Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting How do you butcher your elk?

So once you've packed out your meat how do you perform your buthering. Looking for advice from those that do their own. More specifically which parts of the animal produce what cutts.

ie neck meat to make roasts, steaks cut out of hindquarters, burger made from front shoulders and so on. Any pictures or videos would be awesome.

I make shoulder roasts and jerky out of the shoulder. As for the ham, I cut steaks, make burger, and jerky. Did I mention jerky? Neck, is jerkey, backstraps are just that.
Vacuum seal everything and mark and date it.

I usually make 2 rump roast, two shoulder roasts, then make steaks out of everything I can and grind the rest.

The neck is jerky or burgher. Stew's good, too. The shoulders are best pressure cooked. The hams make the best roasts and steaks.
If you bone it in the field and leave the tenderloins, you'll be banished from this forum.

I cut the backstraps, sirloins and tenderloins into steaks.

I cut the hams and shoulders into chops and I mark them as chops because they need a lot of work with the tenderizing mallet to make them pallatable.

I roll the meat off of the ribs and cut that into strips for fajitas.

The rest I grind into burger.

KC

That may be the best use of rib meat I've heard of. Will keep that in mind for sure!

Boneless, Boneless And Boneless.

About 50% burger....Good Burger.

We do steaks out of backstrap and tenderloin. Roasts out of the hind quarters. Grind the rest.

Find a diagram of a cow, showing the cuts of meat. That's what I did.

I cut roasts out of the backstraps, tenderloins, and the largest muscles of the hams. These are cut approx 1 lb each and are double wrapped in a plastic bag (like grocery store produce) then in freezer paper. All the rest of the meat is ground into burger.

If I want steaks, I can later cut them from a roast.

I trim ALL of the fat, white tissue, and silver skin off all of the roasts and burger meat. I also cook and coarse grind all of the trimmings for dog food.

A few years ago I bought a Cabelas/LEM burger poly bag system for packaging my burger. It is important to freeze these packages in a upright position (taped end up).

Steaks out of everything I can. Hams, some of the front shoulders, backstraps and tenderloins. Neck, rib, briskett and all trim is ground into burger or sausage. If there is trim big enough I usually make steak fries/fajita out of them. I am not real big on roasts so those don't even cross my mind.

Steaks out of everything I can. Hams, backstraps and tenderloins. Neck, rib, briskett and all trim is ground into burger or sausage. Pretty much the same as Dog Hunter.

This is a good post. Thank You.

One muscle at a time. Hinds and loins into as many roasts/steaks as possible. Shoulders (the front ones) into stew and hamburger. Neck into burger.

To save a lot of time wrapping: We individually wrap a bunch of similar cuts in plastic wrap, then put a bunch of them in 1 gal ziplock bags. That way you keep them all together and they'll keep for a couple of years as long as you squeeze the air out every time you take out a piece.

We don't grind all the burger at once. It has a lot of air in it and is more prone to freezer burn. It'll keep better in large chunks. We wrap it in 10lb packages then grind as needed through the year. Also, one of these burger presses is well worth the money.

Everything that looks like a boneless steak is a boneless steak. Everthing else is stew meat and hamburger...

X2. 2 people takes about 4 hours. That includes grinding into burger.

I use about 40 lbs of ground later and make sausage.

I sometimes will cube chops and wrap and mark for Summer kebabs on the grill. Chops make really tasty kebobs.

Out of a large elk, I'll make 2 large neck rosts, 2 large shoulder roasts, 2 large lower rear leg roasts. Prime backstrap is steaks, ballance is stew or grind. major hind quarter muscles are steak on large side, stew if smaller. All brisquet and rib/flank is grind. Every thing else is grind or stew. I get about 25% roast, 25% steak, 10% stew, 40% grind. I also get 2 meals from the heart and 8 from liver. I'm having liver for dinner tonight.

liver is very tasty.

eating an elk liver mousse on toast now with eggs .

Don't forget to save some meat for Mince Meat Cookies and Pies...A great gift to those in the Military..I looked forward to them.

Jayco

The heart of any big game animal always come out with me and is fried in bacon grease with onions. My absolutely favorite meal bar none.

I take the liver and throw it as far away from me as possible. It started out as a "I hate liver" thing but it is now a fun tradition and look forward to seeing how far I can throw it.