beef, veal, chicken, poussin (i.e.: spring chicken, like saying "veal"), & lamb}, and even exotic meats such as {alligator, crocodile, kangaroo, llama, ostrich, python, rattlesnake, & turtle}--and if they don't carry whatever you're looking for, then they're willing to get it for you;

     Shipping:  their shipping costs are a bit too complicated to detail here, but they seem to be cheaper than the following shippers, below.

Broken Arrow ranch:  Not nearly as wide a selection, but always good to know about--AND they have a how-much-do-I-actually-need Meat Calculator!  (For those times when you're wondering how much meat you need, for a given cut, a given number of people, and a given amount of meat per serving.)  Broken Arrow's meats include {venison (2 types), elk, antelope, boar, & quail}.

     Shipping:  $20 S&H, +$1.55/#, plus a requirement to order a minimum of $50 meat... could be better, could be worse.

Fossil Farms:  As with SMG, Fossil Farms also carries a great diversity of meats {alligator, antelope, Berkshire pork, buffalo, burgers, duck (3 species), elk, emu, foie gras, guinea hens, kangaroo, kobe beef, lamb (3 types), ostrich, partridge, pheasant, Piedmontese beef, poussin (still a spring chicken), quail, rabbit, rattlesnake, squab, turkey, turtle (2 types), venison, wild boar, yak, Tur Duck En, beef (grass fed), & wild Scottish game birds};

     Shipping:  $20 S&H, +$1/#... not so much fun (you'll see why, in the #:$ ratio-chart, below)..

Underhill Farms:  The most expensive, given actual costs plus add-on shipping/handling, Underhill is at the bottom of the list, but it's better to know of them than not, just in case you need to place an emergency order for venison and everyone else is tapped out {Belgian blue beef, venison, elk, & pork};

     Shipping:  

     weight     est. S&H

     5#             $44.95

     10#           $53.95

     15#           $67.95

     20#           $82.95

     25#           $98.95

Update 1:  I received a new datum, "The Savory Gourmet", on Sat 22 Jan 2011.

     Given that the 5 suppliers reviewed below are from a year or 2 back, you'll perhaps forgive me for not having included The Savory Gourmet into the shipping-cost graph at the end of this blog entry.  Their meats include: Berkshire pork, buffalo, bison, chicken, duck, elk, lamb, pheasant, wild boar, venison, antelope, black bear, kangaroo, Kobe beef, lamb, llama, ostrich, Piedmontese beef, yak, Mulard duck, duck, quail, caiman (croc), rabbit, python, bacon, reindeer, caribou, salmon, ox, musk ox, alligator, venison, ostrich eggs, snake(?), goat, & emu.

     I haven't yet really look them over heavy-duty, but it doesn't look as if they actually do any shipping of their meats--I could be wrong, but they might be an on-site-only store (i.e.: you might have to shop in person, if you want to buy stuff there).  I e-mailed them, but since they closed 5 hours ago, and don't list being open on Sundays, we might have to wait a bit before finding out one way or the other.

     Meanwhile, for those who are in the area:  their store is located in Lancaster, Pa, and they carry other stuff (such as cheeses, gourmet foods, and butters).

Update 2:  After yesterday's "Update 1", I finally got around to looking at ordering some deer.

     The thing is:  although I had accounted for the fact that the different cuts run at rather different prices from one shipper to the next (I suppose that I should put in an entry on that...), I now had to account for the fact that ElkUSA's Whitetail deer is on a separate page from their other deer, even though they stuck their Red (which is new) on the same page as their Fallow (...this took me a moment to figure out ...seriously:  that makes sense from a shopper's perspective, how?).

     Well, having settled on what we wanted, I thought that I'd Google for possible coupons to apply to the order...  which led me to a bunch of shippers whom I hadn't reviewed:  BisonRidgeRanch (only bison; didn't see shipping costs), HealthyBuffalo (smallish, but ok variety; call for shipping cots), DuffMeats (bison & elk; fre shipping if order's >$150, but that's all that I saw on that), BuffaloGal (some variety; $50 order minimum, shipping calculated upon placing order [before finalizing, I hope?]), BuffaloHillsBisonMeat (only buffalo), NorthStarBison (decent variety), GedaliasCompany (only goat), VenisonAmerica (wide variety), ChoiceFilets (normal stuff), TenderFilet (normal stuff), OmahaSteaks (normal stuff), & Y's Decision (only elk).  (It also led me to CBCrabCakes, HancockGourmetLobster, WisconsinCheeseMan, and a few other even less red-meat related sites.)

     Those, in turn, led me to others:  CrownBlueBison (beef and bison), NWWildFoods (buffalo, honeys, berries, jams, & mushrooms), TexasGrassFedBeef (buffalo, fish, normal stuff), NiobraraValleyBison (only bison), and GrassFedTraditions (bison and normal stuff).
     In passing, I'd also run into BeechHillBison (only bison), SilverBison (only bison), CowboyFreerangeMeat (small variety), JacksonHoleBuffaloMeatCo (small variety), and Lobel's Butcher Shop (normal stuff).

     There truly is a metric shit-ton (technical terminology, you know) of other sites.
     I simply stopped.
     There are simply too many to really try price-comparing the different meat-cuts' cost, pound minima, and shipping/handling charges--unless you're willing to throw together an access database, and live links to each item's price, and more live links to the companies' shipping rates, etc.; if so, then please let me know when you have a finished product.
     Honestly, your best bet is probably to shop around for yourself there.  If you Google almost any of the above-named suppliers or meats, then you'll typically also get additional hits for other suppliers and other meats.

     I haven't had a chance to sort out anything about these new guys' prices or shipping & handling (except to notice the startling-to-me market niche predominance of buffalo/bison/elk), and, though I'd like to, I doubt that I'll do so any time soon (frankly, I might not do so at all).  All that I've done with them so far is to add links to their sites, in the process of which I noted that some offer a small selection of different meats, some a wider variety.

If the graph below is too blurry, too fine-printed, and/or otherwise not terribly legible, then click on it--it will open as an enlarged pic, for viewing convenience.

     If you're thinking of a particular number of pounds of meat, then you want the bottom-most price-square (which gives you the lowest price for that many pounds).

     If you have n-many dollars in mind, then you want the right-most pound-square (which gives you the largest amount of meat for that price).

     Of course, either way, you should also consider just how much freezer-space you have, how much of the food will actually get eaten (as opposed to becoming yet another unidentifiable something in your fridge 6 months down the line), and so forth.