How long to work up your deer to "meat".

B

bamaranger

New member
Just finished working up a 145 lb. +/- deer for the freezer. And as I was a bit curious, I kept track of the time involved. Here's what:

* skin, gut, quarter (hams and shoulders), back straps and innerloins...1.25 hr


The parts then get put in the cooler, iced down, 3 days later, we finish, thus:

*debone all four hams & slice to steaks and trim, slice/trim backtrapsinto
"fillets", trim and cube shoulders as well as any exceess for stew meat,
wrap- tape and label.........3.5 hrs.

TOTAL..........4.75 hr, call it 5 if you want.

Bamawife wrapped for me, saving about .5 an hour, at least. And none of this includes set up or clean up. A 100 lb bow killed doe in bow season took about an hour less.

So, in a comparable deer size, how long for everybody else?
 
Sounds about right. I never deboned the shoulders and hams, so I guess I might have been a bit faster. I never really was in any hurry, though.
 
My time is good , being able to butcher and wrap in about 3 hours on a good day .That's with better than average skill and years of experience !
It would be much better to have a butcher for cutting and a wrapper to wrap !
For things like liver and other organ meats storage is much shorter. Each 10 *F lower temp will double the storage life . Parts to be smoked and frozen --smoke first , freeze after smoking.
 
I always froze it in big chunks and did most of the work after it thawed out to be cooked. Now I get it all ground since I would just as soon have a chopped steak, burger, meatloaf, spaghetti. Never bought the stuff to do it myself so I just pay the meat market. Still pretty cheap if you have seen the price of ground beef lately.
 
Hard to say. I usually hang them up at camp and cut it all off the bone, except the neck. I put the chunk meat in 2 gallon zip lock bags in coolers until I get home. I know it is a heck of a lot faster than leaving bone in. The meat works easier when chilled anyway.
 
Deer is immediately field dressed and carried to my garage and lifted head down.
Skinned, pick its loose hair off the carcass, 1/4 up using a 14 volt dewalt saws-all, then trim each 1/4 of unwanted tallow or fat and bloodshot tissue and anything else not copacetic, de-bone each 1/4s pre-trimed muscles than freeze those muscles for a hour or so to stiffen prior to there streaking. While waiting. Coffee break & a cookie or two. Steel my knives a little. Then the real work start.

Steak out. Measure approximate cooking amounts in piles and wrap the meat tightly in cellophane and freezer paper. Wife labels and fills deep freeze.
Good sharp knives are a must as is a sharp 14" steaking scimitar. Freezer paper metal dispenser saves time and patients. No doubt about that. (Cabelas sells a good one) Steak and stew meat is my cutting choices. Stew meat weight measured wrapped and days later pressure cooker cann'ed into pint jars.

How long? Depends on the deer size and how sloppy I was during its hide removal. (picking loose hair takes time)
Have tried the pulling of a hide with golf ball & rope. But I'm much quicker at hide removal with a 5" curved razor sharp Forester skinning knife when the deer is supported by its hanging on a gamble. Beats pulling it off via ATV use. (To much monkey business in its pulling off)
Have done two large deer in a day. But that effort ran well into the night time before I was through. I suppose if I had to guess on a single deer 6-7 hours of work maybe to do it right & sanitary without any help other than my wife. She's the worlds greatest hair picker and all around darn good Butchers helper bar none.._:)
 
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Shur Shot if you take a cloth and put a little vineagar on it it will wipe the hair off with no muss no fuss.Works for rabbit,squirrles,deer or any thing with hair.
 
Normally(if the carcass isn't frozen) 2 deer skinned, cut, ground, and packaged in a day for my "family group". Me, Son, DIL, and 2 kids start about 9-10 am with a couple of coffee breaks and lunch break and we're done by 4-5pm--around 5 hours actual work time. If I work alone, I can skin, debone, cut & package steaks, and prepare meat for grinding of 2 deer in a day.
 
My deer all get turned into sausage. From hanging to done, meaning cleaned up and the meat in a few large trays in the freezer, is right about an hour per deer. Takes me 6 hours to do an elk into steaks, roasts and hamburger grind chunks.

From a try of meat to make 50 pounds of sausage (bulk) in one pound packages takes about 2 hours.
 
Sounds right on the money for breaking down a deer and getting it packaged correctly. I also like to get around 3 days of aging whether it be on ice or in a walk in cooler.
 
For speedgoats, which I'd say are roughly equal to the average whitetail, we can usually only do no more than 3 in a 6-8 hour shift. And that's with a 3-5 man crew. So, I'd say 4-5 hours isn't bad at all, especially if it's a one-man show.

It's been so long since I butchered a deer (Muley), that I can't even remember how long it took. But the last whole elk took about 8 hours. They're easier with the larger muscles, but there's still a lot more animal to deal with. Even the last partial elk (missing one shoulder, all neck meat, and some other pieces) took about 4 hours to debone, cut, trim, and package. And that was with a 3-7 man crew (kids are not reliable ;)).
 
Me and a buddy can clean a carcass hanging head down in about an hour.
Processing meat varies for me. Some carcasses I process different ways such as some I grind up most of the meat for sausage, sometimes for just bulk ground, sometime I save the hams and different cuts for steaks and roasts.
But one thing I always do no matter what I plan to do with the rest of the meat is I ALWAYS save the tenderloins and I always LEAVE THEM WHOLE. I never fillet them. Now I do obviously trim the silver skin and remove the chain meat from the loins but that is it. And unless I'm grinding the meat I always leave the bone on the cuts that have it. The bone keeps the meat tastier, moister and more tender while cooking it. Plus the charred bones work well to make a stock with if you pair them with the correct mirepoix.
 
Boning/cutting/wrapping the first one I did myself took about 2 days, last one I did took about 5 hours. Experience counts for a lot. ;)
 
Wow Jerrys, that guy is quick. But, I have seen some he could stand on the hide and it wouldn't pull off that way.
 
I'm blessed to have a hunting family. I usually to the skinning and quartering simply because I seem to be the fastest and get less hair on the meat. We soak our meat for 3 days. Sometimes 4. The key is to only leave water on it the first 24 hours. After that keep it just on ice draining the water off every chance u get. The individual muscles on the hams at that point are easily separable by sliding your fingers between them, using knife only to cut tendons or sinew separating meat from the bone. You are then left with individual muscles for roast or slicing into fry meat or stew meat. My father in law usually does the boning. As soon as the bone is removed my wife, mother n law, sister in law, and kids take over. They cut into strips and start grinding. We have two grinders and two foods savers. It doesn't take long. Even if you do all this by yourself the whole process of boning the meat grinding it up and packaging with a food saver should take no more than 3 hours. Cleaning up the cutting boards and grinders takes more time than the processing.
 
Once upon a time when I was a bit younger, I worked as a sudo guide and camp hand on a corporate lease. At the time I could easily get in half a dozen or more deer to dress out and process to varied degrees depending on what the customer wanted. As is typical in Texas weather was sometimes mid 70-80 degrees to down in the 20's so sometimes speed was in essence to get things on ice. Since I was the most proficient with the knife I got most of the meat cutting while I had another fellow pulling hides.

If you look at the animal like a puzzle the pieces interlock in various ways. I usually had them from truck to cooler in less than 20 minutes per animal sometimes more sometimes less depending on how cool it was. If temps were good and cool we usually let them chill for a hour or two after being dressed and skinned. If not well I dissected them and got them on ice ASAP.

There is a quick way to remove the hams even with a pocket knife if you know where to cut and to ring the hip socket. Shoulders are quick and easy as is the backstrap and loins.

Nowadays from field to freezer with the wife inside washing and wrapping I usually am finished up in about an hour then cleaning up the tool. I use limb loppers to remove legs, split ribs and such but still the knife does 95% of the work. It also helps that we have feral hogs to keep in practice through out ht year. They are a bit more involved as the hides can dull a sharp knife in minutes. After it is done and gone however the anatomy is generally the same. Remove shoulders, all loins, then hams by ringing the him socket, then loppers to cut ribs from the backbone. In most cases I don't even leave much for the yotes to come after.
 
It usually takes me about 40 minutes. Twenty minutes to drive to the processor and another to go back and pick it up ;):D
 
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