A.K.A eastwood

im looking to start doing this. not really sure how to start. what i need, where do i get the mox for ground and sausage, etc...

8mm/06

I have butchered my own for years. You' ll need a few good knives and that' s about it. Keep a sharpening steel close at hand to touch up the knives regularly. It would really help you to watch a video or 2 and to have someone experienced there when you do your first few deer. After that it just experience. Some use saws but I have eliminated the use of a saw from my butchering.
I don' t deal with sausage but I do my own grind I really like the taste of venison and if I' m going to introduce other flavors into a sausage I' d rather just use beef or pork to make the sausage and save my venison for the grind, steaks, and roasts. I have been doing more and more grind lately.
I steak out the backstraps and eat the tenderlins whole. I steak out some of the top round and sirloin and only keep the neck (2 pieces) and the shoulders as roasts. The roasts are slow cooked and then used in stews. Pretty much everything else becomes the grind with about 7-8% beef suet for moisture and a tiny bit of beef flavor.

hntngirl

Well, I do my own. But I think 8mm/06 pretty much covered everything I was going to say. Sounds like we do it pretty much the same, except I don' t add any suet to my ground meat. I used to, but got tired of messing with it. I like it just fine without.
Also, make sure that you have plenty of freezer paper and masking tape. I always double-wrap each package. Cuts down on chance of freezer burn and also blood leaking out when you thaw it.

highcountry13

i have done my deer myself since i started hunting and that was when i was 13 now im 16. its not really all that hard u just gotta know what to cut and have sharp knives. mainly i juts cut out the tenderloins whole and then steak the backstrap. i use the neck for a roast and make sum steaks from the rear-legs but other than that i grind it all with a hand grinder. youre gonna need freezer bags and make sure u get the air out

jerseyhunter

Been butchering my own for years now.Taught myself. Picked up a book " After Your Deer Is Down" by Josef Fischl and Leonard Lee Rue,III . Step by step Pictures, read it a couple of times and followed it for the first Deer after that it comes natural. As for spices for sausages go to www.sausagemaker.com they sell everything you need. Also have great receipe books. Hope this helps and Good Luck to you. They sell great premixed spice kits for starters. just add enough fat or fat replacer so it doesn' t come out to dry. Experiment and see what works best for you.

JagMagMan

I have butchered my own deer ever since I started hunting.
I have mainly taught myself how to do it. You have been given some really good advice here. So get a book or video and some sharp knives and get started!
As long as you get the backstraps and tenderloins right, don' t worry too much! Start deboning the deer and with a few trys you will start learning how and where to make the cuts for steaks and roasts. The cuts that you mess up on as you are learning will be just fine for grinding into sausage or chili meat.
As for making sausage just find some recipes to try until you find what you like.
For added fat, I don' t use suet, I get the cheapest pork roast available and grind it up. I like my sausage to be 50-60% deer and the rest pork. It is hard work, but I am a do-it-yourselfer! Works for me! Good luck!

Angus74

I usually remove the loins and backstraps whole and steak cut the hams by seperating each muscle in the hind quarter, slice it or freeze it whole for roasts, but ALWAYS SLICE ACROSS THE GRAIN. The shoulders stay whole and we roast whole shoulders on the grill or a campfire, every thing else that is too small to fry goes to the grinder.

Noleball

We grew up hunting and we did not exactly have a lot of money either so we had to do it ourselves.

Last year, I killed a nice buck on a trip in Kansas, and for the first time, I thought about taking it in and having a butcher do the dirty work for me. When he came back with a $125 price to process the deer, we decided to do it ourselves again.

I guess, like anything else, you just get better with practice. Everyone always wants deer meat if you have it so you invite one or two (just the ones you do not mind giving meat to) over and have a " Processing Party" . Me and one other person can completely cut up, wrap, and grind all of the useful parts of the animal and be cleaned up and meat in the freezer in less than three hours. Mind you, sausage takes a little extra time but, other than that, there is nothing to it.

I believe once you try it a couple of times you will like it better anyway. You get roasts the size you want and steaks the size you want. Also, you know that you are getting all of your meat and some of it is not getting skimmed for the butcher or whoever.

Deleted User

[Deleted by Admins]

Rack-attack

I was lucky enough to have an old Italian butcher as a family friend. We would bring over the deer - drink red wine - fry up some fresh cutlets - and watch him do his magic. Since his passing we did our own for a few years and still occasionally butcher one.

But now I give the buissness to our local taxidermy. Pay my 80 bucks, then give most of it away - I am still a beef man