HuntingNet.com Forums - View Single Post - To butcher or not to butcher? that is the question?
Old 10-22-2017, 05:20 AM
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Giant Nontypical
 
Join Date: Oct 2013
Posts: 9,230
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Yes. You don't need a bunch of fancy gear to butcher. Everything I shoot is butchered by me. If you have a box of 2 1/2 gallon ziploc bags, a black marker and a flat surface you can butcher a deer in the field. You also don't need a bunch if fancy knives. I use the same knife I field dress with to butcher. Since it is a Havalon all I do is switch out the blade which takes maybe 5 seconds to do.

I bone out the hind qtrs into roasts, which I can later cut into steaks, and put a boned qtr into a ziploc bag and toss the trimming into a separate bag. Repeat with the other qtr. Pull the chuck steaks off the front qtrs and bag them and put the rest in the trimming bag. Pull the loins and the straps and bag them. Put both the heart and liver in a bag. Bone the rest of the meat and put in the trimming bag. Label the bags with the marker so you know what is in each bag. An average deer will fit in 6 bags (1 for each hind qtr, 1 for the chuck, 1 for the loins ans straps, 1 for the heart and liver and one for grind) and will fit in one cooler.

I finish the job at home and grind my own burger and make my own sausage. I vacuum pack everything. I leave the roast whole because that way I have the option of roast or steak. Pretty easy to make a roast into steaks but impossible to make steaks into a roast. By doing it myself I know I get the meat from the animal I took and I know how the meat was handled. Everything for butchering fits in a daypack and an extra cooler with ice is easy to pack.

If I am backpack hunting, which I do as well I pretty much follow the same pattern except everything goes into a single canvas bag until I get to the truck. There I will have a cooler that holds ice for a week and I then get the animal on ice.

I have never paid to have an animal butchered. I would rather do it myself but as always, feel free to disagree.
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