Home Game Processing

[gbrown]

I love sausage and I like knowing what's in it. Only way to do that is to make your own or watch someone do it.

Sorry if I go off topic, but I want to make a general statement here, please bear with me. I like this site because it has people like me who want to do their own thing. Like making their own boolits, (even using those J-bullets) reloading, working up their own loads, etc. Making sausage is the same thing. Using those things for our own tastes, blends and methods. Making things for themselves or their families that they know what is in it. An act of love, for those that you love. Processing your own meat, making your own sausage, boolits, loads, etc. is a work intensive, time consuming process, but an act of love for those that mean something to you. I was raised by people who worked long and hard for me, and I realized that early on. I see that in people in this site--why I love it!

[10x]

When my kids lived at home I would turn an entire deer into jerky - not the thin strip oven jerky but the biltong jerky that uses Mortons Tenderquick cure, 24 hours in the brine, a quick wipe down , 12 hours of cold smoke over hickery, alder, or apple, and then 21 days or longer to dry. The meat never gets warmer than 38F. And I weigh the meat before I mix the brine - so many grams of cure per kilo of meat.
Habecure used to be the best but that one seems to be a fond part of history we no longer can get.
One year my 3 sons and I each had 4 mule deer doe tags. We made jerky out of all but the best cuts and those boys and their friends ate a deer in two to three weeks, one thin slice at a time.

[Lloyd Smale]

ive got a harbor frieght overhead winch set up just for deer processing. it actually clamps to the rafters and can be mounted without any damage to them.

You can run a 4'-5' 2x4 through the rafters and drop a couple of eye bolts off of it. Bolt two together if you need to hang and elk. If the garage is sheetrocked you can still slide it through your access panel and run the eye bolts into it. Probably not a good idea on a rental.

[Lloyd Smale]

Most of the deer i shoot durning the year are right in a potaoe field and sorry fans of corn feed deer but i personaly think potatoe feed deer are even better. the deer we shoot durning rifle season at camp are about corn fed too. For a good month before season hundreds of hunters have big corn, sugarbeet, potatoe, and apple piles about every 200 yards in the woods. Its about like graining an animal before slaughter. I dont think ive take a deer in the last 10 years that didnt have a thick laver of fat on its back. Days of finding an old pourly fed swamp buck are long past in the UP. They eat as well here as they do anywhere.

It makes excellent soap too.



I have tried aging as well and didn't notice any difference in the taste.



When processing hit $60 here I started doing my own. The only things I cut out are the backstraps and tenderloins, the rest gets ground into burger ot chunked up and canned. It just didn't make sense to pay someone $60 to grind a deer up when I could do that myself.



Very true. I don't know how the Yoopers can stand to eat their deer. These corn/soybean fed southern deer are fantastic eating.

[Adam10mm]

Corn as a major component in their diet is toxic to deer.

[M-Tecs]

Corn as a major component in their diet is toxic to deer.

All animals with ruminant stomachs depend on fermentation by the microbes for the first stage of digestion. An introduction of large quantities certain types of food such as corn or alpha will cause problems until the microbe levels adjust. That’s why emergency winter feeding can be problematic. Animals will starve to death with full stomachs.

Deer in areas of heavy corn production will almost exclusively feed on corn for several months.

[44man]

All animals with ruminant stomachs depend on fermentation by the microbes for the first stage of digestion. An introduction of large quantities certain types of food such as corn or alpha will cause problems until the microbe levels adjust. That’s why emergency winter feeding can be problematic. Animals will starve to death with full stomachs.

Deer in areas of heavy corn production will almost exclusively feed on corn for several months.

That is true but deer that are eating corn on a regular basis are fine. Microbes change with diet. Deer cut suddenly from corn are also stressed.
Remember when winter yarded deer were dropped hay? They can't eat it. It is a liberal thing that makes them feel good while deer die. They would do better dropping tree branches to the deer. Someone with a chainsaw can save the deer.
Farms today hurt wildlife in a terrible way. They leave nothing in the fields. They leave no strips for birds, no grain and plow before winter. The land would support wildlife better if it grows wild.
It is the Obuma way, throw money at it.
If you feed deer, never quit, feed until spring. When bait piles are gone, deer go into stress.

[Lloyd Smale]

Personaly i think theres a good many deer around here that owe there lives to corn. For about 3 months the woods are full of corn piles and the deer you shoot then have a good layer of fat on them. Very few i know feed through the winter and most who do feed hey. Id bet that fat they put on is what gets a few of them through the long hard winter. deer in the deer yards around here are feed afalfa hey in the winter and they do fine on it. Maybe the stress of suddenly quiting the feeding at the end of season stress them some but id bet theyd be in even worse shape 2 months from then without it and like 44man said its not a bit differnt then farm deer who have unlimited food right up to harvest time and then have none unless they change there diet. We see it at the potatoe farm we do crop damage shooting at. they harvest the potatoes out of a field and leave behind many hundreds of lbs of small potatoes. It doesnt take the deer a week to clean them up totaly. they basicaly go nuts eating potatoes for a small window between the time they are ripe and the time they are harvested and then switch diets. Again these deer have a alot of body fat after this gorging though and im sure it helps them through the winter.

[10x]

In Northern Alberta there is a practice of spraying crops to ripen them evenly and earlier. The spray also kills the understory of weeds in the crops leaving the wildlife less food over the winter.
It is getting difficult to find even mice and the coyotes that feed on them in fields that have been sprayed before harvest.

[44man]

The thing that saves deer even if they eat corn or potatoes is that they still browse. They eat over 1000 varieties of plants. There might be a mix of microbes in them.
Deer in heavy snow yards that have lived on browse will not eat hay and can die if they do. Corn will kill them.
Once the microbes change, it is over.

[Beau Cassidy]

I hunt with 6 other guys, one of who put himself thru college working as a butcher. About once or twice a week during deer season we get together at an old school where we have a processing station setup. We can bone and completely process 5 deer in about 3 hours with 3 of us deboning, 1 running the grinder, and 1 running the vaccum packer. We have found the Cabelas Commercial vaccum packer and 1 1/2 HP grinder to be the cats meow. We also have a large industrial cuber that looks prehistoric but does a great job.

We mix our grind about 2 lbs of bacon to 10 lbs of deer meat. Some guys put ham or beef in theirs. When everything is ground and packaged none of us get in a fight over who's meat belongs to who. It is all nice and clean. We share. If somebody doesn't get a deer then we all share with them. We also give a lot away to family.

We cook lunch in the barn during the season. Our favorite dish is putting some cubed steak in a crockpot full of cream of mushroom soup early before going to the stand. It is ready by lunch. Talk about good! We have a lot of visitors for lunch when we cook that dish.

[smoked turkey]

Now just where was it that I could show up for lunch? That cubed steak/cream of mushroom soup sounds delicious. Also sounds like you guys have it pretty well figured out.

[Lloyd Smale]

beau i do the same with bacon and my bugger. about 2 lb to 10lb gives just a hint of bacon flavor and gives you the fat you need with venison. i also throw in a pack of lipton dry union soup mix to about every 5lbs. Ive found a simple way to add beef fat to burger that i dont want a bacon flavor in like for speggetti, chilli ect. I just go to the store and buy those cheap 3lb tubes of burger. the kind that is nast and more white then read. I add one of those tubes to about 15 lbs of lean venison and it works out about perfect.

I hunt with 6 other guys, one of who put himself thru college working as a butcher. About once or twice a week during deer season we get together at an old school where we have a processing station setup. We can bone and completely process 5 deer in about 3 hours with 3 of us deboning, 1 running the grinder, and 1 running the vaccum packer. We have found the Cabelas Commercial vaccum packer and 1 1/2 HP grinder to be the cats meow. We also have a large industrial cuber that looks prehistoric but does a great job.

We mix our grind about 2 lbs of bacon to 10 lbs of deer meat. Some guys put ham or beef in theirs. When everything is ground and packaged none of us get in a fight over who's meat belongs to who. It is all nice and clean. We share. If somebody doesn't get a deer then we all share with them. We also give a lot away to family.

We cook lunch in the barn during the season. Our favorite dish is putting some cubed steak in a crockpot full of cream of mushroom soup early before going to the stand. It is ready by lunch. Talk about good! We have a lot of visitors for lunch when we cook that dish.

[snuffy]

We cook lunch in the barn during the season. Our favorite dish is putting some cubed steak in a crockpot full of cream of mushroom soup early before going to the stand. It is ready by lunch. Talk about good! We have a lot of visitors for lunch when we cook that dish.

Now just where was it that I could show up for lunch? That cubed steak/cream of mushroom soup sounds delicious. Also sounds like you guys have it pretty well figured out.

Amen to that! What we need on the smiley list is one that's drooling!

Our camp cuisine was whatever the SWMBO's would send with us that could be eaten cold or warmed up. . We were a bunch of blue collar workers that had little extra cash to spend on food. The camp expenses were split in equal shares per person, regardless if one was just starting out at 12 Y.O. Gas to get there, cabin rent, food, was all split evenly Back in the 60's, we could have 12 people hunt the first weekend for around 15 bucks apiece!

Lake Arbutus area of northern WI. As we got older, and more prosperous, we went out to eat on Saturday night. We were just too tired from stomping around the woods to make supper. Usually to a local steak house.

[RP]

It sure varies from state to state and sometimes from county to county. I am very lucky on deer and how i can harvest the meat I feel like. We hunt near the house so after a deer is shot its only a short time to the cleaning station. The station as we call it is a small crane that was taken off the back of the truck and placed on the ground and welded to my frame of the double wide mancave. We dont gut the deer just hook them up to the crane cut around neck and down the back place a golfball in the breast side that is hooked to the bed. A few cranks of the winch and the deer is fur free. We then cut all the meat free from the bone and place it on ice. After it sits awhile draining the blood more then anything else its cut with a meat slicer and trimmed. everything else is ground for whatever. The steaks are run in a cuber that really is one of the best tools I have gotten over the years really makes a big difference. I place the meat in bags and sit them in the freg to do some ageing then frozen. So far the guys and gals have done 14 deer I have taken a grand total of 0 but skinned and processed around 10 The main thing is I got meat to eat. I have learned a lot of things just by watching others do their deer and now reading here its great. PS road kill is a bonus and if i get road kill I have to use a tag even if i just get horns.

[Beau Cassidy]

Pics or it didn't happen, right. I am learning I do NOT like the friggin' change to photubucket. Grrrrr.
The entire hunting party is not in these pictures. We are missing at least 2 people.

This is Randy. He is the fella who used to be a butcher.


Tony


The setup...
















We do it right. It has taken several years to get to this level but it yields good outcomes. Some folks in the community do take advantage of us and we process their deer for them.

We have a great time doing this. We tell tales and joke with each other. We don't get possessive about the meat. If you need some bacon for your mix and I have some, well then its yours. That is how we roll.

[Boyscout]

I would recommend the DVD Easy Deer Cutting by Eldon Cutlip. It's a little dry but full of good information. I have butchered all my own for the past ten and most of my sons deer. First, get it cold! In hot weather, I pack them with ice and cover them with sleeping bags. Second, keep them clean. If you get rupture a stomach wash them and dry them off. Don't let it taint the meat. Three, never use a saw except to cut the legs off. Knives only! Four, be safe and use a meat hook. They are great when your hands are numb and the meat is slippery. Five, don't cut with fat if it may be in the freezer awhile. We add canola or olive oil at the time we cook for fat. The boys used to like to make jerky with a shooter as we like the roast too much to turn into jerky. We grind our own and we take our time and use really clean pieces of meat and probably get better yield than a butcher.

Tallow is bad and we had a butcher load some ground with it once. It was not edible.

[44man]

Wonderful setups! I have to use the garage to hang and bring meat to the kitchen table to bone.
I hang deer in front of the barn to cool, then drag into the garage once cold.
I had to pass early doe season, too warm.
In Ohio and here in WV, road kills do not count against tags. State police just give you a paper. Extra deer.

[Boyscout]

Indiana police don't even bother with the paperwork unless the accident is serious and a telephone call is all most insurance companies require. It's pretty easy to tell a bullet wound from a grill.