When making venison summer sausage, salami etc., what ratio do you mix venison to other meat? I plan to use Boston butt to mix. Being cured and smoked, dryness isn't that big of an issue but I also don't want it dried out. I'm wondering if 25% butt to 75% venison would be a good mix.

Good enough, Snub !

I do 80/20

If you decide that you want to go to all the work of making it and ruin it, you can always add some sort of liquid heat to the mix.

50/50

??? Not sure what you're talking about here?

Well things went well enough. I thought I had more of the 1 pound fibrous casings and only had three. So I only made 5 pounds this run, and used some 20mm calogen casings I had to use up the other two pounds.

Stuffed the casings



A happy smoker ready to roll. Three one pound fibrous casings in back, callogen casings in front. (Note: I had smoked ribs and a deer backstrap the night before and saw no reason to clean out the smoker for this smoke. That's why those drippings are in the bottom.)



Finished summer sausage.



I've tried mixing my own spice mix and tried various recipes for summer sausage, breakfast sausage, Italian's etc and finally just resigned myself to Lem seasoning packages. It's easy to use, no-brainer and so far I've been largely satisfied. My only complaint with their Summer Sausage seasoning is that it is a bit salty. However, when we ate the ones from early in the year that had been frozen several months, I didn't notice the salty taste, only when it was within days out of the smoker.

I don't like to see people ruin good sausage by completely overwhelming the flavor through the addition of ingredients to give it some "heat".

A clean smoker is not a happy smoker.

Well that's true.

Gotta let the darn things acquire some "character"

Mine has a crust inside.

YMMV

My smoker was clean.
The day I bought it....

Can't wait to get the new one "broken in" It takes awhile to build character.

add 20% beef fat to venison

was that a porta john?

Here is the ratios we use and recommend :

Brats – 50/50 mix of venison/pork

Summer Sausage - 70/30 mix of venison/pork

Fresh – 50/50 mix of venison/pork

Sticks – 10/2.5lb mix of venison/pork

It has been "de-accessorized"

'over the top'
As it should be.