burniegoeasily

I use to in my garage, big shop, or small shop. Kinda depended on time and temp. Id set up a sheet of ply wood on two saw horses and cut the deer up. I use a hand grinder to make burger, chilli meat, and sausage. That is after ageing it. I have built me a processing room, a few years back,out behind my shop. Man is it nice.

bigtim6656

how much blood is there from when you start to skin the deer to it is cut down to say half quarters

Newhunter1 at work

As far as processing deer this is what I do.

I built an inverted "U" with a block and tackle in the center at the top. At one of the bottom legs I put a winch with cable thru the wench and hooked to the gambrel thru the pulley wheels. I back my truck to the deer pole and crank it to the top. Then I start skinning it. Since it is already gutted I don't have to worry about that. I skin the deer and cut off it's head.

Now comes the cutting the deer up. I use some clear plastic bags--2 1/2 gallon zip lock bags--and start cutting up the deer. I start with the hams and cut the meat off the bones, but dividing the two big roasts up. Then after each roast is cut off I put one de-boned section into each bag. Compress the bags down to get the air out and seal it. It goes into my basement fridge. Then I do the other side. Next I cut out the inner loins and the backstraps and put all four pieces in a zip lock bag and into the fridge. After that I go with the front quarters and cut off all the meat and into the bags it goes. So when both front quarters are in the fridge I start on the scraps that I can get off the deer. For instance, the neck. I really don't like a neck roast so I cut off all the meat and turn it into stew or burger. Cut off all the meat there and into the bags and fridge.

Next I cut off all the leg shank meat. This is some tough meat and goes into my burger bag. After all the meat is cut off the deer I have a skeleton hanging from my meat pole. I then grab a couple of contractor trash bags and take the back leg bones and throw them over the fence to my dogs. Then I cut the rib bones off...after cutting what little meat there is on the ribs and throw those to the dogs as well. The back bone goes into the contractor bags all nice and tied up and into my trash cans for pick up.

I wait 5-7 days for the meat in the fridge to age at temperatures of 35-38 degrees and after one week I start my processing.

I have a 20x30" cutting board that I put over one of my sinks in the kitchen. In the other kitchen sink goes the scraps that are either to bloody, shot up, silver skin or fat, and these go to my dogs--they love me for that. I then cut the meat into steaks, roasts, stew meat and grind scraps. Then I bag each section into vacuum bags, label each bag of what it is and seal it shut. Then into the freezer until I decide to use it.

Now for the burger...I usually wait till I've got around 20-30 lbs of it. The grind is usually frozen solid and when I'm ready to grind it up I thaw it till it is still semi-frozen, and into the meat grinder. After it is all ground up I have a food scale where I'll weigh out 2 lbs of burger and put that into a vacuum bag. Seal them all up when I'm done and back to the freezer. Some may disagree with me, but the meat is still VERY cold and not out for very long. I've never had a problem with this way and don't anticipate one either.

This is my system and so far it works.

Paul

dvalliere

If you field dress it in the woods and lift up the end to let the blood in the body cavity drain out right away (which you should do, by the way), then the blood during the butchering process is minimal. In fact, other than drippage below where it hangs (put down something disposable under it), there's not much to worry about regarding blood.

PreacherTony

Man, Wis_bow_huntr .... you dun got schooled!!!! ........Newhunter ...... he was just playin' ...

Seriously though ..... some people really need to be respectful of others and take time to type correctly .... there have been posts I couldn't even understand .......... there's a bunch of comma and period haters out there!! [:-]

Newhunter1 at work

PreacherTony,

While I know I didn't treat him as Christ would have, I feel that my post wasn't negative in general. If Wis_bow_huntr took offense then I do apologize to him. As a reading and writing teacher for 7th grade I see alot of posters who have alot of errors and don't say anything. I just don't care when someone takes upon themselves to humiliate someone on a public forum.

There are times I've even misspelled a word.

Paul

phil 5oh

It should either be well "rounded" or "world renowned".

ericstacy

All their bull**** aside. I have actually brought my deer home and cleaned it (Fully)on the tailgate of my truck backed up under the lights of my garage. And I live in the city. You just have to gut it in the field, skin it where you can, and then butcher it as best you can with what you can. If that means in the driveway so be it! If you didn't get a chance to gut it in the field then I suggest you double or triple bag the guts and send them out on your normal trash pickup provided it won't be for another few days. Butchering for the freezer is totally different. Here is a guide line to home butchering.
http://www.wideworldofhunting.com/cutsforbutchering.htm
You either need a saw (Hacksaw will do for most) or you need to carefully cut out the different meat cuts. I need to make a video of both. What do you all think?
Eric S. Stacy AKA: Deerdope

RIStrutStopper

I'd like to see a video.There was one floating around on the internet that was pretty good, but it never hurts to see someone who knows what he's doing. I think I want to try to butcher my own deer next time around.

in da woods

Bigtime, simple. If you have a garage,skin & quarter it.Put the quaters in a cooler & then taken theprimal cutsinside to break them down to the cuts u want. As for the carcass, a sawzall works great. Cut it into small pieces & put it in a trash bag, then in out to the trash.
Here's how I do it: First I rinseout the cavity w/a hose or bucket of water out in the yard. This helps get rid of the unnecessary blood dripping in the garage.I hang mine from a rafter in the garage, w/the head up (doe). I too, use a piece of card board on the floor to catch blood, fur, etc.s. Have in place a garbage can, knives, latex gloves, cotton gloves (when the temps get low), & a large cooler.
Start the skinning process just below the ears. To assist w/the skinning, I place a tennis ball on the fur side of the skin, & loop a rope or nylon webbing around it. Attached to the rope/webbing is a 45# olympic weight. The weight begins pulling the skin, & it's very easy then to use your knife & trim along the meat/skin line. Takes about 20min.
Then use a very sharp boning knife & seperate the large muscle groups, ie; shoulder, loins (backstraps), rump, tenders, neck & if you want rib meat. Put all of these into a cooler. Important to get that meat a cold asap. Then, depending on the temp, I either set up a table in the garage or take each primal cut, one at a time, in the house. Rinse off the primal cut in the sink. Gets rid of fur, blood clots, etc. Seperate out each muscle group from the bone. You can cut what u want out of each primal cut. Shoulders- stew meat, jerky, ground, sausage.
The rump is a better cut of meat. Rump-roasts, steaks, jerky, nice ground meat, & stew meat.
Loins- strictly steaks. Cut into 6" sections, & freeze whole. Cut when u want to grill out.
Tenderloins- says all itself. Neck & rib meat-sausage.
Scrap meat (any thing you trim off the bones, little pieces, etc- sausage. Use a vacuum sealer to freeze all of your cuts. Remember do one primal cut @ a time, & put the finished cuts into the refrigeratoras soon as your done witheach primal cut.