Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What tools do I NEED to butcher my own deer?

I like having a bone saw. I use my dad's from the old Saskatchewan homestead. 75 years old and still working hard.



I have a selection of about 4 knives. A 9" scimatar. a flexible and non-flexible boning saw 6-7" long and a good 8" butcher knife. The right knife at the right time makes life easier. You don't need to spend a lot of money and a set of Victorinox or Henkles in their cheapest lines are very good. (The 4 knife Set should be under 100.00) Steel is a bit soft but tough and easily sharpened. I'd prefer this to more exdpensive and harder knives.

I use regular big cutting boards on my kitchen table covered with plastic but will get a big 2x3 foot peice of cutting board material for next time. I definately would not cut into a hard material like some have suggested. I like keeping my knives razor sharp.



I still use a big hand grinder but after borrowing a friends big electric could be converted.

Agreed, they can be tough on an edge, but basically the entire processing occurs on the hanging carcass, table being used for silverskin detachment and pre kitchen sink staging.

So, some minimal shoulder work, and single surface cleanup. YMMV�

for me:

boning knife
fillet knife
a long-ish bladed slicing knife
butcher board
saran wrap and freezer paper
sharpie
SS manual meat grinder

It really doesn't take much in the way of tools.

For many years I used a manual grinder, and not just for deer but elk as well, but after doing a moose we went to an electric grinder, and eventually to a good-sized one. It not only grinding burger a lot easier, but making sausage as well.

The biggest problem I would have with the counter top, is hosing it off. I would think with moisture the top would disintegrate.

I used to have our tops made out of plywood for that reason.

Let me clarify; the substrate was plywood then laminated.

We've had good results with the little cheapie white electric grinder that they sell at WallyWorld.

Only processing four or five deer a year though.

Lots of good information here, I'll just add my (and my wife's) recommendation for Eileen's book, Slice of the Wild.

For knives we usually use the 6" fillet knives but Cheesy got a Ingram Bird and Trout last year that may come up "missing". For the steaks I've got a real old Dexter 32912 butcher knife that my Great Uncle used in his butcher shop. The only thing we use a saw for is cutting off the lower legs and head.
My grinder is a cheap thing I picked up at the farm store, #22 neck, hand crank/big pulley combo that I've hooked up to a spare 3/4 hp electric motor. We chunk up all the grinder meat including some pork shoulders to mix. We run it all through the grinder, then put on the stuffer tube and run it back through to fill the 1 or 2 pound plastic freezer bags. This thing will grind faster than 1 man can feed it. The guy feeding it will usually be waiting on the one holding the bag and taping it off, even with the tape dispenser speeding that chore up.

DakotaDeer,

We fried a couple of the little white electric grinders on elk and moose. They work OK for deer, but a big grinder is a lot faster and, oddly, usually less noisy.

Buying a good quality grinder is the way to go as most of the meat hunters eat will be in the burger or sausage form. A good grinder will also last and make the processing faster and easier. If you compair the cost of other items used to get an animal from field to freezer a $500-$700 grinder is money well spent.

Actually, I dunno if you have to spend that much. We spent around $200 and ours has done dozens of deer and antelope, along with several elk and moose, and doesn't seem to be affected at all.

A good knife or two, and bone out the meat, double wrap in white butcher paper. I oppose game hamburger and prefer stew meat and chili meat for the less desirable parts, sometimes jerky or sausage with lots of pork in it...

I also believe sawing through the bone is what makes wild game "gamey" and I been eating it for eons...I wrap the seperated musles individually or perhaps two to a package depending on size and we cut them after they are about half thawed and as we use them..Mostly all steak and mostly to be chicken fried with biscuits, gravey, pinto beans, and a big helping of Pico de Gallon on the meat...West Texas ranching families have been doing this for years, and it works in Idaho also..

I think some folks tend to get to technical on this pretty cut and dried subject..:) pun intended!

Two very important tools have not been mentioned yet. The first is a coffee pot capable of making some high quality coffee. The second is something capable of playing bluegrass music on, a CD player or the like.
Drinking good coffee, listening to good music and carefully butchering meat to be eaten with friends is one of the parts of hunting season I enjoy a lot.

Fred

You really don't need too much at all. I do the prep work in my garage (skinning, quartering, etc). All of the boning and cutting is done in my kitchen. I have several cutting boards in the house along with a block full of knives I use just for game.

My friend ChipM and I do all of the cutting and my brother does the wrapping. We generally use plastic and freezer bags along with a vac sealer on some cuts.

Because we remove all the bone, grizzle, silver skin we can the most important tools to have are good knives.

The only other TOOL we use is my gas grill!!!

oh, and don't forget a bucket of cold beers!

CLB

What you NEED depends on what you want the final product to be. We ranch and do all of our own meats, and our NEEDS include, in addition to the great posts above, a few things I've not seen mentioned:

a Cuber - we can almost live on chicken fried cube steak;

a sausage stuffer;

a scale for uniform packaging; and,

a jerky dehydrator/smoker.

Matt, based on where you live, I have probably used the same processor you have over the years. One thing I can wholehartedly recommend is the Cabela's 3/4hp (#12)grinder. Its cheaper than the Bass pro 3/4 hp. I love mine. It's a little pricey but by the time you process 3 deer, you've got it paid for. And making your own sausage is a snap with the grinder. Although if you like sausage making I would recommend a good sausage stuffer.
I also recommend a good hand saw and hoisting pully. I always freeze my meat in freezer bags after wrapping in sulfane. I rarely use my food saver. Bags just seem cost prohibitive.
Last year I made 50 lbs of summer sausage with out even using the smoker and it turned out awesome. That alone would have cost me atleast 180 bucks from the processors in east alabama and quite frankly, none of them make any that's any good.
A good grinder and saw and stuffer seem to be really all you need to get up and going. You may want to consider a Jerkey Cannon and a slicer as well for making jerkey. What ever you do, don't get a cheap grinder. It will be a real pain in the kiester when the sinew clogs up the grates.

All I can add is this: We have a 14"x10" broiler pan that's 2 3/4" high, and we pack it full of ground meat. Then we take a pancake turner and divide the meat into three rows of four, which gives us 12 little rectangles of the size we want to freeze. After you divide it into pieces with the turner, just turn the whole pan over and slam it on the table and it all pops out, ready to be picked up a portion at a time with the turner and put on paper to wrap.

That is true. I end up butchering a lot more than a few deer a year so I forget. When I lived back east I used an attachment for a Kitchen Aid mixer. We would run the grind from 5-7 whitetails a year thru it without trouble.

Lots of good info here, I use a couple Forscherer boning knives and do the actual meat cutting and wrapping on some plastic cutting boards laid out on my kitchen counter. I break down the carcass's in my garage using a hanging rail attached directly to the roof trusses (plenty strong to hold a couple elk at once). I use a block and tackle to lift the critters out of the truck and have several gambrels so I can skin the critters and leave them hang for awhile(depending on temprature) before processing the meat. It may be overkill but I have a 3/4 horse Tor Rey commercial grinder I bought off ebay. In the 10 years i've owned it it's more than paid for itself and it's never bogged down, even last year when doing a bull moose.