Originally Posted by
wis_bow_huntr
Ive been cutting meat since 1993. I used to work as a butcher and Ill be honest. If youre thinking of taking the meat in to be processed its going to be costly per #. And theres no guarentee you will get your own meat back. Youre better off doing it yourself. Theres really not much you can screw up and theres no reason your dad shouldnt eat it. Its no different. I make my own burger, sausage, bacon, steaks, chops, you name it. It can be a time consuming matter, but its so much more worth it and you save TONS of money doing it yourself. And not to mention that most lockers/butchers require a minumum amount of meat brought in. Usually 50# batches. If you dont have 50# of meat, they will add to yours from someone elses, or if you have more than what is needed for what ever you want made youll lose meat and that will go into someone elses batch who doesnt have enough....its hit and miss. If you do it yourself you will get your own meat back, its guarenteed.
These are good points. I have always butchered my own big game, since my first deer in 2002. I get personal satisfaction from doing this myself. I get the specific cuts of meat that I want, and I do some things a bit differently than the stuff the butchers do standardly. I also get the size of packages of meat that are suited to the size of my family. Additionally, cutting up all that meat helps to develop knife skills that come in handy in a lot of different places that you don't necessarily think about. I was aware that my knife skills helped me to better quarter my elk and those of two of my elk hunting partners a couple of weeks ago. Most specifically, these skills enabled me to readily remove the two rear quarters by deboning around the ball and socket joint at the elk pelvis versus just chopping the pelvis bone in half with a hatchet (my partners had planned to chop, but the hatchet fell out of the pack on the hike back to the kill site -- hatchet later found on the way out). Without these skills I'm guessing I would have hacked and sawed the meat on those rear quarters less than artfully.
Your dad needs to get over that preference for the processed meat. The quality and cleanliness is probably greater doing it yourself.