Deer Processing at Home

I've butchered probably 40-50 deer (I butcher deer for my friends too) in the last 10 years so I'm not expert but I'm not a beginner either. The way they show to do it is pretty much exactly how I do it. I do quarter my deer in the manner that they do because we do the skinning and quartering at my buddies house and then I take the quartered sections home to finish making it into the cuts I want. I can do the entire process in about two hours when I'm trying to do a thorough job (removing fat, silverskin, etc.) and it saves me about$80-$100 per deer. A few tips I would recommend is to get a big cooler and remove the drain plug (you don't want the meat to sit in the water and you also want to aid in the "bleeding out" process). As you are quartering your deer throw the sections in the cooler and then cover in ice. Add ice as needed to keep meat from spoiling until you are ready and have the time to finish the process. This also allows the meat to age and tenderize a little. This is extremely valuable in early archery when the temps are high and you need to get a deer finished quickly. The other thing they didn't mention anything about is the rib meat. I do remove the rib meat and use it for grinding. An average deer can net you an extra five or more pounds of ground deer by taking the time to remove the meat between the ribs. I always add about 10-15% beef fat to my ground venison but sometimes I will add pork fat instead. Adding beef fat makes it taste just the ground beef you buy at the grocery store which will allow ou to serve to finicky eaters. Take the time to learn how to butcher a deer because it is something that is worth learning plus it adds more enjoyment to your deer hunting season each year.

I was taught how to butcher a deer from an older man who used to do it for a living. He would go at the deer with a saw and lay the whole thing on a table and cut it right behind the front shoulders, and right in forn of the hind quarters then go from there. I just do it the way most people do it, quarter it while it hangs and just do like greenedog said take out the different muscles and I like to clean it up real good.I have done 9 deer so far and it takes me FOREVER like 4 or 5 hours id say to get steaks+backstraps cut and packaged. But I have always been a slow worker and kind of a perfectionist I like to get all the gristle,fat,silverskin, and bloody crap off the meat before i slice it up.

I absolutely hate deer burger honestly. I like to use the plain old ground burger to make jerky with thats about the only way i can stand to eat it! But, I will take some of the burger and grind bacon into it to add fat to it to get it to hold together and taste a little better, but its still not all that great! lol I got alot burger from last year that will probably end up going to the dogs. haha

Oh and I dont take the rib meat becasue the guy that taught me to butcher deer said that its not worth it he said that if you are going to get contamination in your meat (like guts/feces) its going to be on that meat. I jsut take meat from the front legs, and what cant be made into a steak. and then some from around the front shoulders and neck.

And like I said I am not a fan of deer burger but I might try making deer chili with it and I usually try to make as many steaks as possible so i dont have as much burger. I usually make a bunch of little small steaks I think some people call them "chip steaks" Wrap them in bacon and fry em up, YUM! I do the same thing with the "filet mignon" or inner loins. I also got a vacuum sealer recently that I have been using . It does a good job and I like it becasue it wont leak blood in the fridge when thawing out and I dont get yelled at, And it will be completely thawed out in one day

z7 - I used to hate deer burger too until I started adding beef fat to it. To be honest, my wife (who still swears she can't stand deer burger) has been eating it unknowingly for over a year now. I put it in everything but do not tell her, just to see if she will notice. She hasn't noticed yet. I'll bet if I made you some spaghetti or tacos with my ground deer you'd never notice it was deer. I will admit I'm not a big fan using without added fat - it makes all the difference in the world!

As far as the rib meat goes, I only use the rib meat if the deer wasn't gut shot. If the guts were blown up on the deer the side meat becomes coyote bait

This is what I do with my deer burger,mix in the fatty's beef burger( I think it's 75/25) I can buy at the grocery store. I send both the beef an deer through the grinder and it takes away some of the gamey taste an seems to be the right mixture on the fat. I use to add just beef suet until I found out that some of the butcher shop's around here add fatty beef burger. I don't like adding pork because you have cook it harder and beef is closer to a deer than a pig is.

Man....that brings back bad memories of working at the slaughter house. Spent a year at a pork processing plant in my younger days that did 4800 - 5400 hogs in under 8 hours. I was on the picnic(front shoulder) deboning line and they were flying by on a conveyor belt and you had to wield a knife as fast as that guy just to keep up. I also spent 3 years at a meat processing facility in Florida where the majority of the day was spent on beef top rounds; removing the vein and silver skin, running it through the mechanical tenderizer, then replacing the fat cap back on it, netting, vac pack, and then shipped to a big cafeteria chain.
All of that was after spending 4 years at a IGA where I spent most of my time grinding up this weird looking Australian and New Zealand frozen beef for hamburger. I'd have to saw the frozen 60lb blocks in half and then place each half in a chipper before running through the grinder. I once got a finger stuck in the door of the chipper and was stuck there for about an hour before someone finally walked into the cooler to check on me. Good times.

Me and my buddies have made a lot of jerky out of rib meat. It makes really good jerky and it is already the proper size when you cut it off the deer.

The heart is the best part of the deer. I save every heart from the deer I shoot. The nice thing is I have several buddies who save the hearts out the deer they shoot so that I can have them. I used to save the liver too but since I've discovered I have really high cholesterol, and liver is really high in cholesterol, I gave up keeping those. Deer liver is great too. To be honest, of all the different animal livers I have eaten over the years I would put deer at the top.