Cooking by Cut: A Modern Guide to Big Game Butchery & Cooking is the new book from wild-game cooks and writers Justin Townsend and myself, Adam Berkelmans. You may remember us from the 2026 POMA Summit's Wild Game Feast. We wrote this book to solve a problem nearly every hunter runs into: too much wild game gets reduced to vague labels like “steak,” “roast,” and “burger,” without enough understanding of what each individual cut actually does best. It’s why one venison steak can eat beautifully tender, while the next has you chewing for five minutes and wondering what went wrong.
Built for hunters who butcher and cook their own game, as well as anyone who wants to get more from the meat they bring home, Cooking by Cut teaches readers to understand big game by muscle and cut rather than by species alone. From loins to shanks, bottom round, flat iron steaks, and literally everything in between, the book pairs practical butchery guidance with approachable, globally inspired recipes designed to make every part of the animal worth getting excited about.
If you bring big game home, sooner or later you’re going to be standing over a cutting board or digging through the freezer, looking at a piece of meat and wondering what the best thing to do with it actually is. That’s the gap Cooking by Cut was written to fill. For hunters who want to waste less, cook better, and understand their game more deeply, this is the kind of reference you’ll actually reach for again and again—not one that just sits looking pretty on the bookshelf.
-Adam Berkelmans (The Intrepid Eater)
Order here: https://harvestingnature.store/products/cooking-by-cut-a-modern-guide-to-big-game-butchery-cooking