Butchering deer
Posted 10-05-2007 at 09:59 PM by Oxford
You know what? it's about time for deer hunting here in Missouri. Last season over 300K deer were "harvested." The word "harvested" seems a little weak for what actually happens to those deer that meet up with a bullet to their body. So why not just say 300,000 deer were killed and be totally frank? Anyway. that's a lot of good eating for the lucky hunters...and a lot of employment for employees of locker plants, etc. that do the butchering. Of course, many hunters have the facilities, etc. to tackle butchering themselves.
I helped with that two seasons ago. My brother and his son had four or five deer hanging in their shed cooling off and draining, etc. till they got time to butcher. I happened to visit my brother the day they were scheduled to tackle this job. Their carcasses were hanging upside down on hooks from the ceiling dripping into pans on a concrete floor. The heater had been left on for just enough time to thaw them out so we could proceed.
We started by carefully slitting the hide from top to bottom and using a sharp knife to eventually cut between the hide and flesh to get the hide completely off. Took a little while but we got-er-done. Then we started cutting off quarters which were laid upon a 4' x 9' piece of table top salvaged from the maple floor of a blowling alley. Beforehand the top was cleaned with diluted bleach. One of my jobs was to cut out all the grissle and fat pieces that I could find from the larger pieces cut from the quarter.
Eventually, a precise weight of cleaned venison was wrapped in brown butcher paper...and the exact date, type of cut, and weight were written on the paper with a magic marker.
Before the day was over we had a huge pile of different cuts of venison ready for the freezer.
Now that was a fun, new and different experience for me as a deer hunter.
I helped with that two seasons ago. My brother and his son had four or five deer hanging in their shed cooling off and draining, etc. till they got time to butcher. I happened to visit my brother the day they were scheduled to tackle this job. Their carcasses were hanging upside down on hooks from the ceiling dripping into pans on a concrete floor. The heater had been left on for just enough time to thaw them out so we could proceed.
We started by carefully slitting the hide from top to bottom and using a sharp knife to eventually cut between the hide and flesh to get the hide completely off. Took a little while but we got-er-done. Then we started cutting off quarters which were laid upon a 4' x 9' piece of table top salvaged from the maple floor of a blowling alley. Beforehand the top was cleaned with diluted bleach. One of my jobs was to cut out all the grissle and fat pieces that I could find from the larger pieces cut from the quarter.
Eventually, a precise weight of cleaned venison was wrapped in brown butcher paper...and the exact date, type of cut, and weight were written on the paper with a magic marker.
Before the day was over we had a huge pile of different cuts of venison ready for the freezer.
Now that was a fun, new and different experience for me as a deer hunter.
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