People often talk about a "gamy" taste to their meat. There
IS such a thing. If you have the meat cut up with a saw, the marrow and bone fragments disrupt the taste of the venison. So I debone all my meat with a knife. I cut no bones with a saw at all. The only thing I cut that resembles bone is the sternum when I'm skinning and that too is done with a knife.
I also remove almost all the membrane/sinew that is on the meat. This is a large contributor of the gamy taste some talk about. I also remove all the tallow/fat. When any venison I grind goes into the grinder, it's clean, void of any of these things that disrupt the taste of the meat.
I like to cut it into strips so it feeds better into the hopper. My first grinder experiences have been done with a #10 grinder. See below:
It grinds ok, but I grind more meat now, all of my family, so I use a larger one yet. It's not really a lot of work. You have to keep your meat clean of the sinew stuff so your grinder doesn't plug or slow down. If you keep extra grinder plates on hand, about $5 each, you can switch them out as they get plugged up and keep on grinding, while someone else is cleaning out the one(s) that is/are plugged. Makes for fast grinding this way.
I mix 2lbs of ground venison per 1lb. of ground beef.(some to 3 to 1)
iSnipe