Mary,

Well, thanks for bring up a good point.  Truthfully, since I'm also
pretty new to this, I never considered temperature as a factor.  Just
assumed that a dehydrator was a dehydrator.  Guess I have much more to
learn about dehydrators.  When I dry my jerky, it end up being pretty
dark brown and leathery.  Does this indicate to you that it's cooking
and not simply drying?  The toughness is not a problem for me because I
do my pemmican powder in a food processor, but it I'm losing out on the
raw meat benefit, then I need to rethink this.  Incidentally, to help
you in answering my question, it usually takes me about 8-10 hours to
dry roughly 3-4 lbs of meat in the Mr. Coffee.  Is that too quick (ie.
cooking not only drying)?

Thanks, Chuck