Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting We all love hunting, but who loves eating Venison ?

New 2 99s;
Good morning my cyber friend, I hope all is well as can be with you all out east.

Thanks for the thread and of course to all those who've participated, as you know it's a subject near and dear/deer to me.

It's been awhile since some of these went up so I'll do that and apologize for not having newer ones loaded into Rick's photo system.

This is an ancient upright freezer which a repair shop put a slightly too small compressor in and sold it as a giant beer fridge. We picked it up in '89 and it's still working now full of apples - which I need to take out and do something with this morning in fact. Since the photo, I've added two computer fans which mount on the bottom shelf in the door and they move the air inside "just right" so I can keep the bigger chunks for up to 10 days now.



Getting the airflow right has made a difference, as well as installing an inexpensive digital thermometer which tells me exact temps at a glance. As per Eileen and John's writings on the subject, I'm aiming at about 2° to 4°C.

A couple of 4 point mulie necks from days gone by. Both were the same age interestingly enough - but then there's lots of guys who ended up much larger than me, so that shouldn't be surprising I suppose?



We grind a bunch as my better half really likes burger for soups, stews and sauces.

If anyone is interested, here's how my late father in law converted some washing machine parts and a manual grinder into a powered one. Our in laws were visiting one fall and after watching me manually grind through a couple 5 gallon pails of moose burger for a friend, Seymour said to me, "When I go home, I'm taking your grinder along. I've got an idea and there just has to be a better way to do that!"...





Because there's no bearings in a manual grinder, we'll want to drive it as close to perfectly straight on as possible. Once it's set up however its easy to keep it that way. We have numbered washers and shims which keep the grinder body where it needs to be.

Originally we set it up with a 4 arm Browning drive, but it'd eat at least one of the rubber drivers a year. After chatting with the industrial supply folks, I changed to a Lovejoy coupler. When I bought it, I bought a spare rubber insert and the chap at the desk said, "I'll sell it to you, but you're not going to live long enough to wear this one out". That was years ago and so far, he was right.



Before leaving the grinder, I'd say that about 60rpm is a good speed with a converted manual #22 grinder. As well I make up plastic thrust washers to install into the back of the meat auger so the plate can be really tightened down and it won't wear the parts unnecessarily.

Other stuff that makes the task so much easier if you're using paper is a paper and tape dispenser. My late father was helping me one evening and after watching me chase the paper roll around the bench for the umpteenth time, he too said, "There's got to be a better way than that Dwayne".



Honestly there's not a single time that I process an animal that I'm not reminded of my late Dad and Father in law, because of the useful tools they made up for us.

While I do have some food photos somewhere Paul, just where exactly they might be escapes me just now.

They'd not be of the same class as you folks' for sure, but all the above to say we very much love eating venison and miss it a bunch when we don't have at least one in the freezer for the year.

Oh, last thought on processing and cooking for now would be that for me a digital thermometer was a game changer too as far as an aid to not overcooking all sorts of stuff, but venison for sure.

All the best to you all.

Dwayne