Man, you guys pay a lot to have your deer butchered. Our local processor charges $30.00 to butcher including grinding, a little extra to add beef or pork trim to the grind.
We still do our own tho as we have been snookered and unsatisfied with the quality several times. Generally, we'll butcher 5 a yr . . .I say "we", but my wife is the butcher here . . .and I just help
. I skin and quarter it, put it in an ice chest for up to a week keeping it covered with ice and water draining daily until water runs clear. The wife comes in at this point removing all fat and gristle, nerve, sinew . .anything but red meat. We bone it out, grinding the shoulders and any meat trim . .when we're thru with the carcass it looks like it's been picked clean by buzzards.
The more you do it yourself, the less you'll trust anyone else to do it , especially if you grind as there are so many times you think "do I want that in there" . . .someone you really don't know may not care.
We actually don't have a lot of tools for butchering. We have good knives and a hand grinder, plus hand saws . Our meat keeps in the freezer well, usually a yr. I believe that the trick to getting meat to keep in the freezer this long is in the cleaning process, omitting fat and any other undesirable element of the carcass. Plus, we vacuum seal and then double wrap in freezer paper.
We're wanting to better equip ourselves, but we keep procrastinating as the stuff we want is pretty expensive unless we find a deal.