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

I am very happy with the processor I have now doing my meat, but have always wondered about doing my own. I'm not looking for a proffesional set up, just the basics to see if I want to continue to do it. I have a BBQ cateering company on the side and while no proffesional butcher I can trim my own cuts, seperate large muscle groups into smaller ones and use a knife without killing myself. Here is a list of the equipment I have at the house:

A shop where I can work off a wood table- might need to put some sort of hard top on it.

A fridge and chest style freezer for storing meat.

A good vaccum sealer

Good knives- a chefs knife, a paring knife and mid sized sodukto.


I normally get my tenderloins and back straps whole, have the shoulders and rib meat groung into hamburger and sausage and use the hindquarters for roasts or cut into steaks.

I'm thinking I need a good grinder, maybe a good book on specifics and what else?

I live and hunt in hot as h�ll Alabama so I know the processing needs to be done quickly, if nothing more than skining and quartering to put it in the fridge. (I always gut in the field)

I'd love some advise on the subject.

My dad has always butchered his own meat. When I started hunting I remember all we had was some knives and some cutting boards that we would set on the kitchen counter, we also had an old grinder that we got for free from a butcher shop broke down and we rebuilt it. That is pretty much all you need for processing your animal here, although we do not have the heat problem here in washington.

We have added to out operation somewhat. We now have 2 grinders, a cuber, sausage stuffer, meat mixer, smoke house, walk-in cooler, stainless steal tables.

As you can see it can be done either way, lots of equipment or just what you need. For wrapping the meat we use cellophane and butcher paper, and forgo the vacuum sealer as the bags get expensive when you wrap a lot of meat, and we have never had meat go bad using this method.

Some time saving tips would be to get yourself some stamps made up to mark the packages. We also use a couple old bread pans to measure out our burger packages, we have two a one pound and a two pound, depending on who we are wrapping for

Also I would strongly recommend staying away from wood top tables as they can get nasty in a hurry and are very hard to clean. We use a stainless steal table, and have also had large cutting boards made up (4'x8') to work off of.

I'm thinking a few saw horses and some sort of 4x8 plastic board to use as a cutting/work surface. Stainless steel would be the best, but kinda pricey.
I need to keep my costs low at first.

Yep SS is pricey.... We picked up 2 10' tables at an auction when they tore down the local school to build the new one. I think we only paid $75 per. We basically stole them 4x8 plastic board will work great and we actually put the boards over top of the SS when doing knife work to keep the edge on the knife.

A knife, cutting board and some freezer paper or a vacuum sealer if you want to spend the money. It's that simple. Ken

After being unhappy with some processors a few years back, I started doing my own butchering.

I keep a few of the marine-style 150+qt coolers at the camp or in my truck. After skinning, I quarter and then place everything in a cooler, cover with ice until I have time to butcher. I sometimes leave the coolers in my garage up to 5-6 days, draining water and adding ice periodically. When I have a spare evening, I slide the cooler into the kitchen (tile floor) and set up a sturdy metal frame plastic top table that I bought at Sam's club. They sell several sizes, mine is maybe 2.5' x 5'. As I watch TV, I fish out a quarter and work on it while sitting at the little table, depositing whole cuts into one rubbermaid tub and grinder chunks into another tub (keep several tubs). I toss the bones into a trash bag and put them back in the cooler. If I have time that night I will grind burger and vacuum seal everything. If I don't have time, I cover the tubs with plastic wrap and put them in my garage fridge until the next evening. It takes a bit of time to do everything, but it's relatively low-mess and I get to sit inside with the family and watch TV while I do the work. I might cut up 6-8 deer each year. My main advice would be to avoid skimping on the grinder. My $99 job is pretty slow. A couple hundred dollars more would have gotten something much faster.

We also find a filet knife very handy for cutting away silverskin.

Specific grinder reccomedations? Say $300 price limit.

I have one of these and it has happily chewed up pig and venison for several years now without a hitch.

http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/s...4_325011000_325000000_325011000_325-11-0

You don't need a lot of tools!

I do my own deer, and pronghorn antelope, with this setup:

A drafting table in my garage, with a vinyl top which can be cleaned, and cut on,

A cutting board,

A large knife, and a 6" Rapala filet knife (actually, you can get by with just this knife),

Freezer wrap (the kind that lets you remove all air, color is blue, I don't recall the product name).

I begin by skinning the carcass, removing the backstraps and tenderloins, the lower legs, head, etc., and cooling out. Then, before actual cutting up, I remove the four quarters, and clean thoroughly.

I don't grind up scraps for burger- I save them, freeze them, and feed them to the dog. Gotta feed her anyway.

I clean up the backstraps and tenderloins, remove the silverskin, and either cut up into steaks, or freeze as larger chunks to be cut into steaks immediately before cooking.

Separate out the major muscles from the rear quarters, clean up the membranes, then cut up into steaks. Depending on the age, and size, of the critter, I either do round steaks from the front quarters, or roasts.

A good boning knife and means to sharpen same. Everthing else is just gravy. Looks like you have the bases covered. While I have a fine grinder, if I end up with 70 to 80 lbs of hamburger cuts, I think I'm time ahead just to drive over to the butcher and run it through their unit in about 3 minutes.

I keep chunks as large as possible to minimize surface exposure and potential freezer burn. Steaks are cut from larger chunks just prior to being tossed on the grill.

This one works pretty good unless you have a lot of meat at one time. Last year my wife wanted no ground meat but left the scraps for stew meat. She makes a mean pot of soup with them. miles

northern tool grinder

Those are the basics...Add a dozen or so stainless steel "S" hooks, and a Northern Tool Meat Grinder

I picked up one of this up on a recommendation from somebody on here and I have to say its excellent.

To get a grinder of significantly better quality, you probably have to pay three or four times as much.

I compared it to grinders I could get locally at x2 the price, it it was a far better unit. It has metal gears and drives for one thing, unlike many that use plastic for those critical parts...

But don't go on what I say, read the dozens of reviews under the "Reviews" link on the same page...

Regards,

Peter

Most of it has been said. I do like to have a saw and a hatchet around to go through bone. I like ribs and neck roasts with the bone in.

We pack with a sealer for smaller cuts. Larger cuts we double Saran Wrap and top that with butcher paper.

Wiping down between quarters with first hot water and then a 10% bleach water is a good practice also.

You can get a perfectly good grinder for $100-$120 from Northern Tool that will grind as many deer as you are ever going to shoot.Mine probably has a few dozen elk and at least that many deer and antelope through it.It will keep one person a lot busier than he/she wants. Vacumm sealers are nice,but good freezer paper will suit you well

A knife with a flexible thinnish blade 4 or 5" long.

The tailgate of your pickup truck.

Some cheap plastic sheeting or cheap tarp.

One nice thing to have is a clean cotton tablecloth or sheet or old towels. They dry the surface of the meat and making it much easier to hold onto while cutting. You can use the edge of the tablecloth to grab onto a piece of meat as well.

Loving the ideas guys, keep them coming. Looks like I need to find some sort of cheap hard surface and a decent grinder.

Where do you fellas get your fat to mix in?

Any book or videos you could reccomend?

I never mix any pure fat in. If I'm making sausage I add pork or bacon depending upon the type I'm making.

My son lives in south central KS. When shopping for deer butchering grinder, ect, he found a shop that dealt especially with this kind home butchering and BBQ/Smoking equipment in Wichita. Perfect for him. Might be something like that for you in a nearby city. Good luck.

We do up 10 to 12 a year for ourselves...I quit dickin' around with fancy cuts a long LONG time ago.

We hang 'em, skin 'em, and bone 'em out right there in the shop/garage/barn....

We don't mess around with saws, or hatchets, or none of that stuff. Joints are severed with the hunting knives if we need to drop a lower leg, the rest of the meat comes right off the bone as it hangs head down.

Heavy weight trash bags make it a snap to get the boned meat into the kitchen.

"Cutting" after the boning takes place on the kitchen counter, and with the same hunting knives we used to gut, skin, and bone out the deer. We use those large plastic cutting boards to trim, slice and dice.

We're basically looking for three things, and waste nothing.

1.) Backstraps get cut into 8" pieces, silver skin sliced off, and froze two or three in a bag. These get eaten up so fast we don't bother with vacuum sealing. They're specifically for the grill, or a cast iron skillet, and with marinade. cooked as they are cut, and then sliced after cooking.

2.) Canning meat. Anything that's a clean lean muscle free of silver skin and other garbage is chunked into 1x1 or 1x2 inch chunks and canned in a pressure canner with wide mouth jars. Warm it up in the nuker as is, or add to stews, ect. We freeze it in gallon freezer bags until there's enough to make a canning day then have at it.

3.) Everything else that is edible is grinder meat. Some goes into plain burger, some goes into sausage. Pretty self explanatory. We freeze chunks of grinder meat in gallon bags until there's enough to make a grinder day then have at it.

Me and the Boy can get a deer from skinned to froze in about an hour if we're in a rush.......