Thread: Processing deer

Originally Posted by cricket george

Arkcrappie and I do it the same way. Ice chest for 3-5 days on ice,draining and adding ice daily, then carefully process. I have prepared roasts, burgers, steaks and chili for newcomers who, afterwards, never realized what kind of meat they had just eaten.

Several years ago,my wife browned some bear steaks,and put them in a crockpot with mushroom gravy,that evening we took them to a church Christmas pot luck dinner.You should have seen folks attacking that crockpot,they even took bread and wiped it clean to get it all.
Afterwards the secret got out that it was bear steaks,needless to say,I was almost excommunicated by the same folks who acted like a pack of wolves on a fresh kill. Point is,proper care of wild game before packaging always pays off at the table.

I field dress my deer immediately once I get it down to start the cooling process ASAP. We have a hydrant that is gravity fed from a clean pond that I use to wash out the cavity and further get some of the heat out of the carcass. If the temp is above the 40’s I’ll get 40-50lbs it ice and lay them over the hams and inside the chest cavity. I skin the next morning unless it’s warm, pull out the tenderloin and loins, then put a cheap cheesecloth game bag on the carcass of I’m going to butcher it into steaks and roasts. I do think that hanging and aging does make a difference in steaks/chops and shoot for 5 days if the outside temp cooperates. We crock pot most of our roasts so I’m not convinced it makes sense to age them if they’re going to fall apart in the slow cooker. Aging makes no difference in ground venison so if you’re grinding for burger or jerky you’re just as well off to debone, chill, clean up and grind. Chilled meat grinds easier than meat that has been soaking in ice water and dried with a paper towel. Find a local butcher that will sell beef fat if you want to cut the venison, the 5lb 70/40 ground beef chub is a good tip if you can’t find a local butcher with beef fat. I’ve even bought clean beef fat from Sams Club when they’re cleaning up their steak cuts for packaging. I end up packaging mine straight from the grinder with no beef fat for chili, taco meat and burgers-we add other binders for our burgers but family members like the fattier blend.

There’s no real easy way to clean up the silver skin that I’ve found. I use a thin sharp fillet knife and clean up my cuts just like you skin a fish fillet. I clean as much as I can even for my burger meat because it clogs up my grinder plates. Again, I think it’s easier to trim cold dry meat versus wet deer that has been laying in ice water-just a personal observation.

We dump on our hunting property but would call the city dump and see if they’d accept a cleaned deer carcass. If so, it’s about $10 for a pickup load of stuff at our local landfill. I’m anti-dumping and hate when people dump carcasses on the road leading to the farm we hunt or in the creek that runs through the farm.