This will be my first year hunting alone. In the past, my Grandfather (RIP), has handled all of the “after-kill” activities. With that being said, almost everybody I know takes their deer to the same processor and I have NO idea what to tell them once I drop a deer off. My family eats a lot of ground beef so want to replace as much of that with venison as I can. I also know there are cuts of meat that would be blasphemous to ground-up. What do you tell your processor? With the information given, what do you think I should tell them. I guess it’s a pride thing, but I’m way too embarrassed to talk about this/ask any of my friends.
Processor question from a newbie
- Thread starter SwampJ
- Start date
Buckly
Well-Known Member
Here’s what I’ve told the processor for the last 100 years. LOL. I’d like the tenderloins whole and grind the rest. Personal preference if you want to add pork to the grind. I can’t tell the difference so I don’t but a lot of people do. Then go from there in the coming years possibly add a few choice steaks and try that.
yoderjac
Well-Known Member
There is nothing to be embarrassed about. We were all where you are in your journey at one time or another. When I was a kid in PA, we had a very compressed deer season. There were over a million hunters. There was a regulation that butcher shops had to shut down, do a full cleaning, process deer, shutdown again and do a full cleaning if they wanted to process deer. Since they could not do both, many small butcher shops choose to shut down a process nothing but deer during deer season. However, there were way too few of them to keep up. Field dressed deer were literally piled up outside the shop for over a week as they did not have enough room in coolers for the surge. Deer would freeze and thaw often depending on weather. Who knows if you got back your own deer or someone else's. I understood why some folks thought venison was gamey and did not like it.
Your enemies are heat, dirt, and moisture. They all cause bacteria to multiply. Processing starts in the field with good shot placement and quick recovery. You then want to field dress it being careful not to rupture the contents of the paunch. You want to avoid getting bacteria from the digestive tract on to the meat. Next, do NOT wash out the deer in a creek. That only introduces more bacteria like giardia.
I have private property now, so I use an ATV or UTV to retrieve deer and return them to my barn without field dressing. It is easier to field dress when they are hanging. I then spray them out with clean water.
Because of my experience in PA as a kid, I learned to process deer myself. It is actually an interesting to be part of the process from hoof to table. Since I process my own, I immediately skin the deer and quarter it. This gets the body heat out quickly. I have a commercial reach-in cooler. I put a pipe inside across the top so I could hang deer with meat hooks. I want to get them in the cooler as fast as possible. I want to keep the temperature between about 34 and 38 degrees until I'm ready to process.
So, if you plan to use a processor, I would talk to them and check out their facilities first? Can they take deer at any time? Do they have sufficient cooler space? Can they skin your deer as soon as you drop it off? Will they let you skin it and quarter it and drop off the quarters?
Once a deer is hanging at the proper temperature, it can hang a week or two easily before processing. Hanging at this temperature allows the enzymes to break down the muscle tissue tenderizing the deer without letting bacteria to problematically multiply. With older deer, I tend to age a little longer. With a yearling, if I age them too long, the meat literally falls off the bones.
Now for cuts. I don't think many of the normal cuts for beef work well for our deer. I'm in VA and we don't have big deer. I'll tell you how I butcher them just as background.
Deer fat is different than beef fat. Beef fat is liquid at our body temperature and adds flavor to beef. Deer fat is different. It congeals at body temperature and can leave a tallow taste in your mouth. So, unlike beef, I want to remove fat from deer as much as possible. Venison does not have the fat marbling the beef does.
The prime cut I take is the loin (often called backstraps). I fillet they out. My wife cooks them whole an slices them down after cooking. The next best cut for me are "ham steaks". I call them "ham steaks" because that is what the cut is call when butchering pork. It is a horizontal cut across the rear legs. I have a cheap Harbor Freight meat saw (bandsaw type) that I modified. I use this to cut these 1" thick steaks from the upper section of the rear legs.
The ribs have too much fat and I have not found a good way to cook them that we like. So instead, I cut out each rib with any attached meat and put it in a large soup stock pot. My wife gets this started while we are butchering. We put the ribs in it. over time most of the meat and fat fall off and we remove anything still hanging on the ribs and put it in the pot and through out the bones. Next, we cool the stock pot and put it in the fridge. The fat rises to the top and congeals. We then remove the fat from the top of the stock pot and throw it out. The rest becomes meaty stock for soup.
My wife does not like to cook roasts, so we grind everything else. We have a commercial vacuum sealer and package and freeze all the meat as we butcher.
Now I don't know how to translate these cuts so you know what to tell a butcher, but at least you know what works for me. It should give you some background for talking to a butcher.
Hope this helps.
Your enemies are heat, dirt, and moisture. They all cause bacteria to multiply. Processing starts in the field with good shot placement and quick recovery. You then want to field dress it being careful not to rupture the contents of the paunch. You want to avoid getting bacteria from the digestive tract on to the meat. Next, do NOT wash out the deer in a creek. That only introduces more bacteria like giardia.
I have private property now, so I use an ATV or UTV to retrieve deer and return them to my barn without field dressing. It is easier to field dress when they are hanging. I then spray them out with clean water.
Because of my experience in PA as a kid, I learned to process deer myself. It is actually an interesting to be part of the process from hoof to table. Since I process my own, I immediately skin the deer and quarter it. This gets the body heat out quickly. I have a commercial reach-in cooler. I put a pipe inside across the top so I could hang deer with meat hooks. I want to get them in the cooler as fast as possible. I want to keep the temperature between about 34 and 38 degrees until I'm ready to process.
So, if you plan to use a processor, I would talk to them and check out their facilities first? Can they take deer at any time? Do they have sufficient cooler space? Can they skin your deer as soon as you drop it off? Will they let you skin it and quarter it and drop off the quarters?
Once a deer is hanging at the proper temperature, it can hang a week or two easily before processing. Hanging at this temperature allows the enzymes to break down the muscle tissue tenderizing the deer without letting bacteria to problematically multiply. With older deer, I tend to age a little longer. With a yearling, if I age them too long, the meat literally falls off the bones.
Now for cuts. I don't think many of the normal cuts for beef work well for our deer. I'm in VA and we don't have big deer. I'll tell you how I butcher them just as background.
Deer fat is different than beef fat. Beef fat is liquid at our body temperature and adds flavor to beef. Deer fat is different. It congeals at body temperature and can leave a tallow taste in your mouth. So, unlike beef, I want to remove fat from deer as much as possible. Venison does not have the fat marbling the beef does.
The prime cut I take is the loin (often called backstraps). I fillet they out. My wife cooks them whole an slices them down after cooking. The next best cut for me are "ham steaks". I call them "ham steaks" because that is what the cut is call when butchering pork. It is a horizontal cut across the rear legs. I have a cheap Harbor Freight meat saw (bandsaw type) that I modified. I use this to cut these 1" thick steaks from the upper section of the rear legs.
The ribs have too much fat and I have not found a good way to cook them that we like. So instead, I cut out each rib with any attached meat and put it in a large soup stock pot. My wife gets this started while we are butchering. We put the ribs in it. over time most of the meat and fat fall off and we remove anything still hanging on the ribs and put it in the pot and through out the bones. Next, we cool the stock pot and put it in the fridge. The fat rises to the top and congeals. We then remove the fat from the top of the stock pot and throw it out. The rest becomes meaty stock for soup.
My wife does not like to cook roasts, so we grind everything else. We have a commercial vacuum sealer and package and freeze all the meat as we butcher.
Now I don't know how to translate these cuts so you know what to tell a butcher, but at least you know what works for me. It should give you some background for talking to a butcher.
Hope this helps.
