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Cutting up venison

allen griggs
I cut up the big deer I shot on Thursday. I had quartered the deer, and put the meat in a batch of icy salt water in a big plastic ice chest.
On Sunday, my girlfriend was in town, and we cut up one shoulder, one backstrap, and one ham into steaks. Got 11 packages of steak, I use the white freezer paper.
We also made 11 packages of sausage. I just have a little electric grinder, and I grind the sausage twice, so that is a good bit of work, a real mess, it is a labor of love.
My broken knee was killing me at that point, and we called it a day.
Today I processed the rest of the deer. I had another shoulder, ham, and backstrap, along with the inside straps, and about 7 one pound chunks of meat that I had cut off of the deer.
I got 11 packages of steak, 12 packages of sausage, and 8 packages of burger. I had gone down to the store and get beef fat to mix with the venison for the sausage and burger, deer fat is inedible. I buy a package of sausage seasoning, one pack makes 25 pounds of sausage, this stuff is great!
It took about 5 hours today, my knee hurts a lot. I am self medicating with gin and tonic, it is working pretty well.
Deer season ends Saturday. I reloaded the muzzleloader tonight, and got out the camo and my Home Depot bucket. I will be going out tomorrow, still have a little room left in the freezer.
I have one hide salt curing in the shed, I could use one more.
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Comments

19 comments

Date Votes
  • MVP
    Good work and Good Luck tomorrow[8D]
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  • dongizmo
    Do you need my address to send the steaks?.....[:p]
    Don
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  • whiteclouder
    What do you do with the hides?

    Clouder..
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  • jimdeere
    Allen;
    We've got the canner full of cubed deer meat right now. Very labor intensive. While we're waiting the 90 minutes for the canner to come off, we're going to cut the backstraps up, tenderize them, and wrap for freezing. Just ate some sweet meat wraped in bacon that Mrs. Deere cooked up. We were just saying that probably the indians didn't cull as much of the deer as we do. I bet they used everything but the hooves.
    Good luck with the knee. Hope it feels better tomorrow.
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  • allen griggs
    I get the hides tanned at Sebring Custom Tanning in Florida.
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  • frog21
    I quit cutting up deer,found a butcher that cuts,wraps and freezes a deer for 40.00. He evens puts the burger in 1lb packs.
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  • jimdeere
    That's not a bad deal. I wouldn't do it for that. I think it's around $80 around here. Last one I took to a local meat locker, they threw it in a pile with about 30 other deer. I'd want to make sure I got only the meat from my deer, not one somebody hauled around in their truck for two days.
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  • JimmyJack
    Just a suggestion, wrap the meat in saran wrap before you use the white freezer paper. It will make it last much longer. In addition, a butcher told me to quit using pork with the hamburger and buy the cheapest beef hamburger you can find. Mix it about 25% and it will have the proper amount of fat to add flavor and keep it from being too lean. It works for me. When you grind your meat, it grinds best when as cold as possible to freezing. Sometimes adding a small amount of water like you do when making sausage also helps. They do that in the butcher shop all the time. Look on the package, by law they are permitted 10 per cent or something like that.
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  • tsr1965
    quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
    I cut up the big deer I shot on Thursday. I had quartered the deer, and put the meat in a batch of icy salt water in a big plastic ice chest.
    On Sunday, my girlfriend was in town, and we cut up one shoulder, one backstrap, and one ham into steaks. Got 11 packages of steak, I use the white freezer paper.
    We also made 11 packages of sausage. I just have a little electric grinder, and I grind the sausage twice, so that is a good bit of work, a real mess, it is a labor of love.
    My broken knee was killing me at that point, and we called it a day.
    Today I processed the rest of the deer. I had another shoulder, ham, and backstrap, along with the inside straps, and about 7 one pound chunks of meat that I had cut off of the deer.
    I got 11 packages of steak, 12 packages of sausage, and 8 packages of burger. I had gone down to the store and get beef fat to mix with the venison for the sausage and burger, deer fat is inedible. I buy a package of sausage seasoning, one pack makes 25 pounds of sausage, this stuff is great!
    It took about 5 hours today, my knee hurts a lot. I am self medicating with gin and tonic, it is working pretty well.
    Deer season ends Saturday. I reloaded the muzzleloader tonight, and got out the camo and my Home Depot bucket. I will be going out tomorrow, still have a little room left in the freezer.
    I have one hide salt curing in the shed, I could use one more.


    If you wish, I have a couple recipes...one for Italian sausage, and the other for breakfast sausage. They are for 10lb. batches, you mix your own spices, and add 40% pork to the venison(6lbs. venison/4lbs. pork butt). If anyone would like them drop me an e-mail.
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  • Old-Colts
    Hope you get another one. I could have easily filled all four deer tags this year with does and button bucks, but only had a shot at one nice buck, so he's now in the freezer and I'm done. I was lazy, so after I quartered the buck I took it to our local meat market and they custom processed the deer for us into steaks, roasts, hamburger, and sausage! They season the sausage to perfection![:p]
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  • tsr1965
    I try to process all of my own. Them backstraps are the first thing to leave the carcass after it is hung up and skinned(those two are done immediately upon arrival back at the cabin). Outside of searing them in a hot cast iron frying pan with roasted garlic in olive oil, or on a charcoal/hardwood grill, they are about the perfect temperature just as they come from the freshly harvested deer.
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  • allen griggs
    I heard someone else recommending wrapping the meat in Saran wrap, then using the white freezer paper. Well, the meat without the Saran wrap lasts for a year with no damage at all, so I am doing ok without the Saran wrap.
    Butchers throw away fat, so I ask the local butcher to save fat for me, I walk out of the store with a ten pound bag of beef fat for free, this way, I have only deer meat in the sausage.
    My biggest problem is my little rinky dink grinder. It claims "2.2 pounds per minute" but 1/2 pound per minute is more like it. And grinding that sausage twice, that takes forever.

    This is what I would like to see under my Christmas tree:

    i517628sn02.jpg


    The large, die-cast metal hopper and powerful 450-watt motor on Cabela's new Stainless Pro Grinder lets you grind generous portions of the meats you choose, quickly and easily. No. 8 neck moves meat efficiently and includes 3, 4.5 and 8mm plates which allows you to custom grind ingredients while the two sausage attachments make stuffing your own sausage faster than using a separate stuffer. Stainless construction for durability. Reverse function repositions trapped ingredients smoothly to maximize output. UL listed. Imported.
    Dimensions: 10"H x 15"W x 9"D.
    Weight: 14 lbs. $169
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  • Chief Shaway
    quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
    I heard someone else recommending wrapping the meat in Saran wrap, then using the white freezer paper. Well, the meat without the Saran wrap lasts for a year with no damage at all, so I am doing ok without the Saran wrap.
    Butchers throw away fat, so I ask the local butcher to save fat for me, I walk out of the store with a ten pound bag of beef fat for free, this way, I have only deer meat in the sausage.
    My biggest problem is my little rinky dink grinder. It claims "2.2 pounds per minute" but 1/2 pound per minute is more like it. And grinding that sausage twice, that takes forever.

    This is what I would like to see under my Christmas tree:

    i517628sn02.jpg


    The large, die-cast metal hopper and powerful 450-watt motor on Cabela's new Stainless Pro Grinder lets you grind generous portions of the meats you choose, quickly and easily. No. 8 neck moves meat efficiently and includes 3, 4.5 and 8mm plates which allows you to custom grind ingredients while the two sausage attachments make stuffing your own sausage faster than using a separate stuffer. Stainless construction for durability. Reverse function repositions trapped ingredients smoothly to maximize output. UL listed. Imported.
    Dimensions: 10"H x 15"W x 9"D.
    Weight: 14 lbs. $169


    [img][/img]1028071305a.jpg

    This is the one that I have from Cabelas. It is 1hp. It is $360. #51-6401-001 If you are gonna be a bear be a grizzly. It has the 22 neck.
    I used to use an old hand crank that I converted to a motor via pulleys then a gear box. I spent so much time grinding that it wasn't worth it. I grind most of my deer except for the loins. I might save a couple of roasts but that's it. The last deer we did with it was one that my hunting pardner shot. He ended up with 40 packages of burger. We double ground it then, put the stuffing tubes on and put the burger in the burger bag-tubes. We had all the grinding and packaging done in about 45 minutes.
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  • earlwellman
    Nice setup Chief,
    I was home to PA and we cut ours up in about an hour. I like stew meat, so we didn't need to grind. I couldn't wait to get back to SC to put raost in the crock pot. Had it yesterday.[:p][:p]
    Earl
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  • headzilla97
    THATS THE SAME SET UP MY FRIEND HAS WORKS LIKE A CHARM
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  • Daddie_Tom
    http://www.foodsaver.com/ Thats what I use. Have had NO problems with freezer burn. Use it all the time..
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  • grdad45
    quote:Originally posted by Daddie_Tom
    http://www.foodsaver.com/ Thats what I use. Have had NO problems with freezer burn. Use it all the time..


    That's the only way to go. I found a package of steaks in the bottom of the freezer that were three years old. Decided to try them, and they were just as good as this year's venison. When I vac-pack my ground meat, I flatten it in the bag. It thaws in about 15 minutes, and you can stack the packages in the freezer.
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  • JimmyJack
    If you want to save a buck on a grinder motorize a hand grinder. I did 3 of them, a #12, a #22, and a #32. A half horse moter is plenty. The 32 is rated at 600 pounds an hour, the 22 at 400. I grind the meat twice with a 5/16 hole, and they work great. It takes longer to clean it up than to grind a deer. If you have a butcher that gives you fat you are lucky. One of the most expensive parts is the V pulley to drive the grinder. The small one I hooked up to a gear reducer instead of a pulley, but it is too slow compared to the v pulley. I use 1725 RPM moter.
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  • tsr1965
    quote:Originally posted by JimmyJack
    If you want to save a buck on a grinder motorize a hand grinder. I did 3 of them, a #12, a #22, and a #32. A half horse moter is plenty. The 32 is rated at 600 pounds an hour, the 22 at 400. I grind the meat twice with a 5/16 hole, and they work great. It takes longer to clean it up than to grind a deer. If you have a butcher that gives you fat you are lucky. One of the most expensive parts is the V pulley to drive the grinder. The small one I hooked up to a gear reducer instead of a pulley, but it is too slow compared to the v pulley. I use 1725 RPM moter.


    Being in instrumentation, and process controlls, I have done that also. I used a 180 VDC motor with a variable speed AC drive that we had in our archived spare/obsolete parts. I used a mechanical coupler to couple the motor shaft to the #32 grinder. I also use this motor/drive to turn a spit on a Pig/deer roaster/grill.
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