How much meat did you yield from your deer?
12-04-2009, 08:50 AM
#11
Dominant Buck
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: On an Island in Vermont
Posts: 22,605
the 40% weight of finished product is right in line with my processed deer. 4 hours for me to process which counts skinning, deboning, cutting into steaks and packaging/ clean up. If I grind that day it takes another hour. Still fun after all these years.
12-04-2009, 09:52 AM
#13
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location:
Posts: 1,408
Bought a $99 meat grinder this year, already did the burger off half an elk, 2 whitetails, a muley, and 4 antelope through it. Paid for in full give a deer is now $70 for basic processing around here.
The one deer I did in a sitting was 4 hours. If I would have had time to be as thorough as I wanted I would have picked the bones for another hour on top of that. Don't know how this affected it but I ground the whole deer rather than cutting steaks etc (freezer already full of those, needed ground this year). Yielded a bit under 40% but like I said I was not being as picky as I could have.
The one deer I did in a sitting was 4 hours. If I would have had time to be as thorough as I wanted I would have picked the bones for another hour on top of that. Don't know how this affected it but I ground the whole deer rather than cutting steaks etc (freezer already full of those, needed ground this year). Yielded a bit under 40% but like I said I was not being as picky as I could have.
12-04-2009, 03:10 PM
#15
Giant Nontypical
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 5,062
That $250 is what my entire bill comes to on an average. That is with burger,sausage, sticks.... I dont know what they charge for just the processing part.
12-04-2009, 03:22 PM
#16
Typical Buck
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 564
Do you make your own sticks and sausage? From you original post I got the idea that you didn't. Sounded like you did regular processing.
12-04-2009, 04:56 PM
#18
Fork Horn
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: northern USA
Posts: 274
We butcher as a group (my three brothers and my dad) I can have a deer skinned on average within about 20 minutes, but I've been doing about seven deer per year for the past 20 years. We typically butcher between seven to ten deer and it takes us about 45 minutes per deer and that's with 5 guys working. Everything trimmed, steaks cut, roast cut and everything ground and wrapped. We leave about 200 pounds out for sausage so that isn't ground right away. This year, total meat from six deer was about five hundred pounds total for an average of about 80 pounds of meatwith nothing added. If you shoot bigger deer (2-3 1/2 year old bucks and does) there will be more meat. Plus in the north the deer weigh more. I don't know what the field dressed weight of our deer was though so I can't tell you what percentage per deer we average.
12-04-2009, 04:58 PM
#19
Giant Nontypical
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Saskatchewan Canada
Posts: 6,921
Lest we forget that the butcher's profession is to cut meat fit for the table and therefor it is not unreasonable to believe they are a little faster then the DIY guy who touches his/her steel a few times a year????? To compare is unrealistic...JMO!
12-04-2009, 05:01 PM
#20
Banned
Thread Starter
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 824
My wife and I cut up my doe last weekend. This was our first time doing our own.
Skinning... hour
Cutting different cuts of meat off the bone...... 2 hours
Cutting up steaks and Roasts, and packaging them.... 3 hours
Working on burger meat (taking fat and senew off)...2.5 hours
Have not done anything with the scraps yet, they are in the freezer.
17.5 hours total between the 2 of us. Way longer then it should take, but you know what? I saved myself $250 by doing it myself.
Skinning... hour
Cutting different cuts of meat off the bone...... 2 hours
Cutting up steaks and Roasts, and packaging them.... 3 hours
Working on burger meat (taking fat and senew off)...2.5 hours
Have not done anything with the scraps yet, they are in the freezer.
17.5 hours total between the 2 of us. Way longer then it should take, but you know what? I saved myself $250 by doing it myself.
$250
Great day in the morning! Where is that dude that wanted to make some money processing deer? He should move up your way.
It gets quicker the more you do it, but it makes you think twice about that bonus doe on the last day. It is a good feeling when its all said and done. I've got burger to grind tonight, wife is having one of those girly selling crap parties, and I'm not allowed in the kitchen until everybody leaves.... Hence my time on this thing.....