By Brandon Butler | It’s becoming harder to find quality deer processors. The good ones are so covered up in
work, they can continue to raise prices but the customers keep coming. I tried a new place
this year and was charged 50 cents for every 1-pound bag my ground meat was stuffed
into. A lot of hunters can’t afford or just don’t want to pay $200 to have a deer processed.
The alternative is an investment of time.
Deer, elk, antelope, bear, wild hogs and other big game animals can all be delicious if
processed properly. You can save a bunch of money and take care of the processing
yourself with a minimal investment in equipment and a commitment to the amount of
time necessary.
The first step in game processing is properly taking care of your kill in the field. Field
dressing your game, transporting it cleanly and keeping it cool are the core
responsibilities you have in taking care of game animals after the shot. Doing so will
improve the quality of your table fare.
Skinning your animal is the next step. If you’re new to this, there are countless videos
available online that show you exactly how to do it. If you have an animal you are going
to have mounted, then extra care will need to be given to caping out head. Once you have
it skinned, the butchering begins. Here is a look at the tools you want for a basic at-home
butcher shop.
Game Processing Knife Set
You’re going to need more than one knife to properly butcher an animal. You’re also
going to need a meat saw. You need a skinning knife, a butcher knife and a boning knife.
A skinning knife has a large round blade and dull point. A butcher knife has a large,
heavy, sharp blade. A boning knife has a narrow blade and sharp point for slicing meat
off the bone. A meat saw has a long, fine-tooth blade for cutting through meat and bone.
Electric Meat Slicer
When you go to the deli and ask for lunch meat, the person behind the counter slices it on
a meat slicer. You want one of these machines in your home butcher shop. You can set
the blade to cut different thicknesses. You can use a meat slicer to craft perfectly uniform
loin steaks or cut hams into thin strips of steak to be simmer into Italian beef. Smoke a
couple of wild turkey breasts and slice them into lunchmeat.
Manual Meat Tenderizer and Jerky Slicer
Once you have sliced your steaks, you can run them through the tenderizer. Some people
say venison is tough and gamey. Take big flat pieces of meat and run them through a
tenderizer to produce perfectly sized jerky pieces ready to be seasoned then smoked or
dehydrated. It doesn’t take buying too many bags of gas station beef jerky to understand
this economic benefit.
Dehydrator
Jerky is just dried meat. A dehydrator dries meat. First cure your meat, then place the
strips on the tray and set the temperature and timer. Bigger is better but a four-tray
dehydrator will get you started. An eight-tray or larger will make short work of jerky
strips.
Grinder
After slicing steaks and backstraps, you’re left with miscellaneous pieces you’ll want to
grind. Go over the carcass cutting off all meat you aren’t saving as steaks or roasts and
drop it in a meat lug. Use a grinder to turn these pieces into ground meat. Grinders come
with plates to regulate thickness and tubes for injecting sausage casings. Grinders also
allow you to mix beef or pork fat into your wild game. Meat needs to be cold when
grinding.
Mixer
For mixing seasoning into ground meat before turning it into jerky or sausage, a meat
mixer is the ticket. Not only does it make the task much easier on your forearms, it
spreads the seasoning out uniformly. With a mixer like the 10- and 20-pound meat mixers
allow you to season a lot of meat at once.
Sausage Stuffer
Once your ground meat is mixed with seasoning, use a sausage stuffer to fill casings.
Casing come in different sizes for summer sausage and snack sticks. Dump the mixed
ground meat in the canister and attach the right sized tube. Hi Mountain Seasoning’s
Sausage Kits have everything you need.
Burger Press
Perfect burgers are formed with a burger press. A simple single burger press makes every
patty uniform. Adjust the thickness to build whatever size burgers you desire. You need
to separate burgers with a piece of wax paper. You’ve seen the stacks before with frozen
burgers separated that way. You need to do the same. Vacuum seal or package your
burgers in freezer paper.
Smoker
If you consider yourself a sportsman and don’t already own a smoker, you need one.
Smoked wild game roasts, loins, lunchmeat and especially sausage will get you through
the year. Electric smokers make the job easier. I’ve used one for years that drops wood
discs automatically.
Vacuum Sealer
Vacuum sealers package your game air-free, reducing freezer burn. They suck the air out
and seal the package so no air can get in. You can store vacuum-sealed meat for years.
Some food sealers can be used with a 12 Volt DC adaptor if you are trying to process an
animal in the field this is helpful.
Accessories
You’ll need basic accessories. For ground meat, use weight-specific freezer bags. Freezer
paper and freezer tape are also necessary if you are not vacuum sealing. Meat lugs are big
plastic tubs you want for holding meat at different stages of the butchering process. An
apron is nice. A high-quality knife sharpener is a must. So are rubber processing gloves.
Conclusion
You can purchase everything covered in this article for under $1,000. When you consider
how much it costs to have a deer butchered, especially when you have jerky and sausage
made, the savings add up quickly. Sharing equipment with hunting buddies is an option.
If you go three ways, your portion of the expense equals the cost of having a couple of
deer butchered.
Not only is butchering your own animals cost-effective, but it also adds an entire element
to being a hunter. You killed this animal, and now you are processing it. You own every
step of the process from the field to the dinner table. The core of being a hunter is to
provide meat for the dinner table.
See you down the trail…
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