Butcher your own Meat or Pay someone? Raised & Hunted meat

[Jeeper1540]

We have everything done except the 2 back legs. the shoulders got shot up unfortunately, so we only got a pound and a half of good meat all together. i was able to salvage maybe e a pound of meat suitable for hamburger.

 

[Riverdale]

Selected the hunted/raised do it myself

Also selected the 'other'

I process for some other people

 

[Dogfish]

Today's victim for the butcher table after he hangs for a few days.

Headed out with the boys after some pretty minimal success on finding deer this year. With our weather they have not been moving at all. Since it poured last night we decided to switch areas and head up a different drainage. There was a spot we had looked at before but usually passed on because there was a camp nearby. This year it looked too good to pass on. 10 steps in and 10 yards away was this guy.

14 " tall, 14" wide. 2x2. This deer was bigger bodied than any blacktail I've taken. (Blacktail have the smallest horns of all deer in Washington.)
Meat hanging. My son hit him in the neck, nothing wasted!

 

[gettinaclue]

In honesty, I haven't butchered my own meat yet...but I will in the spring. We will be raising meat chickens and turkeys and ducks! I'm very excited.

My step dad used to hunt when I was growing up. We always took ours to the butcher. Neither my DH or I hunt...wish we did though. Bambi is sooo yummy.

 

[jaj121159]

I process most all of the critters I shoot. I have in the past have deer processed. As far as my chickens, I clean the ones I am going to save and eat, but the ones I'm selling, I have to have processed since I am selling through farmer's markets. (Sold 40 birds in three hours on a slow day) I just had 51 broilers processed and it cost me $81, but two 40 mile trips to the processor.

 

[Lesalynn]

We do it all here. Process our own deer, make our own steaks, burger, sausage, chili-meat, you name it, we do it. I agree with whoever said they get more meat doing it themselves. Last season, between the four of us hunting, we had 4 deer in one day....yep, that's the truth. Anyway, my father-in-law took his to the processors, wanting to make the job easier for us. His deer was the largest that day, but when we got the meat back, there was WAY less there than what we came out with per deer for the others. It's not always an easy task, specially when you do a lot at once, but to us, it's worth it. We get exactly what we want. Those goes double for the sausage. I'm real picky about how my sausage is flavored. I like it the way my pa-paw did it, so I do it myself.
The first time we processed some of our own chickens I thought the kids were going to swear off chicken. They said NO WAY were they eating them. Got them to try it, they love it. Now they prefer the ones we raise. We just separate those that are for the freezer. They know not to get all attached to them. It's much easier that way.
I love butchering our own meat, just like I love growing our own veggies and fruit. At least then I KNOW what I'm eating. It may not be the best thing for everyone, but it works for us.

 

[Beekissed]

Dogfish, that is one nice deer...looks to be plenty of meat on that one!!! Congrats to your son...he looks very proud.

Have you ever tried the golf ball method of skinning? We converted to that many a long year ago and find it so much easier and less chance of hair getting on the meat that we never looked back. Although, being hillbillies, we never had a golf ball. We just used a ball pean hammer!

 

[mamawolf544]

I take about 25 birds to the processor a time. It is worth what they charge us for no mess.
On the other hand my DH processes all the quail.
I have been thinking about getting the supplies to do it ourselves but we use the meat for our own meals so it is prob not worth it.

 

[ShadyHoller]

We do our own birds and game. The chickens are pretty easy, especially when you devote a day to it and do a big batch. The economy of scale. That's just for our own consumption.

I used to have my deer done by someone else, but now I do them myself. A lot of the commercial butchers around here won't take wild game anymore, and those that do are either too far away, or when I call they tell me they've got their cooler full of animals and can't take any more, or some sort of hassle like that. I've found that since I've started doing my own, it's not that intimidating, and now I've got control over the process that I didn't use to have. I don't mess around with trying to make steaks out of the less-than perfect cuts: if it's not tenderloin or backstrap, it's either getting cubed for stew-meat, or it's going in the ground meat. As a result, by grinding up all that meat that the butchers always feel compelled to turn into steaks of dubious quality, our ground meat is leaner with less gristle. Same thing goes for our stew meat. And we roast and boil the leg bones and ribs into a stock that we pressure can. It's hard to ask the butcher to do that for you. As far as the cost goes, it's a toss-up, because it takes me all day to process a deer, and I certainly wouldn't be able do it for what these guys charge. The main benefit to doing it myself is control over the finished product, and not having to beg and plead with some butcher to take my animal, or get stuck driving it to the far side of the county.

One final word: I don't know how we ever got by before we had the meat grinder attachment for our kitchen-aid bread mixer. It doesn't have the output for a high-volume operation, but if you only do a deer or two a year and a bunch of duck sausage, it makes all sorts of things possible. Just watch out for steel shot when you do ducks!

 

[Dogfish]

We borrowed a friend's Cabela's grinder for my elk last year. 257 lbs of ground elk. Took three of us mixing and grinding about 4 hours before we finally had it bagged and wrapped. I need to buy one for myself. Don't want to hurt the wife's Kitchen-aid by using that little grinder attachment for an elk, but maybe I'll give it a try for a deer.