We add beef trimmings from the grocery store.

Here in Iowa it is generally cool enough to let the deer hang. The hang time allows us to plan out the butchering. Part of the planning is to call the meat department at the store as it takes a good day for them to accumulate the trimmings. They do do a coarse grinding of the trimmings too.

One advantage of beef trimming is that it is something that they normally discard so the price is usually a dollar a pound or less. Pork trimmings are not discarded by meat departments because it is used in breakfast sausage. The pork is priced the same as the finished sausage. 75 cents for beef or $2.50 for pork. You decide.

We grind the venison, mix it with fifteen to twenty percent ground beef trimmings (on a big table), and then run the mixed meat through the grinder again.