Sounds like you saved a lot of money doing it yourself, EKM. For lots of reasons I think processing one's own game is the way to go, if possible.

I feel satisfaction when I process my own meat from my game animals. For me, my pleasure in hunting is partly the hunting aspect -- pursuing game -- and partly pleasure in achieving competence in the myriad skills associated with hunting: shooting well (I'm workin' on it anyway!), cleanly gutting a downed animal, skinning the animal, quartering the animal, processing the meat, taking care of my feet, dressing so I can be out all day long, getting into a hunting position in the dark, not getting lost, etc. Processing the meat is one of those competencies. It certainly is useful to be able to control how your meat is cut up. In my case I have some special preferences which most processors probably wouldn't accommodate (I like stews and spicey meat pies called "terrines" and so I package miscellaneous chunks of meat as stew meat and miscellaneous small trimmings for making my terrines -- while this meat would normally go into venison burger at a processors shot), but if you process your own meat you can process it any way that pleases you. Processing your meat yourself you know you are getting your own well cared for meat, not someone else's meat that was brought back on the hood of their truck or left overnight on the ground before they took the trouble to find their kill.

And processing meat -- at least deer and pronghorn, which I have experience with -- is not difficult, either physically or technique-wise. I think it helps to see it done by another before doing it yourself, but even this isn't entirely necessary.