butchering your own deer

[buckscout]

I know we have talked alot about it on here but I wanted to touch on it a little more....after 10 years of taking my deer to a local butcher to get my meat processed I decided no more was i going to pay another man money to do a job that I knew I could do....not to mention the satisfaction of KNOWING I am eating the deer I shot and in a weird kind of way, usually its a deer that I have built a bond with....so taking it to a butcher always was kind of sad to me.....like I said, in a weird kind of way.....

anyhow, about 5 years ago I decided after helping numerous friends and family butcher their deer that i was going to start doing my own....butchering was never the issue, it was making all the types of processed venison that I loved that I thought was going to be so hard......like the Jalapeno summer sausage to the peppered whiskey jerkey strips to the sweet and spicy breakfast sausage.....but let me tell you all that once I got the correct materials like a meat grinder and a jerkey gun and a few other butchering tools this has become more than a hobby......not to mention it is so easy and their really is not a wrong way to cut up a deer as long as you dont cut off a finger while doing so.....

my main question to all of you guys out there who butcher your own deer, and I am not excluding you guys who butcher deer for a living or do it for supplemental income.....but my question is what tips and tricks do you all use once you have the back straps out, and the roasts out....what or how do you start getting the other cuts of meat out? I go for the straps then a few roasts then everything else goes directly to summer sausage and jerkey......we live off SS and jerkey this time of year......but what other cuts do you all prefer outside of the straps and roasts? I refuse to make burger, I just feel like its not for me.....I have yet to make a pound of burger and walked away thinking that it was better than hamburger from my local farmer's half steer that I buy each Christmas......

I am not asking for recipes, I am just wanting to know what cuts am I missing out on aside from the straps and roasts? I know some of you all have found good tender tasting areas that are not normal cuts of meat.....

for instance, when cutting up a lamb with some of my distant family, we have found there is a small portion of meat right above where the "backstrap" would be on a deer.....its about the size of a golfball to a baseball and its as tender as anything I have ever eaten on a lamb......yet you wont find it talked about on any website...the only people that discuss it are the ones who butcher them...................with that said, what parts of my deer am I wasting by grinding up for jerkey or sausage?

[PlayTheWindMike]

Catfish straps unless you are already getting them. I never knew about them until I butchered a deer with a buddy of mine and he showed me. Then I went to show a couple other friends and they knew about them already. Just let it go in one ear and out the other if you already know this but it is new to me within the last couple years. They are on the under side of the loins. Actually they are not bad and they are tender. If you are making jerky with cut meat strips these catfish loins make a more juicy and more tender jerky. You are not going to get 10 pounds worth but before I knew about them I was throwing them away.

[MQ1]

If you use more steak you can cut the roasts up for round steaks

[taylor6400]

Catfish straps unless you are already getting them. I never knew about them until I butchered a deer with a buddy of mine and he showed me. Then I went to show a couple other friends and they knew about them already. Just let it go in one ear and out the other if you already know this but it is new to me within the last couple years. They are on the under side of the loins. Actually they are not bad and they are tender. If you are making jerky with cut meat strips these catfish loins make a more juicy and more tender jerky. You are not going to get 10 pounds worth but before I knew about them I was throwing them away.

Those are the tenderloins! Dont throw them away! I just pan fry those babys in butter...mmm!!!

I dont know of any other great cuts that you could miss. But a buddy of mine started boning the whole hind quarter, cleaning it up, and curing the whole thing and smoking it in a ham bag with hickory. SOB are those good.

[buckscout]

I have done the ham bag deal with some meatier hind quarters of older deer.....makes for a great veggie stew with already cut up venison in place of beef cuts.....the bone in hind quarter in a bag allows for so much flavor to get into the soup its crazy.....and the longer you cook it the better it gets, as long as you go a few hours you will not taste even the slightest bit of gamey meat.....

also, for those of you who make jerkey using a jerky gun....here is a trick I just learned this past weekend......do everything just as your normally would and make your strips, not the slim jim snack bites but the actual strips from the jerky gun......place them in the dehydrator and do everyting just as you normally would.......I do mine for 10-16 hours depending on thickness so with this little trick you only want to dehydrate them for about 5-6 hours....just long enough for them to bond together and become one solid strip and not a strip of ground up meat that falls apart.....ok, after 6 hours or how ever long it takes for them to bond, take them out and wrap them around a half sliced jalapeno that you have de-seeded, then wrap a piece of bacon around that and put toothpicks through to hold in place and put on the smoker for about 3-5 hours....I guess you could do the oven if you dont want the smoky flavor......but those little things were as close to heaven as you could get with venison.....

I know I said no recipes when I started this thread but I had to share that, it was just something that a friend and I decided to try this weekend.....we smoke a lot of meat all summer long...if you are familar with smoking foods then you know these are just a knock off from ABT's that the smoking community loves to make........quite possibly the best tasting snack i have ever made with venison.