RE: self butchering
Bigtime, simple. If you have a garage,skin & quarter it.Put the quaters in a cooler & then taken theprimal cutsinside to break them down to the cuts u want. As for the carcass, a sawzall works great. Cut it into small pieces & put it in a trash bag, then in out to the trash.
Here's how I do it: First I rinseout the cavity w/a hose or bucket of water out in the yard. This helps get rid of the unnecessary blood dripping in the garage.I hang mine from a rafter in the garage, w/the head up (doe). I too, use a piece of card board on the floor to catch blood, fur, etc.s. Have in place a garbage can, knives, latex gloves, cotton gloves (when the temps get low), & a large cooler.
Start the skinning process just below the ears. To assist w/the skinning, I place a tennis ball on the fur side of the skin, & loop a rope or nylon webbing around it. Attached to the rope/webbing is a 45# olympic weight. The weight begins pulling the skin, & it's very easy then to use your knife & trim along the meat/skin line. Takes about 20min.
Then use a very sharp boning knife & seperate the large muscle groups, ie; shoulder, loins (backstraps), rump, tenders, neck & if you want rib meat. Put all of these into a cooler. Important to get that meat a cold asap. Then, depending on the temp, I either set up a table in the garage or take each primal cut, one at a time, in the house. Rinse off the primal cut in the sink. Gets rid of fur, blood clots, etc. Seperate out each muscle group from the bone. You can cut what u want out of each primal cut. Shoulders- stew meat, jerky, ground, sausage.
The rump is a better cut of meat. Rump-roasts, steaks, jerky, nice ground meat, & stew meat.
Loins- strictly steaks. Cut into 6" sections, & freeze whole. Cut when u want to grill out.
Tenderloins- says all itself. Neck & rib meat-sausage.
Scrap meat (any thing you trim off the bones, little pieces, etc- sausage. Use a vacuum sealer to freeze all of your cuts. Remember do one primal cut @ a time, & put the finished cuts into the refrigeratoras soon as your done witheach primal cut.