How many hunters here butcher their harvested big game?

I have to figure out how to hunt in Alberta this year, took my hunting course. Just need to figure out the simple stuff.

I want a damn white tail :D
 
After our deer hunt we get together with our families and cut it up ourselves. Arn' has an old grinder, I bring the butcher paper and we all get out our fillet knives. The kids have a great time. Everything is deboned and trimmed; all cuts turn out great.
 
The Kentucky Dept. of Fish & Wildlife has a TV show & magazine called Kentucky Afield. They made a useful 14-minute deer-butchering video of a knife-only boneless processing technique, working from the hanging carcass. It was so popular that they expanded it into a DVD they sell for US$15 (helluva deal!) and deleted the original video. Go to http://www.kyafield.com and click on the "KYAfield Store" button. The first item on the "featured Items" list is the deer processing video. When I got my copy some years ago, I had to register to set up an account - you likely still have to.

There are still some... ummm... "unofficial evaluation copies" of the original video available on the web. Doing a web-search for "deerfield.wmv" with the quotation marks greatly reduces the unrelated results, but this will still pick up some extraneous videos and forum threads with the now-non-existent original link on the kdfwr.state.ky.us site. Two valid links that I found are:
http://www.newjerseyhunter.com/video/deerfield.wmv
http://www.stripers247.com/deerfield.wmv

The rest of the Kentucky Afield TV-show video segments are now on a YouTube "channel":
http://www.youtube.com/user/KYAfield

<edit> I just found a series of videos on home deer butchering with a somewhat different technique by this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/user/williescountrymeats#p/u

Regards,
Joel
 
Last edited:
Butchered a few myself, last year i couldn't with the injury sustained so i had to take them to the butcher. They did a absolutly terrible job,hair all through the meat. Hopefully this year i will be able to myself.
 
I've been cutting up my own deer for years now. Here is a good tip if you are using a folding table to cut on like I do, get 4 pieces of pipe about 14-16 inches long (or longer if you are a giant, LOL) to put on the existing legs of the table to raise it up, it saves your back as you are not bent over to cut and wrap.
 
I do everything that I can by myself. I learned from the kid next door. He is apprenticing to be an abattoir so I learned to be a 'butcher'. Not very good at it yet but, I can get the job done. Practice makes perfect.
 
i grew up thinking that everyone butchered their own game. i didnt realize that people would actually pay a butcher to do something that i consider a major part of the hunt. you get to do the fun stuff, but pay someone else to do the "dirty" work.:confused:

im not bashing those who get game butchered, but to me its part of the experience and all hunters should be cutting and wrapping their own meat.
 
My buddies and I have been doing our own for ever. Working Saturdays in a butchers shop as a kid provided me the basics. Sometimes work or weather drove us to use a commercial butcher but the results have disapointed.
A really good guide is :
Game: The Art of Preparation and Cooking Game and Game Fowl
by Klaus Wockinger, Douglas Leighton
Softcover, N & C Publishing, ISBN 0969365322 (0-9693653-2-2)
Hardcover, N & C Publishing, ISBN 0969365314 (0-9693653-1-4)

Wockingers recipe for bratwurst is the best I've found - he is a hunter and a chef.
 
Spent a season working at a butcher shop :D I do my own on a butcher block at the butcher shop I just spend the rest of the day doing some work for the butcher to pay the cost of using his tools and such. Worth the time to me since I usually get to cut up other peoples animals too so I get MORE experience making me a more experienced cutter on my own animals and helps the butcher out too. WIN WIN.

Plus I get to wear the white smocks so I don't get my clothing bloody WIN!!!!!!
 
No! My South Africans would let it age 21 days! I left to come back two days later.

The locals whom I gave the meat, butchered it the next mornig. They left it to age 2 weeks. They kept the best cuts and sold the rest to a nearby (35Km) village.

I shot several hundred pigeons and doves on the Monday. They fed the local township!!!!!!!! The locals collected the birds, policed the grounds of all shells and paper boxes while keeping the birds. That is the deal from the local farmer with 18000 head of cattle and some 4000 Km sq of land!
You can view pictures of South Africa in my website:

http://www.sportingphotosshop.com/

Have a great week,
Henry;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom