Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting First time processing my own

Just the fat that was in the beef brisket.

I agree, you can freeze it however long you want, but it won't be near as good.

Removing membranes and silverskin before freezing is important, IMO.

Removing membranes and silverskin before freezing is important, IMO.

We sell a lot of our carcasses, but those I keep I butcher myelf..Given most were our small Roe deer its fairly easy.

In the past I used to take some of the meat to a local butcher and he would add pork belly and seasoning ect, and make them into sausages which were excellent...

One time I asked him to do some burgers..Not sure what went wrong, but they turned out like carpet tiles, they were so tough even the dog had trouble chewing them!

overgrinding or over packing burgers when making them is the only way to make burgers tough.

I used to remove all the silverskin as well, then I read somewhere that it actually helps prevent freezer burn. Now I leave it on. I haven't noticed any difference in either the flavor or tenderness of the meat when I leave it on and it does seem to protect from freezer burn. It makes the butchering process go much quicker when not trimming every piece of connective tissue, too. I do trim all the fat and am religious about not letting hair get in the meat.

I always let it age for a few days as well, to get past the rigor stage.

Just my experience, YMMV.

We cut all of our own also. Be it elk, mule deer, bear, whitetails, and my wife even got a moose a couple years back.

We invested in a Cabelas 1hp grinder several years ago, which works great.
We buy rolls of the plastic produce bags from the grocery stores, put meat in one of those then wrap it in freezer paper it will last for years, literally.

With our burger, which we grind a lot of, we don't add anything to it. I never did like eating a good deer/elk burger that tasted like cow or pig. I hear a lot of people say they add beef or pork fat so it sticks together, no need for that if you know how to make burgers.

By the way, if you ever get a chance, moose is excellent table fare.

So I chose to skip the processor and give it a go myself this time. I kept it pretty basic, just cutting out the back straps and tenderloins for steaks and then everything else I used for hamburger meat.

A few comments:

Wild animals are not all the same, whether in species, age, or condition. Connective tissue and silverskin can affect taste, but only in a few species during the rut, or sometimes when they start to lose weight during winter.

When it does occur, the off-taste tends to increase the longer the meat's frozen. Have had it happen with rutty mule deer that tasted fine initially, but after 6 months in the freezer the cuts with more connective tissue definitely changed flavor. But most of the time it doesn't make any difference.

Whether or not to use plastic for wrapping depends a lot on the freezer. Frost-free freezers tend to freezer-burn meat, because freezer burn is a result of "freeze-drying," essentially oxidation of the meat.

Frost-free freezers are constantly cycling moisture outside the freezer, and if you open up a freezer a lot the same thing happens. The worst are the freezer compartments in most new refrigerators. They're frost-free and not as cold as dedicated freezers, and get opened a lot, so oxidation's likely. Fat also oxidizes easily. Lean meat doesn't.

The reason vacuum-sealing works is it gets the air out, the reason we use it primarily for fish and birds, which are often irregularly shaped. With steaks, roasts or burger that can be tightly wrapped, it's not likely, especially in a non-frost-free chest freezer.

My wife and I trim all fat off big game, and don't add any fat to burger. Unless the cut is really irregular, we don't vacuum-pack or even use plastic. Instead we double-wrap in good freezer paper, and put the packages in frost-free chest freezers. They've never freezer-burned even when stored 3 years, and we regularly keep big game meat that long from special animals.

If somebody wants to make sure then plastic helps, especially in frost-free freezers. But if you have a non-frost-free chest freezer, good freezer paper is quicker, a lot cheaper and just as effective.

My hunting partner and I have been busy this year. The new LEM 1.5HP grinder/cuber/slicer has made life easier.

Art,

Sounds interesting, but have a couple questions, and then some comments on how long we keep meat:

What brand of bags are you using in the chamber vac? We buy 1100-foot rolls of 18" wide freezer paper, and process an average of 7 animals a year, ranging in size from "eater" pigs and pronghorn to nilgai, elk and moose. The average cost for paper is around $3 per animal, so am wondering how the bags you use compare in cost.

We have the roll set up in a dispenser/cutter (that as I recall cost around $20, though that was a number of years ago) and have a pretty fast system worked out. With two of us working, we can butcher and wrap a mature northern buck deer in about two hours, cut into steaks, roasts, stew, backstraps, filets and burger. A nilgai, elk or moose takes 4-8 hours, depending on the size of the animal. Am wondering how your system compares timewise.

Freezer burn has never been a problem. For everyday meat we have two non-frost-free 15-cubic-foot chest freezers, one next to the kitchen and the other in the basement, and Eileen has a 15cf upright (again non-frost-free) for her cookbook projects, so she can access them more easily.

We empty and defrost all three each year just before hunting season, then inventory the meat and divide it between the kitchen and upright freezers, a process that takes a couple of hours.

The empty chest freezer in the basement gets filled during hunting season as a "savings account." With very few exceptions, we don't eat any of that meat until the following year.

The kitchen chest freezer gets filled with the oldest packages, with meat from last year's hunting season on the bottom and older packages on top. Most of meat we're eating right is from 2012 and 2013, including several packages we cooked last week while my brother was visiting, and none have been freezer-burned. That's been our experience for many years now.