When Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett went off to the wild frontier, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the Louisiana Territory and the uncharted West, they probably had jerky in their packs.

According to “Making Jerky at Home Safely,” drying is the oldest method of food preservation. Even the ancient Egyptians ate jerky.

Rodney Schaffer, director of technical services, product application for Con Yeager Spice in Zelienople, said jerky can be made from venison, beef or any other meat.

“The process revolves around taking meat and slicing it thinly with the grain so it can be seasoned, dried and eaten later,” Yeager said.

He said venison jerky has become a popular snack.

“Everybody likes it and everyone will eat it,” Schaffer said. “When you can change (deer meat) into jerky, snack sticks or bologna, people are much more intrigued.”

Zac Slater of Slater’s Meats and Bim’s Baloney said the company has processed 170 deer already this year. It processed nearly 1,000 deer in each of the past three years at its deer processing facility, Bim’s Baloney, which opened in Petrolia in 1996.

“We make about 10,000 pounds of bologna, hot sticks, sausages and jerky each year,” Slater said.

By the end of the season, about 1,500 pounds of venison will be used at Bim’s Baloney to make more than 500 pounds of jerky.

The company makes jerky but does not sell it. All of the meat goes back to the hunter.

“It’s probably one of the more popular things,” Slater said.

He said the company has also made jerky using bear, goose, moose, elk, wild boars, caribou and antelope. He said the best jerky comes from deer, moose and elk. These taste the most like beef jerky.

“They’re really close to the same. A lot of people would really never tell the difference,” Slater said.

Jerky starts with raw meat.

Schaffer, who makes jerky at home, recommended using meat from the deer’s hind quarters, loin or neck. A large, single piece of muscle without connective tissue works best.

“It usually comes out of the steaks,” Slater said “It’s just better. There’s less fat in it.”

“Lean meat is what we want for making jerky,” Schaffer said. “Venison usually is lean and not marbled.”

Bim’s Baloney uses five smokehouses to smoke the jerky. It uses seasonings from Con Yeager Spice but adds other ingredients.

“We just make one kind,” Slater said. “Everybody makes it different. Some people like garlic in it. Some people like it more peppery. It’s all what you like.”

Con Yeager sells jerky kits for commercial and home use. The kits include sodium nitrite as a curing salt. Schaffer said it contributes a mahogany color, improves the flavor and acts as a preservative.

The seasoning with each kit includes a smoked flavor that eliminates the need to invest in a smoker to make jerky. Sweet, soy, Worcestershire, black pepper and other flavors are incorporated into the seasoning mix, too.

Hillbilly Jerky Kit is Con Yeager’s top seller. It is slightly hot and sweet and includes garlic and onion flavors.

“Hot and sweet in today’s world really goes well,” Schaffer said.

He said food and cooking shows have encouraged Americans to become more adventurous eaters.

“It’s been a wonderful thing for the food industry,” Schaffer said.

To end with a jerky that has an appealing texture, the meat should lose 55 to 60 percent of its moisture during heating and drying. Schaffer said an inexpensive digital scale is handy to measure this. One pound of meat will become 0.4 pounds of jerky, or 6.5 ounces.

“That’s why it’s so expensive in the store,” he said.

Jerky has to taste good but it also must be safe to eat. According to the Pacific Northwest Extension’s “Making Jerky at Home Safely,” published in 2012, jerky has to be heated enough to destroy harmful pathogens that cause illness. It also has to be dry enough to store at room temperature without the growth of disease-causing organisms.

Schaffer said instructions for making jerky have changed in the past 15 years. Temperatures and length of time for heating and drying are important and should be followed.

Schaffer does not recommend storing jerky in the refrigerator unless it is vacuum packaged. If it isn’t, liquid can condense on the inside of the bag and cause mold.

Schaffer said storing jerky in a plastic bag at room temperature is preferable.

“If it’s vacuum packed, it keeps longer. If you freeze it, it keeps longer,” Slater said.

He said mold does not grow on the jerky while it is frozen but it can once it is out of the freezer.

“The dryer it’s kept, the better off it is,” Slater said.

Slater said how long jerky will keep depends on how it was cooked and cured and if it was done 100 percent correctly.

Schaffer said, “Everyone wants to hand a piece of jerky that they’ve made from their deer to their buddy and wants their buddy to say, ‘This is some of the best jerky I’ve ever had.’ That is success.”

He said, “What you do at home is a project. It’s a fair amount of work.”

The expense and time needed to prepare jerky often keep people from making it at home, Slater said.

Schaffer said, “Hunters are compelled to consume what they’ve harvested. That’s part of the experience.”

Search for “Making Jerky at Home Safely” for complete preparation instructions from Pacific Northwest Extension.