Greg does what we do. Several friends and I normally process up to about 10 deer per year for our elderly neighbors.
I usually prepare about 50-60 lbs., for our family home use.
We hoist and spread the deer's hind legs with a tractor front-end loader, or we hoist it in my barn's cold room. We strip the cape to the ears.
We usually take out the tenderloin first if no feces or urine entered the body cavity. If the neck is in good condition, we take it as three pieces of "brisket" -- two sides and the bottom.
We split off the the two shoulders, and strip out the backstrap. Finally, we split off the two hind quarters.
We usually don't do anything with the ribs -- very little meat, and way too much fat that turns rancid very quickly.
We don't always have time to finish butchering immediately, so like Greg, we put it on ice in big coolers or refrigerators.
We use fish fillet knives to remove all the meat from the bones. We remove at least 95% of the fat and membranes before grinding or vacuum sealing. About 10-15% of the muscle meat becomes ground meat. The rest, like blade roasts, flank, sirloin, round, and shanks get vacuum packed whole. All are boneless, and most are fat/membrane free.
I've got a batch snack-stick and summer-sausage meat curing/fermenting as I write this. It was mixed 2/3 venison and 1/3 pork shoulder. It will get stuffed and smoked on Wednesday.
No jalapenos -- but I do add 2 tablespoons of red pepper flakes per five pounds of meat.
No cheddar -- I haven't yet figured out how to keep it from melting and draining to the bottom of the hung sausages in the smoker! I recently heard of "high temperature" cheese for this purpose -- but I really need to check it out before using it.
Good hunting -- good eating,
Ken
Then we take all the fat
