I'm a little late to post here but if you would like my recipe for making deer sausage, the first thing that I would say is that if the meat is already ground that it is not a good idea to thaw it, make sausage and then freeze it again.

Now if it was just cubed meat that would be the way to go. But once it is ground - it should be made into sausage as soon as possible.

Where I live at - in Pennsylvania, it is usually cold in the month of December / January and it is ok to put it out in a shed, as long as there are no other chemicals or gasoline - motor oils or fuels that would give off a smell that could be transferred into the meat. Same thing if you had an old car that you didn't drive and had it sitting in the yard. You could put the meat inside the car or in the trunk and it wouldn't hurt it - for storage for a couple of days. As long as the temperature stays below 45* outside and goes below 32 at night – it will keep.

If you don't have a grinder - take it to who ever made your ground up meat and have them mix it with pork or even better yet is to tell them to grind it 50 / 50 with pork before you bring it home.

If nothing else, you can use ground sausage.

I can remember years when I was a kid and Jimmy Dean Sausage was on sale and dad bought 20 lbs of it and mixed it with the meat and pork fat. But we made 60 lbs of sausage per a batch back then.

Anyone that thinks that good sausage is made with junk meat is only kidding themselves. The better the meat that you mix with your sausage - the better your sausage is going to be.

The day I bought my ingredients, I went to the grocery store and bought 3 large pork loins - $2.99 a pound. They were about $15 each.
I then went to the butcher and asked if they had pork fat that they were keeping to make sausage and if I could but some.

Because of what I had already bought, they only charged me $10 for10 pounds of mixed pork fat.

I ground my pork at the same time that I ground my meat.
I used a formula of about 1 to 1 when I put it into the grinder and then I sometimes used more deer meat to clean out the grinder - while I was grinding it.

The proper way of doing it - with a grinder as small as mine is to grind about 10 pounds or less at any one time. You have to grind the meat at least twice and even better is three times. Minced meat – the fine plate in the grinder made my sausage taste like sand. I didn’t like it.

To grind it 3 times, you have to put aside some meat - because the pork and venison gets stuck in the grinder from time to time.

If you grind it more than once - you will make sure that there is no bones or foreign material in your meat.

Once is not enough, and mixing once ground pork into once ground venison will make a batch where you will have pork and then venison and then pork - you get the picture.

Once the meat is ground. You put it into a clean pan - aprox 24 quarts or larger. Drain any blood that might have accumulated inside of the smaller pans when you ground it.

I use dried onions - at least one cup per a batch - if that is what you want.
I also use about 1/4 - 1/2 a cup of season salt - Hickory flavored is good.
I then put about 2 - 4 cups of Italian Seasoning
I then use about 1/4 cup of Rosemary - course is better than fine.
I then use about 1/2 a cup of Paprika
I then put in about 3/4 of a cup of fennel seed.

I add about 4 to 6 cups of water - spring water works best.

I then add about 1/2 of a small container of meat tenderizer - dried.

I then add about 1/2 to 1 cup of Medium course Black Pepper.

Knead everything in the pan until it looks like it is thourgly mixed.

You then get a small Iron skillet out and put one small piece of meat into the pan and fry with a small amount of spring water. If you use oil - make sure that it does not change the taste of the meat that you are cooking. Or your batch will not come out right.

If it tastes too salty, you can add more ground sausage. If it does not have enough salt - you can add more, same with all the other ingredients.

By keeping your batches small, you can flavor to taste.

Mark all your pans of meat with a batch number and a description of what it is - summer sausage, Italian Sweet sausage, hot sausage etc..

To make hot sausage, all you have to do is use the hot pepper seeds that you buy to sprinkle on pizza. Add about 1/4 of a cup to 10 lbs. and cook one batch and taste. Keep adding pepper until you get it as hot as you want it.

Make sure that when you taste meat that you do not use ketchup or mustard when you are trying to determine how much ingredients to use.

Plain white bread is also fine. I use Italian.

Then you can package sausage as loose bulk, or you can put into hog casings and make rope or links. The smaller the rope, the better the sausage - unless you have a big family that can eat it all in one sitting.

I usually put my loose bulk into freezer bags - the best I can get.

I usually wrap my links and and rope into freezer paper. Double wrapping is a very good thing to do - because it protects it from freezer burn and drying out.

You can also use one of the food savers as long as you use freezer type plastic.

It should keep for a whole year if you wrap it right!