Wore out
Shooting a deer is the easy part, once it’s done. Getting it in the freezer- now, that’s some work. I’d packed the body cavity with bags of ice becasue it was warmer during the day than I liked, but in the end, that was fine. I hung the deer from the gambrel I built into the garage ceiling. It took all day. My back is sore from the bending over the too-low table. My hands are sore from the rope winch, raw from constantly washing and changing gloves. But the deer is in the freezer. I took some pains to get as much meat off it as I could, cutting it into mostly roasts as I have steaks leftover from last year. Small scraps and strips went into the grinder. THe hide and hooves are in the garbage for takeout today- If I had time and the skill I’d tan the hide and smoke it, but I don’t, and I don’t have the time to develop it either, right now.
I’m nursing a headache now, and the arms are hosed up from the cutting and grinding, but i feel fine.
18 comments Og | Uncategorized
Good lord! It shouldn’t be that tough. I would like to see what your doing neanderpundit.
Two guys that know what they are doing can have a deer field dressed and the hide off in 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe 20 for a bigger animal. Butchering and wrapping is about 45 minutes, maybe an hour if you are drinking beers.
It shouldn’t be an ordeal. I personally found it relaxing…
Rusty, you’re a bigger fool than I thought. One man working by himself, it takes some time. But if you’re so convinced, I’ll shoot another’n for you. And you can show me how to bucher it out in 45 minutes.
And I’ve butchered more animals than you’ve eaten.
Just did two hindquarters the other day. A gift from a friend. Even already skinned and sectioned it took a couple hours. My first attempt at butchering. It went fairly well and I think with more practice it would be quicker but it was still not the easiest thing. Well worth the satisfaction of doing it myself though.
Interesting thing I recently learned. Don’t get in a rush to chill the critter. Seems we should leave it at the median temperature (don’t quick haul it to a freezer) for a couple hours anyway. The meat will be more tender. It won’t spoil for some time.
I wish I had a smoke house/butchering area so I could hang and cut up my own beef, as the local guy seems to think he knows best so will only do things his way. So now I have to haul the critter at least 55 miles to get it butchered the way I want.
I left it from saturday to tuesday, keeping it under 40 degrees as much as I could. It tasted fine. (yeah, I ate some raw) I am just about to go get the liver ready for tonights dinner.
Rdennis: You mean you need more stuff to do?
Not hard to find butchering stuff. Hard part is to find the time to do it. My cousin took a little Home Depot garden shed, like a 10 x 20, and lined it with sheet metal (ductwork galvanized stuff) on one half. The other half he did in sheet plastic, and the floors are epoxied concrete. He has a little air conditioner in the sheet metal side, and has tables and hoses and stuff set up in the plastic side, so he can hang meat and process it right there. He has some shelves he dry-ages meat on too, its just like a little walk-in cooler, the AC unit keeps it at around 35 degrees and almost no humidity. Dry aged deer is pretty amazing.
Shoot it. Drop it off at the deer processor. Within five minutes it’s skinned, gutted and hanging in the cooler to age before processing. Stop back by in two weeks and hand them $50 and they hand you your deer frozen to -35 degrees in two pound packages. It’s a beautiful thing.
I have no plans to do it the old fashioned way anytime soon. Not only have I done my share of deer but I helped my family butcher too many hogs when I was a chap. Hell, my grandparents didn’t even have running water in their houses until around 1975.
I love Division of Labor.
Try $175. I don’t have that kind of cash to spare; if I did, I’d be shooting deer and donating them to the food bank instead of using them to fill my freezer for food so my family could eat.
WTF?
Mexicans are Unionized up there???
$210 if you don’t skin it yourself. No union, it’s just the going rate.
Well hell. I’d be a skinnin’ the critters myself too.
The processor I use charges $50 if he skins it and $45 if you skin it.
That is what I call a No Brainer.
I can field dress one in about 20-30 minutes. Processing is easier though as I drop em off at the local butcher who’ll do it for a hunsky, any way I want.
Wish I was that lucky. Field dress, as you say, is a half hour.
Yeah Og, I had thought about it. It would have to be strong enough to support a railing with about 400 to 500 pounds of meat in quarters. I even thought about partitioning off part of the shed. 40×40 in the front half I use for a shop and place to store my tractor. It has 10 foot side walls so it would be handy to hang a rail from there. Just need a winch. Biggest chore would be cutting the beef in half, looks like.
When we shoot a doe we just poacher cut it anymore. Take the hindquarters and the tenderloins and leave guts and rest for the critters out in the pasture. If I get my meat saw/grinder, I’d take the fronts also as ground up they are good to make jerky with. Or sausage I suppose if I ever got a smoker fixed up. Only money to do so, now if I can just get some! LOL
Last beef we had done last summer, cost a little over $300. About 400 pounds of meat. $80 butchering charge, and 50 cent a pound to cut and wrap I think. Of course I had to haul it 55 miles one way and then go back and get the meat when it was done. But he will let one hang for 20 days if you want.
As I was taking a massive, man-sized power dump, I was thinking about the exhorbitant rate processors charge to process a deer in your area.
Gotta be some sort of Government involvement going on there. Anytime something costs WAY more than it should there is usually some Government rules/regulations/taxes/mandates/license fees/etc in there somewhere. If not, some enterprising young soul will usually step up to the plate and uncut the hell out of the competition.
The cost of living in Yankeeville ain’t four times what it is in God’s Country.
Several ways to preserve the hide for later instead of throwing it away.You can stretch it and salt it down with a box of rock salt; or you can roll it up into a ball and freeze it inside of two doubled up plastic trash bags. Also after field dressing 60 some odd whitetail in my life I can remove interior body components in 5 minutes; another 10 to skin.
it’s not so much that it’s difficult to get the guts out, it’s the awkwardness of wrestling around the body by one’sself. It’s much easier when you have a hand or two.
I have a couple frozen hides already i’ve been thinki g about tanning, I just don’t (or haven’t) had time to lookl at doing anything with them yet.
Yeah you’re right awkwardness is the word for it. Too many legs flopping around.
I have an elk hide and a whitetail hide dried to do something with.