Dealing with hair and butchering it yourself.
 

I have been on the fence about weather i should butcher mine or have it done. Alot of you guys make ogod points about the crap butchers can do form taking some. Using scraps from another deer for your hamburger.
One issue that is on my mind about doing it myself is hair. I helpa neighbor hang, skin and quarter a doe last year. For some reason he did not use the front legs and gave them to me. Then after he hung the rest of it for a day or so he gave me one of the back legs. i cut them up into steaks roast and stew meat. One issue i had was hair. there was hair all over most of it. I washed it off and was real carefull. I never found a hair after cooking any of it. Though there where a few out of the freeze nothing some water did not take care of.
SO how to you keep the hair off the meat when you butcher it. I thought about skinning it then washing it with the hose. Will that work

Hair is surely a problem. If you take your time skinning the deer, hair can be kept to a minimum. After sknning wash it down with a hose. That will normally take care of 90% of it. When butchering, I wash the meat again and keep an eye out for hair. If you butcher the meat correctly (removing the fat and tendons) you will get all the hair. I have butchered for about ten years now and I can honestly say that I have never pulled meat out of the freezer and found hair. I cannot say that about some of the meat that I have received from "professional butchers".
Now there some very good butchers around but far and few.

hair is almost a non-issue once you learn to skin properly...

trick is to cut the hide not the hair...i use a knife with a REALLY pointed blade...i poke that into the hide and get it under the skin with the blade pointed outward, like it is when you open a deer to gut it...if you use your knife to cut through the hair, then the hide, you'll have a mess with hair everywhere...cutting the hide with the blade away from the meat also keep you from cutting meat...

after you make your cuts on the hide around the legs and down the inside of the legs and down the belly to meet your gutting cut, the rest is pretty much pulling the hide off and no to minimal knife work...

a trick ive heard of for hair is running a torch over the carcass to singe the hair...never tried it...but skinning how i do, i never had much hair...but many guys skin with the knife cutting through the hair to cut the hide...gotta slip that blade under the hide with the blade pointed towards the hide and it'll be easier, faster, and cleaner...easy to do even on cold frozen carcasses...but its REAL easy when its still warm and the hide is loose..

hang and skin or use a vehicle to skin the deer.....if you use the vehicle method you will get very, very little hair on the animal and you can mostly get it off with your knife and going over the meat sideways with the knife.

Skinning properly, like others have said, will GREATLY reduce the amount of hair you have on the deer. Once you ring the legs with your knife, that should be about it as far as cutting into the hide. The fewer holes you make, the less hair that will be around. Go SLOW on your first one!

Ok guys i guess the only thing i will need to look at now will me temp when i get the kill. Which i doubt will be a issue with the weather we are having. I think i am going to order one of the good videos.

skinning it properly is a must...however, even the most seasoned skinner will come across some hair...take a propane torch and simply burn it off..it leaves no tastes or anything of that nature behind..it does smell tho.

try youtube

if you do get any hair on the meat, take a blow torch and quickly burn the hair off the meat. Obviously dont torch the whole deer but once the deer is skun out go back over it with the torch real quick and lightly and it will take care of all your hair problems

Good points on the skinning. I wash it down after skinning if there is any blood or hair left it usually goes down the drain. I haven't tried the torch but have heard it works.

I have found that if you rinse the deer off real well, before you skin it, you dont get near the hair on the meat. Ive been hosesing my deer down just before skinning and have found it to help a lot. Actually a butcher friend of mine suggested it.

Believe me, JNTURK is right. It also makes the skins easy to flesh out, that is if you are into tanning hides.

You Guys are worrying way to hard. I stick my deer, then take him/her to the cleaning station. Anywhere you can hang a Gambrial. Gut then skin the deer. In the cooler within 15 minutes. We are in south Texas where the temps are usually pretty warm. We keep ice on the carcaus for at least two to four days. Then we process it. Makes the best steakes and roast, you ever had.

I have been butchering my own deer ( and about 3 or 4 of my buddies deer) for about 20 years now. As many others have stated, after you get the hang of it you will not have alot of hair to deal with. But a few years ago I came up with the ultimate solution to removing hair. I was inspired by our cat, and I will never use any other method.
Now I just lick the hair off. It works great and really fulfills the primal hunting urges and makes the hunt so much more complete. After some trial and error, I will pass along the best tip for success. Take your time and go slow, and, most important, by all means, only do a quarter of the deer at a time. The first time I did it I got a little rambunctious and took me about 3 days to get the whole hairball out of my throat!!:s4:
Seriously now, what little hair is left, I also just run the propane torch over it quickly and it pretty much vanishes in thin air.

The reason most people get hair on the meat is because they dont know how to properly skin a deer. The best way to skin a deer or any animal is from the neck down. Hang them by the neck. When you skin youre cutting with the grain of the hair not against it. and then youre pulling with the grain. It should be common sense.

A good butcher
 

is careful and avoids, the hair in the meat, as much as possible. It takes some, more training and learning to get it right.

But a lot of hunters have no butcher training, so the process takes time and study. No easy quick answer. And butchers in the business have no interest in teaching their process.

carefull skinning and a propane torch for me also. works great and my wife doesnt go nuts.Venision is the only ground meat my family has eaten in around ten years.:barmy:

lol very funny

makes sense to me. thought he neighbor did it from the feet down. might have been the issue.

Ummm, hey Tim. If it had actually had feet, it probably wasn't a deer.:s4: