Deer processing

You'd be surprised... lot's of guys I run into don't want to get blood all over their Gucci-flauge!
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I guess they don't carry baby wipes in their pack.

My dad wouldn't be very pleased if he found out I ever disrespected a deer by not gutting it right away to get the meat cooling as quick as possible.

You will know 100% of the meat is yours
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I trust the girl I have doing it now, she's been doing my FIL's for years before I started hunting.
 
If you're interested...

...PM me. I've got a video that's worth watching and I keep it on Google Docs for sharing purposes. My deer don't enter the house unless they're already in the cooler on ice.

Field Dress.

Hang n' skin.

Debone the large groups and some trim into the cooler on ice. Hams, Shoulders, Tenderloins and Backstraps. Those are the large pieces. Everything else is trim for burger, stew meat.

Skeleton, Hide, Head, Entrails.. all stays in the field.

Beyond that, it's literally a couple of hours on the kitchen table with a good sharp deboning knife, cutting board, freezer paper, tape. I did it all myself the first time. Never used a processor/butcher.
 
I'm pretty sure my wife would flip her lid if I dragged a deer in the house and heaved it on the table.
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HUH? I thought every body did that!
If a deer is skinned and quartered, it is very manageable on a kitchen counter or table. Bring one quarter at a time into the house, your wife will hardly notice.

Bone the hinds for steaks and roasts, the fronts for burger, and the backstraps for steaks. Done in 2 hours!
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Is what I do!

If you make a mistake, no biggie! Use as stew meat!
 
I don't have the facilities right now to butcher a deer at home.
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You don't have a kitchen table?
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;)
I used the tailgate on my F-150, perfect height.
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5 years ago, or so, I butchered 3 antelope in my uncle's garage. His vegetarian wife would have shot him, if we took them inside.
We used jack stands, garbage cans, and stacks of newspaper as work surfaces. (Since the workbenches had 4-foot piles of crap on them, and the folding tables couldn't be located.)



Just wondering what everyone's paying for deer processing. My processor went up on her price by over 25% from last year because of the cost of freezer paper. She's charging $65 up from $50 last year for skinning, boneless cut and wrap.
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If I had a local butcher that only charged $65, I knew I'd be getting all of my meat (and only my meat), and they skinned for free... I'd gladly pay that.

Almost everywhere around here, you pay by the pound for the received hanging weight. If you bring in a 140 lb carcass that only has 40 lbs of meat on it, you pay for 140 lbs. If you bring in a 650 lb Elk that yields 220 lbs of meat, you pay for 650 lbs. If you're dumb and bring in a rotting, Swiss-cheese Deer carcass that hasn't been skinned or gutted, and weighs in at 250 lbs, but only has 25 lbs of edible meat... Yep, you pay for 250 lbs (and extra fees to skin and gut it).

The few places that have fixed prices (up to a certain hanging weight), generally start at a point equal to 150-175 lb hanging weight (Mule Deer). So, they aren't much cheaper, if at all.


I care, greatly, about how the animal is treated. From the shot, to the table, I like to know it's being treated properly. Handling everything myself is great. But, if I had a good butcher charging that little, they'd be cutting it for me. ;)
 
with my current work schedule, and a 6-month old baby, I hardly have time to hunt, let alone learn how to butcher.
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It really is not that hard ...... though if you have not done it, it can seem daunting.

Hang the field dressed animal upside down by the hocks on a gambrel ......

This thing is very helpful if you are doing this solo:

http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/prod...ferralID=e419e6a0-3f33-11e2-b779-001b2166c62d

In any case: Pulleys are your friends, and as with friends, more is better!

-remove lower legs (distal to knees) with sawzall....
-begin skinning by making cuts down back of all four legs
-pull skin down while making small cuts between body and skin
-keep pulling down and cutting until "his shirt is over his head and then unzip his collar" with a vertical cut from chest to chin
-remove head (sawzall is a handy tool, ain't it?) with skin attached
-remove neck in sections short enough to fit in a crock pot (neck roasts)
-split body lengthwise (it SAWZ ALL!) down spine
-count up 6 (some say 7,8, or 10) ribs and cut spine and sternum with ________ (yep!) .... front quarter will be hanging by intercostal muscle between ribs - grasp foreleg (so this front quarter will not fall on the ground and cut that muscle with your (you thought I was going to say SAWZALL, didn't you? Bzzt.) knife.
-take front quarter into house/put in cooler/whatever
-repeat for other side
-tie one hock to tree/rafter, so it will not fall when you remove the other side from gambrel and take it in

There, animal is quartered.

Simple.
 
When the kids were young we'd hunt 4-to-5 states and nearly broke me paying to have 10 or more head processed. After that I bought all the equipment to do our own....paid for itself the first year. That was nearly 20 years ago, since then probably saved close to $20,000 in processing charges @ roughly $1000 per year.


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I haven't had a deer professionally butchered in well over 10 years. Had a friend that took a job skinning for a local butcher after his skinner flaked out and disappeared on him one season (Guy was prone to just take off for Alaska, usually crab fishing on the Bering Sea). That butcher lost a bunch of deer after the guy took off, they just rotted in his cooler. After that he put a big box in his walk in freezer labeled Build-A-Deer and every deer he butchered had some cut of meat placed in that box just in case he lost another deer in his cooler. After I found out about that box I decided to learn to cut my own and never looked back, I also make my own fresh and smoked sausage using seasoning from LEM. My group of friends all pool some meat together for sausage, got 50 lbs waiting in the freezer right now and still 2 weeks of deer season to go. I have a PDF of a brochure put out by the New Mexico State University on how to process your own venison if anyone's interested I could probably e-mail it.

Stu
 
Haven't brought a deer into a butcher shop in many years. A sharp knife and my battery powdered De Walt reciprocating saw makes short work out of a rather arduous task for one person. No roasts or hamburger. Just steaks, stew meat for canning, and enough sliced jerky to appease the entire families appetite throughout the rest of the year. No sausage either. I found myself growing tired of eating it long before I came to the last package of it in my freezer. (no matter what the type I made or had professionally made) I never give meat away but to only my family members. If my work associates want a little taste. "They can go hunt one as I did." That way they will know and appreciate what all goes into harvesting a deer. (preparation before & after and one's patience during.) I'm a firm believer of the old proverb "Charity begins at home.>>First!!"
 
stu925 said: I also make my own fresh and smoked sausage using seasoning from LEM.
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stu925: Since you like to use store bought seasonings for sausage making. I know of a great place to purchase all types reasonably. Most if not all the privately owner butcher shops in the MPLS area buy their seasoning in case lots from this store. But they will sell to individuals wanting smaller quantities as well. "Just a thought you might want to expand your sausage making horizons is all." If you want I can PM you the info?
 
I can't imagine dragging a deer in from the field that hasn't been field dressed. I don't understand that at all.
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I'm totally the opposite. Leaving them whole cuts down on dirt contamination. I get the animal back to the truck as soon as possible then straight to the skinning rack. Even then, the gut sack never gets opened unless it is a really big animal and the tenderloins are worth getting (deer down here are really small and the little tenderloins while good, are too small to get really excited about).
 
I can't imagine dragging a deer in from the field that hasn't been field dressed. I don't understand that at all.
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Where we hunt you don't normally have to drag them anywhere unless it's out of a swamp or bay to the 4 wheeler or truck. Load them up and take-off.

We live in a rental house that is about 1/2 the size of what we need. The garage is packed with stuff and there really isn't any place to make it happen the way I would like. We are in the process of planning our house and the build. A complete area dedicated to processing and hanging game and fish is going to be part of it complete with butchering station, cooler, meat processing and washdown. Yeah, I'd rather process my own but right now its easier to take the entire animal and let the processor I know do it for me and we know that the deer we take to him are the deer we get back from him.
 
we know that the deer we take to him are the deer we get back from him.
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Mehbee ....mehbee not ..... but your meat IS going on the same table and through the same equipment as Cletus' buttshot buck.....
 
Hauling a "sometimes" nearly 300 lb. (live weight) Wisconsin buck around is going to give you a hernia! Gut it, get it home and wash it out with the hose. The doe I got this year weighed 140 lbs. after gutting. I've seen many bucks on the scale (field dressed) weighing over 200 lbs.!
 
I think the "field dress or not" question is as geographicly based as caliber norms ..... the further south you go, the more likely it is that hunters bring the whole animal back, guts and all......

I think warmer temps and generally smaller animals support the "get it home immediately" theory.......

Opening day of Firearm deer season here is generally the first Sat. in November .... temps run in the teens and twenties overnight, 40-60 for afternoon highs..... animals washed and cooled immediately and hung overnight will stay under 40 degrees if not hung in the sun..... that would not be an option in Georgia or Texas.....
 
Guess I went through a cycle of processing my own or not processing.

Many years ago, I had my deer processed. Then did them myself for several years. For the last 12-13 yrs. my neighbor(retired butcher and 35yr friend) has done them for me. He's getting to the point he can't do it anymore so I'm gearing up to start my own again.

It's kinda a touchy situation with the neighbor as he enjoys doing the butchering. He's 78 and according to his wife, his hands ache very badly(arthritis/gout), especially after a butchering session. Naturally, he's never said a word to me...hard headed German.:rolleyes:
If I want to find out how he's REALLY doing I have to talk to her.

I've been thinking the last couple season's of how to go about having him not do them anymore without hurting his feelings, making him feel useless or making him mad.

I'm thinking of getting set up and telling him I'm wanting to learn to do my own but I need his expertise butchering knowledge and maybe getting him to come here in an instructional/teaching capacity only.
 
Mehbee ....mehbee not ..... but your meat IS going on the same table and through the same equipment as Cletus' buttshot buck.....
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With some processors, that is a very true statement. The processor we use is more expensive than others around for a reason. They take the time to ensure that you are getting your deer processed the way you want it. Witnessing the care and diligence they put in firsthand gives me some sense of assurance not normally found as I gather from the posts I read. Some businesses are still run with values and care.
 
I think warmer temps and generally smaller animals support the "get it home immediately" theory.......
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Jimbob, you are exactly right. The faster we can get it to a real skinning rack and get it cut up and on ice, the better off we are. I got a nice sow last Saturday. At noon, the air temp was hovering right around 80 degrees.
 
Over the years I've run into quite a few hunters that couldn't field dress a deer. Or in few cases went about it wrongly. In one situation a guy did such a bad job of it. We honestly had to tea bag that deer off a bridge to the river below. We just couldn't take a chance on a unusually warm day driving it back to camp to clean it up. I wonder if that would be considered polluting?_:)
 
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