Meat cuts or sausages?

...i carry lightweight mountaineering pulleys when i hunt deer in backcountry...hoist them off the ground and skin and debone right there...no sense in carrying out what i won't eat...loins and rumps go into roasts/steaks...everything else gets ground or used for dog food once i'm home...

...deer not in backcountry come home gutted...they hang in my sheds and i carve/saw off of them as winter progresses...takes less freezer space/canning time...it's how it all used to be done for millennia...if it warms then it tenderizes a bit...it's going to be cooked anyway...

...but last year our larder was full so i went looking for a yearling...shot one of a doe's twins...fed the whole thing through the grinder and made bambi-burgers...nothing like it for tender and delicious!!! (the equivalent of wild veal)
 
I can understand leaving the bones in the bush if you are backpack hunting way back of beyond, but otherwise, the bones are an essential part of my game meat diet.

I even save the front legs and hooves of moose and elk for soup. My German -born wife says the butchers used to sell calves hooves in the butcher shop.

I save every bone from any critter I butcher.

Took a shared hunt moose to a butcher in 2012. My buddies and me got 3 or 4 liquor store boxes of meat each from the beast and as I was the only one who wanted them, I asked for all the bones and got six boxes of bones for soup. We are just now hitting the bottom of the last box. We have bone broth-based soup for lunch nearly every day if it is possible.
 
MD said:
I can understand leaving the bones in the bush if you are backpack hunting way back of beyond, but otherwise, the bones are an essential part of my game meat diet.

I even save the front legs and hooves of moose and elk for soup. My German -born wife says the butchers used to sell calves hooves in the butcher shop.

I save every bone from any critter I butcher.

Took a shared hunt moose to a butcher in 2012. My buddies and me got 3 or 4 liquor store boxes of meat each from the beast and as I was the only one who wanted them, I asked for all the bones and got six boxes of bones for soup. We are just now hitting the bottom of the last box. We have bone broth-based soup for lunch nearly every day if it is possible.
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I'm with you 100% on this, sir! There is a ton of good flavour and nutrition in those bones. At any given time, I have a good supply of stock/broth made from deer, moose, grouse, hares... whatever I shoot.
 
Venison runs the same kind of price as premium cuts of beef. Turning it into just sausages is a crime. Worse if it's mixed with pork. Your buddy and his Philistine "butcher" think McPuke's is fine dining too?
 
LOL @sunray

Agreed.

I've known a few people who hunt but don't like to eat wild meat, so they have it all put into sausage and "dog food".

Try as I may, I haven't quite figured that out yet.

It'd be like a ### guy trying to pick up chicks. What's the point?
 
BigUglyMan said:
That is the key to having good wild game. It's all in the trim.

And no bone-in. NEVER bone-in!
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Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks this way. The family is not a flexible as I would like meat taste wise, so I try to make things easy for them. My brother does the same thing with fish from Great Slave to keep his wife happy.
 
I'm not a big fan of some deer but I have come to appreciate how flavour of game changes in a drastic manner in relation to it's location... Growing up in the north Okanagan I had some white tail that when cooked had a flavour about on par with a rotting lamb skin soaked in billy goat urine and left in a car with the windows up in a mall parking lot mid August... The flavour was often disguised by various sauces or marinades but you could always find it if you looked for it.


Fast forward 20yrs and a 14hr drive to northern Alberta and add in a city born an raised better half who decided to get involved with a hillbilly, I had some pretty firm reservations on deer hunting but a friend of mine here volunteered to take any of the venison I dident want after I tried it... Most of my first deer here was ground or cubed for soup and stew... after trying it I noticed it was absent of the pungent gamey taste I was all to familiar with so after much coaxing and several pots of my secret recipe chili I had convinced my missus to try some fried tenderloin... That was a big step for her and myself but since then we have gradually started adding whole cuts of meat to our cooking routine...


I fully understand how some folks choose to use deer as a filler in sausage with pork and I do the very same thing when I prepare my own sausage and pepperoni at home, some deer needs the help depending on where it has come from and how it was handled... I had some chops given to me by a fella who harvested a buck in New Brunswick and to me it was quite gamey but still edible (processed by a butcher out there BTW)...

Myself, being raised about a half hour from the closest gas station and a good stretch past there to town grew up with a 1acre garden (small I know) and a rabbit hutch with adjoining chicken coop, we raised all manner of small critter and even a few big ones, when I moved to another home for a while it was much the same and at least 2 nights a week we grabbed "the knife" off the kitchen counter and went to the barn to pick out our dinner be it quail or emu, rabbit or goat, pig or cow... an entire menu of things people only see at the bottom of the last page of the menu and most start at $25 a plate these days...


I am not an expert butcher but I do believe I have a firm grasp on getting the animal from the hoof to the deep freeze, I have done it since I started skinning rabbit when I was 6 and recently graduated to the "on call guy" when any of my local friends have a bison swinging from the rafters and want everything from standing rib to porterhouse carved from it...



The single most important thing I can't stress enough with any game is to TRY IT FIRST, carve a roast from it, fry a tenderloin, cube a front shoulder from deer and stir fry it, this will tell you 2 very important things...
#1 It's flavour
#2 it's tenderness

Then you have 2 answers
#1 sausage to hide the flavour
#2 large cuts of muscle for roasts or steaks/chops


I just cut an exceptionally tender WT doe, her front half went to stew meat and burger as the amount of body fat made whole cuts quite difficult, the backstrap was divided into 4 pieces and we roasted one and froze the other 3, her rear quarters were cut off the bone and into 5/8" steaks from knee to hip, everything else was ground.

If not for sampling her tenderloins and some back strap I may have broke her rear quarters into burger and roasts for jerky...

As for my better half... She's adjusting to wild game quite well, after Monday nights dinner of deer steak pan fried with a bit of olive oil and Montreal steak spice she suggested I spend this coming weekend looking for more steak :)



 
I can't understand why people turn an entire deer into meat sticks when there are so many uses for deer meat, providing it has been handled properly from field to table. It makes as much sense as grinding an entire cow and not bothering with saving the choice cuts.

That said, I think many people mishandle deer which encourages them to turn the entire animal into sausage as their deer always taste gamey and are tough as leather...
 
"I think many people mishandle deer which encourages them to turn the entire animal into sausage as their deer always taste gamey and are tough as leather..."

Exactly. You can't abuse meat and expect to bring it back. Shoot it cleanly, gut it cleanly, keep it clean, cool it and and it will be fine.

I get pissed off when people say "Oh it' s not gamey at all" when I give them a sample or share some meat at a meal.

Of course it's not gamey. I don;t f**k game meat up.
 
canadian hunter312 said:
I can't understand why people turn an entire deer into meat sticks when there are so many uses for deer meat, providing it has been handled properly from field to table. It makes as much sense as grinding an entire cow and not bothering with saving the choice cuts.

That said, I think many people mishandle deer which encourages them to turn the entire animal into sausage as their deer always taste gamey and are tough as leather...
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Actually there is a very good reason to grind an entire cow up, if you hang it properly for 14 days and it's still tough as shoe leather then chances are it's not going to get any better.

That being said I know a fella who has a B&C moose above his fire place harvested in the Yukon... Was an old monster of a bull... they took 1 roast off of it and put it in the freezer then sent the carcass to the butcher for grinding, a few months later they found the roast in the freezer and cooked it up... He said it was tender as veal and he was mighty upset he wasted a good moose.
 
If you make sausage from the better cuts and some beef fat you'll get a nicer tasting sausage. It's not wasted.
Not everyone likes deer steaks and roasts. So far I've enjoyed the sausage more.
 
LarryG said:
If you make sausage from the better cuts and some beef fat you'll get a nicer tasting sausage. It's not wasted.
Not everyone likes deer steaks and roasts. So far I've enjoyed the sausage more.
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I did that in the spring with some ground venison and regular ground beef, made 5lb's of breakfast patty's... Was really good and way less time consuming than sausage

Another treat for potluck dinner with some friends is venison meat pie but I grind in about 15% bacon otherwise it's way too dry.
 
We make about 50/50 grind and cuts (steaks, roasts and stir fry).
But we only case 1/2 the grind, the rest gets bagged for making spaghetti sauce, burgers and such. But we only use pork, we don't like the beef fat.
 
snoopycda said:
We butcher our own, prime steaks and roast, the rest go's to grind or sausage.
Unfortunately, my wife see's deer as a substandard meat and will turn her nose up unless I fool her. It is getting harder to do that after 24 years of marriage though.
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lol, no matter what I tried, steak, roast or sausage, my wife and daughter are the same that do not like any game meat at all. Me and my sons love any kind of meat though.
 
Prairie Hunter said:
I'm still searching for the best recipes that my wife and daughter would love.
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I'm telling you - listen to zamstony and me: google "steak milanese" or "game schnitzel". Super easy - take your steak, pound it out to 1/8 - 1/4" thick. Season some bread crumbs and push the steak into them - really embed them well. Fry on medium in enough butter and olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Easy on the heat, or you will burn subsequent batches. Lay to drain on some paper towel. Serve with a lemon wedge. You could prepare a Swiffer sheet like this and people would still gobble it down.

My favourite, though - a pile of 1/2" thick steaks seasoned with salt and pepper, fried in butter and olive oil in a very hot cast iron pan for about 20 seconds per side. With a big a chunk of Tuscan-style bread and a glass of wine - oh baby.
 
I pop tenderloins out of deer but the rest I process into burger, pepperoni, salami, fresh sausage, etc. I do this myself or in my Dad's meat shop.

Elk and moose I take a lot of steaks and roasts from but more and more I am turning them into processed products. I prefer a buttery, tender chunk of beef for throwing on the BBQ grill. However an elk roast kept moist while cooking is hard to beat!
 
LarryG said:
If you make sausage from the better cuts and some beef fat you'll get a nicer tasting sausage. It's not wasted.
Not everyone likes deer steaks and roasts. So far I've enjoyed the sausage more.
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True. Same as if you reserve some of the better cuts for jerky, for example.

But a butcher that is processing a whole animal into sausage, rarely goes to the bother of trimming or sorting and separating the cuts, anywhere near as well as a person that is doing so for their own purposes.

When I dig a chunk of meat out to make sausage with, I know what it is, then grind it, rather than simply grinding it all.

Cheers
Trev
 
Reading this thread and seeing how many people seemingly don't like deer meat... It really makes me wonder... why?

There's gotta be something fundamentally different in order to result in some people loving it and others not liking it much.

But where does that difference lie?

People say that it is a combination of factors; the animal's diet, the age of the animal, the way it died, how quickly it was gutted and skinned, how it is processed, and how it is cooked...

I'm not really sold on the whole diet and age thing; I've eaten old bush bucks that tasted just as good as alfalfa-eating spikers. So that leaves gutting, skinning, processing and cooking.

I gut a deer pretty-much within minutes after it dies. Then I take it home and skin it and leave it hang in the shed for a day or 3, depending on temp. I butcher it myself, trim religiously, and vacuum-pack before freezing. I don't think there's a whole lot of magic here.

That brings us to cooking. There's one thing I do know about deer meat; cooking it requires one to abandon much of what they know about cooking meat. It can become dry and tough in about 1/2 the time it takes to cook beef to medium. Deer steaks are best just a touch past blue rare. Roasts are best between rare and medium rare. Stew meat and ground can be used pretty-much like their domestic counterparts, though.

In my world, deer is some of the most tender, flavourful meat I have ever eaten. It knocks the socks off your average Kirkland ribeye or pork chop. This isn't wishful thinking, it is exactly what myself, my family, and many friends experience when we eat mule deer roasts and steaks.

I don't even know what the word "gamey" means. I think it is something that people just imagine.
 
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