Processing your own deer meat

[memphismason]

Who does there own Deer Meat Processing? Please chime in with any info that will help others with their own processing.

[323ssplt]

I'm very interested in this thread too. I finally have a house and land where I can do my own processing (when the time allows) and the wife wants to start making her own sausage. Soooooooo..........lay out the good info

[kckndrgn]

I've done it, with my father-in-laws help. Not sure what tips I can give as it was the first time I processed one, my FIL was a great supervisor

Got some nice roasts, jerky meat, and even ground some up.

[Guest Old goat]

I do when I decided to take one, really not much hunting to it where I live. I don't try to do steaks from a deer though I did years ago. All roasts, actually just take the bone out and freeze quarters, cut neck roasts(very good) remove tenderloin and backstrap. give the ribs to my Dad, he loves them. I take the bone out because my wife doesn't like the "jelly" after cooking also much milder taste if the bone is not cooked with the meat. My wife makes jerky when she feels like it, just thaw a 1/4 and go for it.

[Cajun]

I do all of my own, No secrets here though. I cut both backstrips out and the rest I either grind up or make Jerky with it.

[DaveS]

I do my own processing, and making venison hams, sausage (all types) and balogna is a hobby of mine. I'll sit after bit and fill ya in a bit.

[Mike]

I do my own. Not sure what tips to give...

Watch someone do it, then have them watch and guide you through a few of them.

It's the only way to learn!

[mrmoetn]

Venison Primal and Cuts Charts

Hers's one way to do it. This guy makes it too hard:

This is the way to do it:

Deer Processing

There are better versions (video quality) of this video out there but i can't find them right now.

[ShaunM]

I do my own and have my own recipes.

[memphismason]

When everyone say that they do their own, are you guys doing your own ground meat, sausages, summer sausages, etc?

This is where I feel left out because all I know to do is remove the muscles cr the bone and then decide three types of meat, Steaks, Roasts, and cube meat (too small for the other two) and will ne used in stew or added to a roast. I split the ribs and smoke them, but that is all my dad knew to do and that is all he taught me to do.

[Mike]

I don't do sausages. I do steaks, jerky cuts, roasts and burger.

[Wingshooter]

My grandparents used to butcher all of their deer. I watched and helped out a few times when I was younger. I don't really remember too much except they would pull or shread some cuts of meat. Then they would cook it in a pot with BBQ sauce. Wow, that was great on a bun! Just like pulled pork or beaf BBQ sandwich except it was venison. :yum:

I would like to start butchering my own. You really know what you are getting and how it has been processed.

Edited July 22, 2009 by Batman

[Mike]

The best part is coming off a morning hunt. Butchering your deer then having fresh tenderloin and eggs.

[DaveS]

Mike knows how to eat!

[ShaunM]

When everyone say that they do their own, are you guys doing your own ground meat, sausages, summer sausages, etc?

This is where I feel left out because all I know to do is remove the muscles cr the bone and then decide three types of meat, Steaks, Roasts, and cube meat (too small for the other two) and will ne used in stew or added to a roast. I split the ribs and smoke them, but that is all my dad knew to do and that is all he taught me to do.

Yes I do it all. I usually do it over at a buddy of mines due to him having all the mixers, grinders, etc.

[DaveS]

To me...one of the greatest joys of processing your own deer is making your own country hams and sausages. Grill a fresh made deer brat, bite down on it, and when it "pops" in your mouth? Dude....make ya slap ya buddy for another!

[DaveS]

OK...got some coffee in me now...

Usually I have an idea of what I want before I get started. Start by skinning the deer keeping as much hair off the meat as you can. With the hide off, refer to the thread "tanning deer hides". Wash the meat with a garden hose and clean wire brush. A pressure washer works good here. No soap please! If it's cold outside, let the deer air dry for a few. Using a BATTERY POWERED recipricating saw, cut the deer straight down the center of the spine. Sometimes it helps to have an extra hand holding the deer. Just don't cut them down the middle!! You will have two "halves" hanging. It's easier to work on a half at a time instead of the whole thing. Have a bucket ready. Lay the half on your cutting table. Trim all loose meat from inside and outside of the carcuss (sp) and throw it in the bucket. Remove the shoulder, trim it and wrap as a roast or cut it into Shoulder steaks. I prefer roast for the oven or Smoker. Awesome BBQ'd!! Remove the belly meat and throw it in the bucket. Did I mention putting the dogs up? If you want boneless loin, just filet the loin off the spine and slice it into butterfly chops, bloneless chops or leave it whole. If you want "bone in" chops, Then cut them as such. Remove the ribs, cut into serving side pieces (did I mention getting the grill hot while we were doing all this). Season up, throw them on the grill or wrap for the freezer. Every cut you make, you will have trimmings. Throw them in the "grind" bucket. Now you should have a "hind quarter" left. There are several things you can do with this. Leave whole for BBQ, Leave whole to make country ham (I use one or both for ham). Slice into steaks of all sorts or slice into jerky meat or any combination of the above. It's your deer, cut it how YOU WANT IT! There really is no right or wrong way to cut your deer. Trim the hind quarter up nice and neat Package for freezer. Throw the trimmings into your bucket.

There's just not enough room here to tell you how to make each and every cut. Just search for "cutting meat" on the internet....there is alot of good info out there.

Repeat the same on the other side of meat. Take the bucket of "grind" and put it in the fridge for awhile. Cold meat scraps are easier to grind than warm ones. If you want to make sausage, weigh the amount of meat you want for sausage. You will need this info when buying enough seasoning. I usually take half of the total grind for burger and half for sausage. Keep in mind, to make burger and sausage you need a good grinder, and depending on the type of sausage, you may need a sausage stuffer.

When I make deer sausage of any type, for every ten pounds of venison, I use a five pound "Boston Butt" roast. It adds ALOT to your sausage. Most venison is too dry (no fat) to make juicy sausage (remember that deer brat "popping" in your mouth and the juices flooding your taste buds?) That's how that happens.

I don't know what else to share here. I guess we'll hold a "Q&A session now. Thank you for reading my endless babble.

Dave (WD-40)

[Guest 1shot]

I process my own deer. I do quite a few each year. This past year I did around 15. Nine were mine. Where I hunt in East NC they have unlimited doe tags. The deer are usually hanging up ready to dress with in 2 hours after they are killed. We do not field dress or even gut the deer. I have found the secret to good deer meat is to get it out of the hide as quick a possible and de-bone the meat and soak it in water with white vinegar around 12 hours.

THE PROCESS: Hang the deer by the hind legs using a gambrel. Make a cut in the hide all the way around the the leg below where you have the gambrel hooks at the beginning of the ham shank on both legs. Then cut the hide from this cut down to the crotch on the inside of the ham on both sides. You can now start removing the hide on the inside of the hams very easy by hand or touch it with a knife. Using you knife just touching the hide peel the hide off the outer side of the hams. When you get to where the tail is cut through a joint and through the rectum. Go on the belly side of the deer and cut the hide from the crotch area down to the back edge of the front legs on both sides leaving the hide on the belly. You can almost follow a line made by where the white hair and tan hair meet. Now take you knife and touch the hide as you pull the hide away from the deer toward the back bone. Once you get the hide away from the sides and almost to the center of the back you can go to the back side of the deer and grab the tail and place your other hand against the top part of the tail area and pull the hide down all the way past the front shoulders.

Now that you have the hide removed from the main part of the deer you can now make a cut down both sides of the back bone all the way down to between the front shoulders. There will be a plastic like membrane coating over the back strap of meat. Start down at the front shoulder area and slide your hand between it and the back strap and pull it away all the way up the whole back strap. When this is done make a cut from the back bone to the far side of the back strap where it sits under the back ham. Then start pulling with your fingers the back strap away from the deer starting at the spot just under the ham cutting the meat loose as you pull. You can work your way all the way down the back on both sides to between the front shoulders pulling the whole back strap out in one piece on both sides.

With the back of the deer facing you take your knife and make a cut on the hams on both sides of it's butt hole down to the ball joint. Now make a cut between the hams on the back side of the deer feeling and following the pelvis with the knife blade all the way around each ham making the cut go all the way to the ball joint. These cuts will have separated each ham from the other and will be loose all the way around down to the ball joint. Go to the inside of the ham and look at the shank end of the ham. You will see where the knee joint of the legs began. Make a cut all the way around the shank end down to the bone just below the knee joint toward the main ham. If you make your cut too far toward the hoof direction you will cut the tendon that is holding the gambrel hook and the deer will fall.

After you have made the cut all the way down to the bone all the way around the shank end of the ham you will see on the inside part of the ham a line of meat running from the knee down to the ball joint area. Make a cut down to the bone from where you cut around the bone at the shank end of the ham the length of the ham down to the ball joint following the line of the meat. You can now just cut around the bone and pull the whole ham away in one piece. Now go to the front shoulder and cut any meat you want off the shoulders or you can just cut the whole shoulder away from the deer and de-bone the meat off it. I make hamburger out of this meat. If the deer is big enough and you want to get the true tenderloin you can make a cut in the paunch up between where the ham area was and reach inside a cut them out with out spilling all the guts out because while the deer is hanging up everything will laying toward the head away from the tenderloin area. I don't keep anything form the rigs because most of the deer I kill don't have all that much meat to fool with on their ribs.

I take all my meat and place in a 48 Qrt cooler and cover with cold water and place around 2 cups of white vinegar in with is and mix it around good. THis will draw the blood out of the meat, that wild taste everybody talks about. Let the meat set in this for around 10 or 12 hours. Take the meat out and wash and separate the pieces from the hams. It is almost like cutting on the dotted lines. Look at the ham and you will see the pieces how the muscles separate. The rump roast, the flank and shank pieces. After I cut the pieces apart I put them whole into zip lock freezer bags and freeze. If I want stakes I will let the meat thaw out about halfway and then cut my stakes off the piece. It is easier to cut good when it is half frozen. I cut the back strap into three or four pieces depending on it's length and place them in a zip lock and freeze. When I want to use them I let them half thaw and then cut and pull that plastic like membrane off the back side and then cut it into the pieces how I want to use them. It is easier to get the membrane off when it is half frozen.

Man it took me a lot longer to type this than it does for me to dress a deer. I have gotten it down to 17 minutes after I have done two or three.

Here are some tips I have picked up. Use rubber gloves. It keeps your hands cleaner and keeps them warm if it is cold. The best knife I have ever found or used is made my the Cutco Cutlery company out of New York. Do a search on Cutco Cutlery and you will find them. Their hunting knife with the double D serrated edge is sharper than a scalpel. It stays sharp. I usually send my knife back to them after doing around 25 deer for their free shapren. It is now dull but just a little less sharp by this time. You can see up to three knives at a time back with $5.00 for shipping back to you and they will sharpen them free. I got my electric meat grinder from walmart for less that $100.00 and I do not add any fat like pork or beef to my ground deer meat. Have fun good luck.

Edited July 22, 2009 by 1shot

[DaveS]

Why do you not field dress the deer? I thought getting the deer cooled down as quickly as possible was the thing to do? Just curious is all. I don't think a "busted gut" (for whatever reason) would be a good thing to leave inside your deer for any length of time. Please elaborate.

[Mike]

Mike knows how to eat!

Yessir! Nothing like you and your hunting buddy putting away some prime eats after a successful morning.

[Guest FlyntG]

Any hunter should at be able to process his kill himself, whether he chooses to every time or not.

You dont need any fancy equipment, and just a few posts ago were some really good discriptions on howto. Check YouTube for video howtos. Here's really all you need:

1. deer (dead already, preferably)

2. hanging place (kids swingset works great!)

3. good sharp knife

4. saw (hacksaw or bonesaw)

that is all you need for roasts, hams, tenderloins, backstraps, ribs, and stewmeat. Add a sausage grinder to your collection and you get burger and sausage. Got mine for $10 at a yard sale. Steaks aren't (imho) worth the investment of equipment. I get steaks the few times I take a deer to the professional processor, and that is more than we want. The roasts are better as roasts or even jerky.

also, I don't tan deer hides, so I skin mine with my 4x4. Cut the hide around the neck and legs, and split from neck to groin. Pull hide back a little at the back of the neck, place a golfball or golfball sized rock in the skin, tie a rope around the ball inside the hide, tie other end to 4x4 (deer is hanging SECURELY) and take off. I don't have as much hair on the meat since I began to skin this way, and it is faster and a lot more fun.

[Guest 1shot]

WD40. The reason that my buddy and I don't field dress our deer is because they are usually dead only 2 hours or less by the time that we are processing them. There is no need to go through the hassle and also leaving a gut pile around where you will be hunting the next day is not wise. I killed 9 deer out of the same stand this past year. Two nine point bucks and a 6 point a cull spike and the rest were meat doe's. As far as busting a gut on a deer with a shot, I can recall only one in well over 200 deer that I have killed. It was while using a 120 gr Speer Grand Slam bullet out of my 25-06. The good size buck was facing me right at only 50 yards away. I shot him in the chest and the bullet went almost all the way through him. I found it in his right ham in the ball socket. Perfect mushroom and it's weight was 87 grs recovered. This bullet is too tough for my liking for shooting deer size game. It would work great on elk.

I always place my shots into a front shoulder or have them exit one when possible. With the proper caliber rifle and proper bullet it is BANG FLOP.

[DaveS]

Sounds good!

[DaveS]

My son and myself did an experiment last year regarding the "gut pile" issue. I took a nice doe in the morning around 9:30. Field dressed her where she fell (about 30 yards from my stand). Dragged her out to our canoe, had a lunch break and went back into the woods about an hour and a half later, to hunt until dark. When I got to my stand, the gut pile was completely gone. Only some blood on the tore up ground remained. The coyotes (which are bad in our area) clean up gut piles ASAP! About 3:15 that afternoon, I got a nice 8-pointer, feeding withing 10 yards of where that gut pile was. He wasn't in the least bit concerned about the odor. I don't think the deer in our area has been taught what a gut pile smells like. I think it's just an odor to them that apparently presents no danger. We used to drag our deers back to the canoe for field dressing. Not any more! Please share your expeiences with this.

WD

[Guest Mugster]

My son and myself did an experiment last year regarding the "gut pile" issue. I took a nice doe in the morning around 9:30. Field dressed her where she fell (about 30 yards from my stand). Dragged her out to our canoe, had a lunch break and went back into the woods about an hour and a half later, to hunt until dark. When I got to my stand, the gut pile was completely gone. Only some blood on the tore up ground remained. The coyotes (which are bad in our area) clean up gut piles ASAP! About 3:15 that afternoon, I got a nice 8-pointer, feeding withing 10 yards of where that gut pile was. He wasn't in the least bit concerned about the odor. I don't think the deer in our area has been taught what a gut pile smells like. I think it's just an odor to them that apparently presents no danger. We used to drag our deers back to the canoe for field dressing. Not any more! Please share your expeiences with this.

WD

From what I've seen, I don't think it scares them off at all. Some will tell you different. I think it may actually be an attractor. I wouldn't worry about it.

Stake out that gutpile! I always watch them now if possible. They'll suck a coyote in from a long way. They'll watch you while you work and then get em quick when you leave. I'm usually ready to pack it in after shooting/cleaning/dragging, but I hunt alone. I can muster an hour or 2 for a free shot at a yote sometimes. I try to back off about 200 yards and use a different rig for it. I try to cover the downwind side where i think they might come from.