I cut mine into steaks, roasts, chili meat, and if I do jerky I do that on my own. I've been sending the rest to a processor to make into sausage, but I'm debating on that. They charged me $50 to make 12lbs of deer meat into 24lbs of german sausage adding 12lbs of pork to it. Still cheaper than you can buy the sausage but not by much.

I'm amazed that so many people don't make steaks out of a deer. Several folks I've talked to around here just send the entire deer off to be made into sausage, etc. Seems like a waste to me.

It takes me about 3 hours by myself to go from a quartered deer to having it cut and packaged. Making jerky takes a while, but it isn't constant work by any means, it's checking the oven every hour or so and flipping it over. I like my jerky a little on the thick side so it takes about 6 hours in the oven at 185 to get it dried out. I can do about 5lbs at a time in the oven and the last time I made a batch of jerky I made 15lbs.

One thing that I did was spent some money onone of thosevaccumm food saver contraptions. It is SO much easier than messing with freezer paper and does a better job too. I spent $90 for the food saver and it costs $10 or so for a roll of the vaccumm bags and that is good for a full size deer.

I also feel that processing it on my own I end up with better quality in the end and there is never any doubt about how the meat was handled.