907brass;
Good morning to you sir, I hope that this 13th of December finds you and yours well.
Thanks for the interesting thread that you've initiated and of course thanks to the respondents who make it so!
We started processing our own game in '89 when the chap who we took ours to sold his place and provided us with the push to begin to do it ourselves.
Our first purchase was an upright freezer that had a too small compressor installed so it'll just so freeze stuff now. The chap who did the work sold it relatively cheap and it's not missed a beat once since '89. I'll note that we added a couple computer cooling fans now that hang on the bottom shelf on the door and between them and the top fan it provides just enough air flow to prevent molding.
We have a number of tables set up to process and absolutely as noted the height should be correct for the user. We do all ours boneless, so cutting boards and a bunch of commercial quality knives are the tools needed here.
A few years into doing it ourselves and very quickly helping other hunting friends, my late father in law took our old cast #22 hand grinder home to Manitoba, tore apart a washing machine that he found and motorized it for us.
It uses the original motor driven with a 3" pulley which drives a 12" off the washing machine, which drives a 1½" that drives a second 12" pulley. For our setup it hits exactly 60rpm which was the sweet spot for the grinder, knives and plates we use.
The final drive needs to be very level here to reduce wear. We do it with shims under the grinder body. As well, the original drive was a Browning coupler with the smaller 4 winged rubber spiders, but it'd eat them pretty fast. When I changed it to a Lovejoy type, I bought a spare spider and the chap in the store told me I'd never, ever install it.... so far he's been correct!
Some of the other items we find very useful are a butcher paper dispenser and a freezer tape dispenser, as when you're packaging it's nice to be able to grab tape or more paper with one hand. My late father built these handy holders for me.
We use paper usually to put down on the work tables, but poly would be fine too.
The bloodshot meat, fat and internal organs are saved and ground in the 3/8" plate to be used for pet food,
Lastly, if you don't have a copy already, go to rifles and recipes which is John Barsness and Eileen Clarke here and order Eileen's "Slice of the Wild".
Linky thing.
https://www.riflesandrecipes.com/product/slice-of-the-wild/Even though as mentioned I'd been processing our own game and cooking since '89 and before, I learned a whole bunch from that book and truly can't recommend it enough to anyone who wants to get more out of their hunting experience.
Hopefully that was useful for you or someone out there sir. As always there's lots of ways to get there, but that's been ours this far.
All the best to you folks this Christmas Season.
Dwayne