Diving in late on this thread but my experience has been if the meat has had a few days to hang or be kept cool it is somewhat firmer and easier to process.In my bachelor days I could stuff a bunch in the fridge and pick away at it evenings doing say a quarter each night depending on the size of the deer and save the trim to grind with a hand grinder at the end. My hunting buddy was a meat cutter and had a walk in cooler. He would do a big deer cut and wrapped in 3.5 hours or so. He was really ,really fussy on trimming and cleanliness. Before the cooler days I would also keep the meat in coolers on ice but always made sure the kept dry. Looks like we'll have to do that again as my pal is "in a better place now"......