Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Butchering your own beef

A tractor with a front end loader is a big help to get it up and well bled out. Getting the thing cold real fast is important considering it's July and packaging it to prevent freezer burn is a big concern if you are not into meat packing. You are going to be a while eating a whole beef. We have a freezer full of vacuum sealed pasture beef right now. Even after sharing it with our 3 kids it is going to be a while. Grass fed ain't corn fed but it'll do.

I have helped on a few over my life time. One thing not mentioned is a sturdy table at a proper height.
I am taller than average and a short work surface is a back killer.
Throwing a beef rump on a folding table isn’t ideal.
Growing up my dad built a meat saw table out of drill stem and steel plate. It was a solid table but his 5ft 6 versus my brothers 6ft 4 created grumbles.
The Table saw was handy but not often used except on Tbones and ribs.

Beer is also helpful, all my friends like beer, they are much more inclined to help ifn you have beer.

In the early to mid eighties we used to buy those Dexter's by the case from a local supplier. That was the go-to knife of every commercial fisherman. Nowadays, we see the plastic handled stainless version mostly. I never cared for that model as it took a bit longer to sharpen properly and speed was everything when cutting fish for hours at a time.

We used to raise beef and hog along with my Great Aunt who owned the farm.


We also "crop damaged" a lot of deer. (Don't ask, but deer were on the table in 4 or 5 homes) So cutting up animals wasn't unfamiliar.

Even so, we didn't have a band saw or big grinders.

On hogs, we would do around 6 in a day. Group of family would show up,
bacons and hams set aside for curing, sausage made, puddin and scrapple made. Lard was done the next day.



Cows were shot, stuck, gutted and skinned, split, layed in the back of a pickup.
Just doing that took a big dang chunk of the day if we had 3. And we had a tractor with a good loader

(Check your loader first. There are a lot that don't go high enough to get a big steer off the ground. Check lift capacity too. If it's a "play farmer" tractor, it may not lift 1500#. Especially 10' high, plus.

You need at least 10' of lift ,
consider,
the length of the hanging apparatus between the lift and the hocks,
+ the legs are a couple feet higher than the body,
+ the body,
+ the neck and head.)

Anyway, the carcasses were hauled to the butcher.
Sometimes one at a time if it happened to be warm.

When money was tight, we just paid to let it hang, and be cut/ground.
Mom would go pick up a half, and start working on it while we were in school or work. We would work (3-4 of us) for quite a few hours trimming and wrapping. 2 big freezers would be used, trim kept in the fridge/ and being canned as fast as 2 water bath canners could go.
Freezers did their thing, Mom rotated the meat to allow it all to freeze.

(Meat stacked thick in a freezer can spoil before it freezes. It will take a day or two to get a bunch froze. If you rotate)

A day or two later, we would repeat.

As others have said, you need,
Lift capacity,
A cold place.

An unheated building can suffice if it's cold enough.
There are custom butchers here who got by on a block building for years.
Actually heating them a little to keep from freezing.
Our winters are too warm now. You can't expect a few weeks of cold weather.

Ive cut and wrapped an easy 50 elk and exactly one bovine.

Isn't anything that cant be done. Hell, it was done for centuries without power. Do not ignore the hanging conditions posts. You can reduce your bulk by grinding whatever you intend to make burger in advance.....then get it frozen and youll be able to stagger your frozen burger packs into the pile of unfrozen meat to help get the freeze to set faster.

A couple of GOOD knives, a steel and a saw is all you need to do the work.....but all a carpenter needs is a hammer, brace and hand saw, if you get the drift.

I used to work in a slaughter house in Sulphur LA. I have thought about this a bunch since meat prices went up. 2 main things you need is a hoist and craddle to lay him in - feet up. and of course all those knifes and saws in that pic above, a sawsall would be good too, clean area to work, tubs for tripe and a way to get ride of the blood, a place to empty the tripe also

When I need to butcher I start by shooting, most times 22 hornet and sometimes just 22lr, slice throat and bleed them out. I use to always hang to do the skinning and split the chest but now I just roll them onto their back and skin about 90%, hide will still be attached to the spine, cut deep into the butthole and pull it out far enough to tie it off with some small rope so it don't leak then push it back in. Remove feet and split the chest then hang and slice up through being careful not to slice into the gut. Quarter it leaving 1 rib bone on the hind quarters. I've never processed the cuts before, just take to butcher for that.

This guy has seen a few beef cattle from every direction, I would endorse that assessment

The mobile slaughter guys we pay are pretty badazz. It's super cheap, too. Maybe $75 or $100 a head?

They show up in a reefer truck with a winch and hoist mounted on the back corner.
Pop the cow in the head, Put the cable around the back legs and as 1 guy operates the winch the other guy is making cuts the whole time.

It might take 15 or 20 minutes, max, and 4 clean quarters are hanging in the truck, the hide and guts are in a 55gal poly drum, and they are on the next animal or pulling out on their way to drop your beef at the butcher of your choice.
They make it look easy.

If I had a big cooler to hang them I may have them drop it at home one of these years.

Advice from some fugging guy with a shoe closet and a sunglasses display case?

Fugging A.


These mobile guys do it for a song.


Build a cool bot like Slumlord and get to it!

Pussies.

I’ve done over 20 moose, on kill site, most of them solo, about half in excess of 1,000 lbs, none with the benefit of even a come-along.

The most memorable was the 54”” 1300-1400 lb bull that went straight down with shot placement just under his antler base, not quite wedged between two 3’ high hummocks, with his legs folded underneath.

I was alone, but fortunately only a half mile from the float plane lake. I just started at the top and worked my way down. 4 hours later the meat was bagged and cooling on a deadfall 100 yards away.

I just don’t see the OP’s problem.

Maybe this will help.

I have butchered about 90 whitetail deer, and at least 2 dozen wild hogs. In Georgia, you can't take a wild hog to the butcher. It is fun but it is a lot of work.

I did spend the summer with big game guides in British Columbia. Up there, they quarter an 800 pound moose with a chain saw.

We did it when I was a kid. I still do pigs, deer and wild game myself but a steer is way more work than I want to do

“Want to”. Is of course muy better than “ have to”.

Those mobile butchers sound pretty good!

I have used a chain saw to cut up downer calves for my running hounds, but I wouldn't for table beef. I don't care much for the bar and chain lube on/in the meat and cut/splintered bones just don't appeal to me either. I don't know a lot of people who've used a chain saw on beef or hogs (for family consumption) that have done it more than once.

I’ve butchered one beef . It was
Pushing 900 pounds. We used a medium size tractor to raise the beef up just like butchering s deer . It was two men working and about 10 hour day . We ground a lot of it and just did our best in cutting up everything else . It’s hard work plus you need to know what you’re doing sorta lol . You get the back strap just like a deer .

My step grandfather owned a farm and had 7 sons, so butchering a beef was a group effort and they could take care of it no problem. One by one they came of age and left home. After that my grandma said they always had a butcher come and paid him to take care of it. Back then on a farm, young boys started helping with butchering at around 9 or 10 years of age.