Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Butchering at home

Just finished cutting up this year’s Mulie.

Got some grind to do tomorrow before Oregon kicks the hell out of the dogs.





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I prefer to butcher my own but sometimes it’s just too warm (even in December) when that’s the case, I’ll take it to the processor. When it’s cool enough, I’ll do it myself. I typically pull the backstaps and tenderloins and put them up in roasts. I make stew meat out of the hams and grind the rest. Those three types of cuts fit the vast majority of recipes that the wife and I like.

Anyone just use a refrigerator to age/store quarters for a week or so? Was thinking of getting a bigger fridge for garage to put them in when it's warm in bow season.

I do. Pull the racks out, use wooden dowels to hang the meat from

Double door Coke drinks fridge.

^^^This^^^


My hunting Partner did the same with a large fridge.. It works great, there is a big difference in the finished product after dry aging the meat.

I don't think you offended anyone.

I think it is important to pass on the knowledge to the next generation.
For me personally anyway. From the woods/field to table. I try to teach them that there is a lot more to the whole hunting experience than pulling the trigger.

My 9 year old granddaughter dressing her first deer.

gut every thing out of a frig.& frz. screw something to both doors on the out side then spray the space inside with foam .put a rod throw the sides and set ther. on low to start out best to get a thermometer to set temp. to 40*

I'm back to doing my own because no local processors are doing it anymore. The thing I often worry about is if it was cool enough when I hung it. I did 2 whitetails this week. I did the first right away but let the other hang for about 4 days in the garage. It was getting down to low forties at night but up to low 70s during the day. It seemed OK when I boned it out the other day but I wonder if it was too warm during the day.

I prefer to hang meat for a while if it's cold enough out but it's often still warm during the day this time of year. I used to bow hunt a lot which usually meant September here and then I didn't hang dear long because it was warmer.

I have a LEM 650 what grinder I'm planning on using for the first time to grind me own trim meat. I'd like to make some brauts or boer wors so I'm going to have to decide whether to add some fatty pork or beef fat.

Bb

Same here in my AO. Nights during deer season can drop below freezing but get up pretty warm during mid day. My garage is the same when the heat is off. Cold at night but too warm to hang during the day.
I have an old Coca-Cola commercial cooler. It's just a little smaller than a refrigerator, has 4 adjustable metal wire shelves, and keeps a constant 36 degrees. We can cram 4 boned out whitetails in there, and we just had an entire boned out 900 lb (live weight) angus heifer in it.
Find yourself one of these type coolers or an old refrigerator to age your venison in. We use unscented plain white trash bags to put various boned out chunks of meat in to keep them from leaking blood all over the cooler. One part of "aging" meat for me is to get the blood to drain out. The ham or whatever will still drain inside the bag and it's a simple matter of blotting the blood off the bottom of the chunk when we take them out to process/cut.

For anything we grind I can't stand the taste of venison fat so we trim it ALL off. We go down to the Food City meat dept and buy beef fat trimmings. Hog fat comes from our own pigs we butcher. Venison "burger" for cheeseburgers gets beef fat, 80/20 ratio. Anything that's "sausage" gets the pork fat, usually 70/30 ratio.

We do all of ours usually between 6-8 deer per fall.

Burger I’ve tried it all got on a bacon kick a few yrs ago tasty but it doesn’t keep long beef fat at a 20/80 mix is where it is

Used to be able to buy a 10 lb box of cured/smoked "bacon ends" from the old Wade's grocery store back in the day, CHEAP. Not much good for the frying pan but made superb venison bacon burger with a handful of beef fat throwed in.

Wade's is a damn Family Dollar now and they don't sell boxes of bacon ends.

NOT paying bacon prices these days just to make burger and our own bacon we process is for, well, bacon.

Got an Hobart grinder and meat cuber and makes pretty easy work of it. Theres not much on a deer, even larger ones. I do steaks, grind, and can preserve. Need to get into making my own sausage and jerky treats.

Daughter of mine killed a 150pd doe youth day with her x bow 2 weeks ago there’s nothing left

A couple of my cousins have huge refrigerators that they use for deer and beef. My Grandma used to cut up and can a whole deer.

If we kill it we process it. Wife helps with the skinning, gutting, and boning out. She also goes through each bin picking out every piece of hair. We grind and package it ourself as well.
The animal deserves to be respected. Once you buy a grinder and sausage stuffer it opens up an entire new world.

cm9702;
Good evening to you, I hope the weekend behaved for you and this finds you well.

As JSTUART mentioned, if you can find a commercial pop machine from a few years back they're usually wonderful cooler platforms.

When our meat cutter sold his place in 1989, we bought an upright freezer which a local refrigerator shop had put one size too small a compressor in and it would just barely freeze. He'd had it advertised as a beer fridge and over the years it's stored some of that alright, but we've also had parts from 2 ½ animals in there.

It sort of morphed into a bit of a thing in our lives as we've been able to teach a number of younger folks how to process their own game over the years. That alone has been a very rewarding activity for me personally for sure.

With the refrigerator unit itself and storing game, the big thing we've found is to keep the temperature at about 2° above freezing for best results.

I've installed a digital thermometer on the outside of the door which has the sensor inside the fridge of course, so I can tell at a glance what the temp is and adjust accordingly.

The other thing is one needs a wee bit of air circulation inside.

While I tried a couple different small house fans inside, they were too much air flow, so my son in law suggested I pick up a couple computer fans and they're perfect for moving air inside. I've got them mounted in such a way that I can direct them somewhat, but just moving the air helps quite a bit.

With that setup we've kept deer up to a couple weeks, but honestly usually I'll only age the stuff being cut into roasts and steaks that long.

Hopefully that all made sense and was useful to you or someone out there.

It's good to see all the folks who've enjoyed processing game over the years like we have.

All the best and good hunting.

Dwayne

The pop display coolers are awesome. Mine was given to me because it wasn't running. I think I have a couple hundred bucks into having a tech come out and fix it.



When we did an addition on our house 7 or 8 years ago I built a small shop at the back of our garage for processing critters. Best money I ever spent.

I usually cut mine up while it's laying on the flatbed of my truck.