self butchering
 

i know there are alot of you that do your deer your selfs.

i have thought about it .

Due to the cost , being able to know it is done right and clean.

I am good with a knife but do not really have a place to do it

where do you guys do it at . What place do you fine to be the best . i.e kitchen garage just out doors or what

what do you do about clean up and getting ride of the carcass.

RE: self butchering
 

Well before you can become a well renouned butcher you have to learn how to SHARPEN your spelling skills.:D

RE: self butchering
 

LOL,

I have a gambrel system in my garage, Prior to my new garage floor I simply hung it fromt he trusses. Now with my new floor, LOL I lay down plastic or cardboard to catch the blood etc....

I also have a can I use to catch the scrap, I lay a board across it and hang it, skin it, quarter it, debone it and put it in tin pans to move to the spare refridg. A couple days to set up and I microclean it and bag it.

I am very particular about my venison and I want to know it can go from bag to pan without issue. The closer you microbutcher your venny, the better the eatin too. ;)

RE: self butchering
 

why can't you just answer the question or not respond. I am sure you make a typos aswell or are you just perfect

RE: self butchering
 

Bigtim, its not all that difficult. Im no where near a pro at butchering a deer, but the doe i did this morning didnt come out all that bad. Simply hang it anywhere you can, perferably somewhere that is cool. Then slowly start taking the deer apart. You are going to want a good sharp knife, i use a small filet knife.

RE: self butchering
 

"Deer Processing 101"by Brad Lockwood is the most informative how to dvd you can buy. It takes you through every step from feild dressing to the freezer. It is worth every penny...

RE: self butchering
 

Before we had a barn to hang one in we just used a tree limb to hang them from. I quarter them that way and then carry the quarter inside and debone on the kitchen counter. Burger gets cleaned, thengoesdirectly into the grinder. Steaks are cleaned,cut to size, wrapped, bagged, and frozen. Depending on what you want to do it can take anywhere from a couple hours to most of the day.

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just about anywhere will work,throw the meat in bags or ice chest, then to the kitchen to cut it into freezer portions

RE: self butchering
 

I don't usually do this...in fact I don't do this at all. That is until someone comes on here who wants to point out a grammatical error. So before you do...please make sure that your post is free from all errors as well.

For instance...you spelled renouned incorrectly. The correct spelling would be renowned. Renown is used as a noun and means "widespread honor or fame..." While renowned is used as an adjective meaning "having renown; famous."

Just thought I'd clear that up for you...no harm, no foul.

NH1

RE: self butchering
 

We do all our butchering. We butcher in a garage with all the necessities. We have a grinder, and table we butcher on. We use the filet knives as well. They seem to work better. Make sure you clean everything after every use, and you wont have any problems. When we are finished we have a very big hole and we drop the remains in the hole. We have a fence over top of it to keep animals out. Then when hunting season is over we cover the hole...

RE: self butchering
 

I use to in my garage, big shop, or small shop. Kinda depended on time and temp. Id set up a sheet of ply wood on two saw horses and cut the deer up. I use a hand grinder to make burger, chilli meat, and sausage. That is after ageing it. I have built me a processing room, a few years back,out behind my shop. Man is it nice.

RE: self butchering
 

how much blood is there from when you start to skin the deer to it is cut down to say half quarters

RE: self butchering
 

As far as processing deer this is what I do.

I built an inverted "U" with a block and tackle in the center at the top. At one of the bottom legs I put a winch with cable thru the wench and hooked to the gambrel thru the pulley wheels. I back my truck to the deer pole and crank it to the top. Then I start skinning it. Since it is already gutted I don't have to worry about that. I skin the deer and cut off it's head.

Now comes the cutting the deer up. I use some clear plastic bags--2 1/2 gallon zip lock bags--and start cutting up the deer. I start with the hams and cut the meat off the bones, but dividing the two big roasts up. Then after each roast is cut off I put one de-boned section into each bag. Compress the bags down to get the air out and seal it. It goes into my basement fridge. Then I do the other side. Next I cut out the inner loins and the backstraps and put all four pieces in a zip lock bag and into the fridge. After that I go with the front quarters and cut off all the meat and into the bags it goes. So when both front quarters are in the fridge I start on the scraps that I can get off the deer. For instance, the neck. I really don't like a neck roast so I cut off all the meat and turn it into stew or burger. Cut off all the meat there and into the bags and fridge.

Next I cut off all the leg shank meat. This is some tough meat and goes into my burger bag. After all the meat is cut off the deer I have a skeleton hanging from my meat pole. I then grab a couple of contractor trash bags and take the back leg bones and throw them over the fence to my dogs. Then I cut the rib bones off...after cutting what little meat there is on the ribs and throw those to the dogs as well. The back bone goes into the contractor bags all nice and tied up and into my trash cans for pick up.

I wait 5-7 days for the meat in the fridge to age at temperatures of 35-38 degrees and after one week I start my processing.

I have a 20x30" cutting board that I put over one of my sinks in the kitchen. In the other kitchen sink goes the scraps that are either to bloody, shot up, silver skin or fat, and these go to my dogs--they love me for that. I then cut the meat into steaks, roasts, stew meat and grind scraps. Then I bag each section into vacuum bags, label each bag of what it is and seal it shut. Then into the freezer until I decide to use it.

Now for the burger...I usually wait till I've got around 20-30 lbs of it. The grind is usually frozen solid and when I'm ready to grind it up I thaw it till it is still semi-frozen, and into the meat grinder. After it is all ground up I have a food scale where I'll weigh out 2 lbs of burger and put that into a vacuum bag. Seal them all up when I'm done and back to the freezer. Some may disagree with me, but the meat is still VERY cold and not out for very long. I've never had a problem with this way and don't anticipate one either.

This is my system and so far it works.

Paul

RE: self butchering
 

If you field dress it in the woods and lift up the end to let the blood in the body cavity drain out right away (which you should do, by the way), then the blood during the butchering process is minimal. In fact, other than drippage below where it hangs (put down something disposable under it), there's not much to worry about regarding blood.

RE: self butchering
 

Man, Wis_bow_huntr .... you dun got schooled!!!! ........Newhunter ...... he was just playin' ...

Seriously though ..... some people really need to be respectful of others and take time to type correctly .... there have been posts I couldn't even understand .......... there's a bunch of comma and period haters out there!! [:-]:D

RE: self butchering
 

PreacherTony,

While I know I didn't treat him as Christ would have, I feel that my post wasn't negative in general. If Wis_bow_huntr took offense then I do apologize to him. As a reading and writing teacher for 7th grade I see alot of posters who have alot of errors and don't say anything. I just don't care when someone takes upon themselves to humiliate someone on a public forum.

There are times I've even misspelled a word.

Paul

RE: self butchering
 

It should either be well "rounded" or "world renowned". :eek:

RE: self butchering
 

All their bull**** aside. I have actually brought my deer home and cleaned it (Fully)on the tailgate of my truck backed up under the lights of my garage. And I live in the city. You just have to gut it in the field, skin it where you can, and then butcher it as best you can with what you can. If that means in the driveway so be it! If you didn't get a chance to gut it in the field then I suggest you double or triple bag the guts and send them out on your normal trash pickup provided it won't be for another few days. Butchering for the freezer is totally different. Here is a guide line to home butchering.
http://www.wideworldofhunting.com/cutsforbutchering.htm
You either need a saw (Hacksaw will do for most) or you need to carefully cut out the different meat cuts. I need to make a video of both. What do you all think?
Eric S. Stacy AKA: Deerdope

RE: self butchering
 

I'd like to see a video.There was one floating around on the internet that was pretty good, but it never hurts to see someone who knows what he's doing. I think I want to try to butcher my own deer next time around.

RE: self butchering
 

Bigtime, simple. If you have a garage,skin & quarter it.Put the quaters in a cooler & then taken theprimal cutsinside to break them down to the cuts u want. As for the carcass, a sawzall works great. Cut it into small pieces & put it in a trash bag, then in out to the trash.
Here's how I do it: First I rinseout the cavity w/a hose or bucket of water out in the yard. This helps get rid of the unnecessary blood dripping in the garage.I hang mine from a rafter in the garage, w/the head up (doe). I too, use a piece of card board on the floor to catch blood, fur, etc.s. Have in place a garbage can, knives, latex gloves, cotton gloves (when the temps get low), & a large cooler.
Start the skinning process just below the ears. To assist w/the skinning, I place a tennis ball on the fur side of the skin, & loop a rope or nylon webbing around it. Attached to the rope/webbing is a 45# olympic weight. The weight begins pulling the skin, & it's very easy then to use your knife & trim along the meat/skin line. Takes about 20min.
Then use a very sharp boning knife & seperate the large muscle groups, ie; shoulder, loins (backstraps), rump, tenders, neck & if you want rib meat. Put all of these into a cooler. Important to get that meat a cold asap. Then, depending on the temp, I either set up a table in the garage or take each primal cut, one at a time, in the house. Rinse off the primal cut in the sink. Gets rid of fur, blood clots, etc. Seperate out each muscle group from the bone. You can cut what u want out of each primal cut. Shoulders- stew meat, jerky, ground, sausage.
The rump is a better cut of meat. Rump-roasts, steaks, jerky, nice ground meat, & stew meat.
Loins- strictly steaks. Cut into 6" sections, & freeze whole. Cut when u want to grill out.
Tenderloins- says all itself. Neck & rib meat-sausage.
Scrap meat (any thing you trim off the bones, little pieces, etc- sausage. Use a vacuum sealer to freeze all of your cuts. Remember do one primal cut @ a time, & put the finished cuts into the refrigeratoras soon as your done witheach primal cut.

RE: self butchering
 

I started out about 25 years ago and it was a celebration event. We went all day butchering deer because mostly we didn't know the right way to go about it. We ate fresh deer burgers and drank a lot of beer. We progressed to a big table in the basement with a huge grinder machined to deer processing, we were all into the deer and did many at one time.

I then progressed to one or two deer. Deboned them as the meat came off. Saving the back straps in a few cookable dinners and the rest in whole pieces for jerky and hamburger as needed down the road. I would package them in 1-2 pound pacages and defrost them as needed then run them through my KitchenGrinder. It's quick and I believe way easier then a whole deer at a time.

Today, I donate the whole deer to a carnivore preserve. The whole deer and maybe this year I will take a tour. They rescue big cats around the US.

My last example in regards to cutting the back straps and then saving/freezing the big chunks in 1-2 pound bags was far easier then any other method when I ate deer.

RE: self butchering
 

"As a reading and writing teacher for 7th grade I see alot of posters who havealot of errors and don't say anything."

Dagnabbit, there's another one teach!:eek:

RE: self butchering
 

We take ours to the garage and do em up there, take the prime cuts like the backstraps then cut some steaks and roasts and grind the rest into ground meat, how can u go wrong with deer burger? im pretty sure it is impossible, doing ittakes about an hour or two top to bottom, 2 hrs well worth the 60-70 bucks u can save

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He beat me to it...

RE: self butchering
 

Did that on purpose...[8D] That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :eek:

RE: self butchering
 

Yup, do it in the garage. Just don't let it hit the floor and have some pans handy. I bone mine while it hangs so no table is needed. I put it in pans, then the fridge, and a few days later cut the portions and vaccum pack it.

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I agree. I'm a visual learner, so it is much easier for me to pick up something like this if I see it, rather than just read about it. We have a bunch of Game Processing/Butchering DVDs, and while I learned something from each of them, I got the most out of Deer Processing 101. (Brad is an award-winning professional meat cutter.) I love the way the Steel Stick chest spreader really opens up the chest cavity.

-- FLIX

RE: self butchering
 

we used to skin them in my buddys back yard, on a tree limb...now i have my own garage with a small pit. i have a gambrel, to hang it over the pit..and skin it then hose the blood down the drain, then cut out the backstraps and inner loyns..then quarter it, and put in the fridge in my garage.. then i go out and and cut it up for the freezer as i watch hunting shows on my tv in my garage, yep when i built my garage, i put a tv, phone, oil furnace, sink, hose, i even have a recliner out there...a lot of the time my wife thinks im working out there , when im just sitting there watching tv, (and having a cold one) LOL....i wouldnt pay someone to cut mine up, because im picky...

RE: self butchering
 

I've always paid to have my deer processed and packaged for me. But I've been thinking about learning how to do my own.

After reading this thread, I definitely will continue to pay to get my deer processed and packaged. It just looks like a big long messy pain in the A**. It would take me half a day to do it, and I'd have to spend a ton of money to get the right knives, a meat grinder, and a vacuum sealer. No thanks.

Kudos to you guys that do your own. I admire your work ethic. I'd rather work 2 hours of overtime and pay someone else to do it than spend 4 hours of my own time doing it. To each his own though...:)

RE: self butchering
 

I butcher mine in the garage. Hang the deer for a few extra days if it is warm outby backing off a fan about 10 feet away from the deer on medium or low, helps to dry the deer inside. I bought a video called From Field To Freezer by Jerry Chiapetta and narrated by Chef Milos Cihelka. Maybe you can find it online, it is very informative. Took a long time on my first deer, but now I can do it without the video. I'll never take it to a butcher again. The meat is incredible tasting. Just go forit and you'll be glad you did. Cambo1

RE: self butchering
 

Last year I butchered my deer myself, it was the first time I had attempted it. Once the skin is off, it's really easy. Nothing to worry about. I took off the loin(backstraps), and the roasts I wanted and took the rest to a guy who does ground meat cheap(he charges extra for adding beef fat or making sausage, which I didn't want). After I took the roasts and loins, I wound up with 35 pounds of ground critter. I think if you do it once, you'll never go back.