Butchering Tips and Tricks

Hunting is much more than pressing the trigger; it is an entire process you should enjoy year round. From preseason scouting to year round consumption of harvested wild-game meat, hunting can become more of your lifestyle than hobby. Some people think hunting is just as simple as pressing the trigger but to the true hunter, the experience extends long after you leave the field. You hear a lot of people say “I want to know where my food comes from” but so many of the same are quick to hand off their kill to a butcher. No disrespect to the great butchers out there but there are some hacks (no pun intended) in your industry with less respect for the game brought in to be processed. The only way to follow your game from field to table is to take it from field to table by yourself. In this month’s blog, I want to share some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned for butchering wild game. I believe in processing my own animals and staying hands on as much as possible through the process.

Many Ways to Skin a Deer

I learned to immediately field dress a deer upon killing it to avoid the meat from spoiling. Make a full-length shallow cut and avoid puncturing any internal organs. Gut piles were expected if you hunted and that was always the way; until I moved to North Carolina. My first hunt in North Carolina resulted in a buck and a doe down and a night full of cleaning. When I went to make the first cut, one of my hunting companions asked me, “you aren’t going to gut that are you?” As I found out that night, these seasoned hunters didn’t do it the way I did. Finding a new way to do something isn’t an insult to your favorite way. Think of the various ways to process in the same light. While I preferred one method of dressing a deer, the hanging gutless method used in North Carolina worked equally well. An on-the-ground gutless method is another way and all sorts of nuances exist for butchering when you get back to the kitchen. Should you vacuum pack or saran wrap? Should you hang your deer or dry age cuts in the refrigerator? Do you package whole quarters or break down the legs into individual muscle groups. The answer is, do what works for you and absorb all the tips and tricks and use them when they are needed.

Clean and Prepared Area

If you have your work area cleaned and prepped before you start, you’ll work through a deer in no time. It also helps to have your deer quartered and broken down with the least amount of hair, leaves, dirt, and other field nonsense covering it. My general rule is to avoid putting anything in my cooler that I wouldn’t put on my butchering block. I also avoid letting venison sit in cooler ice water as the meat will absorb it and ruin the quality. Long before I cut up the hind quarters, I wash down the entire butchering surface with a vinegar solution. I set up my cling wrap and butcher paper next to my cutting board and I cut strips of masking tape and affix them to my counter for easy access. I make it a point to weigh all my cuts, grind, and cubed meat prior to final wrapping and I label each package with the animal type, weight, and date before putting it in my freezer. When wrapped in saran wrap and wrapped in freezer paper, meat can easily last for upwards of a year. Having an organized flow through process is better than scrambling for this and that and using one space on your table for nothing in particular and everything all at once.

Sharp Knives

It goes without saying, keep your knives sharp. For the most recent doe I butchered, I used my tried and true combination of a Fiddleback Forge F2 and Kismet Practical Hunter (KPH). These knives have keen edges easily maintained with a Spyderco Triangle Sharpener and a set of basecamp strops from Sagewood Gear. Cutting meat shouldn’t dull your blades but your edges will come in contact with bone and that will definitely do a number on sharpness. If the knife you used to gut and skin the animal is the same as the one you’re using to break it down, cutting hair and hide can be very tough on an edge. Make it a habit to cut and touch up, cut and touch up, cut and touch up. Thin blades are easy to hone every so often and the two knives I prefer to use have very different but complementary attributes. The F2 is a compact boning knife with a narrow pointed blade. It works well to separate connective tissue precisely. The KPH has a wide belly that helps slicing top and bottom round roasts into strips for jerky. Both are great knives and even greater when they are touched up to cut effortlessly. When I dress a deer and break it down further, I find I usually have a dirty hand and a knife hand and only one hand touches the animal as the blade goes to work. Speaking of clean and dirty, if you’re out in the field and find your knife is picking up a thick layer of fat on the flats, having a pot of warm water heated with a camp stove as you work is a great way to keep your knife clean.

The Grind

As you break down leg quarters, remove silver skin, and cube up steaks, you are going to end up with random bits of venison too small to cook on their own. These bits end up in your grind pile. Deer grind is protein perfection and it turns visually unappealing cuts of meat into a uniform consistency. Grind shouldn’t be any more difficult than placing venison into a dedicated meat grinder or in my case, a grinder attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer, but there are some tips that help the process. I prefer to put my grind bowl in the freezer as frozen meat tends to push through the corkscrew apparatus better. I also run my grinder with the largest grind attachment the first time through and then onto a finer grind attachment for a better grind consistency. Depending on what I am looking to achieve, I’ll weigh the venison grind and cut in 20% beef fat for burger or bacon and spices for maple-bacon breakfast sausage. One of the best tricks I learned for the grinding process is running day-old bread through the unit to help clean it out when you’re done.

Gifting and Feasting

When I process a deer, I always eat the tenderloins first as that is part of the celebration of the hunt. I’ll hold onto backstrap, grind, ball roasts, and some cubed meat for stews. One of the best aspects of hunting is gifting meat to friends. In North Carolina, each hunter has 6 tags (4 antlerless and 2 antlered) to punch throughout the season. That is far more deer than I could consume on my own and my girlfriend isn’t the biggest venison fan. With limited freezer space, even with a spare freezer chest, I give away what I can’t consume. I’d recommend you keep a list of people on the “ready list”. That is, have a list of people in your circle who are interested in venison whenever you take a deer. Reach out to them instead of waiting for them to reach out to you. In my opinion, there are a couple ways to pass along the bounty of a good hunt. You can package everything or call over the recipients to pick up quarters, untrimmed steaks, or whole animals. If you want to provide a gift that keeps on giving, you can teach the butchering process while you grill up some of the meat. You may even convince someone who isn’t a hunter to learn how to hunt after you show them the satisfaction of eating what you hunted. Some of the best memories are made around a good fire, with close friends, and with great food. Good luck this hunting season.

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