Quartering a moose with Sawzall

mbogo3 said:
The Princess Auto saw we used was useless perhaps one of higher voltage in portables?
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Not higher voltage, higher QUALITY! Princess Auto designed to fail. I just ordered a pair of the boot scrubbers they have on sale. Spent the whole night trying to figure out how they could screw up boot scrubbers! They can screw up a crowbar! Makita, Dewalt, Ridgid, Bosch, you know the big guys that actually have an R&D department. lol Pruning blades only trust me. I got sucked in to the CARBIDE trap. Holy Phuck what a $26 disaster that was, lol cuts through bone lol, if you have it held in a vice!
 
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The new great moose butchering tools are the 12" electric chainsaws... the cats meow for making quick work of the job.
 
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Why on earth would you split a carcass along the spine into quarters? Is it a requirement of you butcher? It is a much more difficult procedure than is necessary. But I understand that some butchers only want carcasses that look like they came from a commercial abattoir. If that's the case, my comments are not relevant.
I find that home butchered meat is higher quality if I do all the butchering with a knife and do not use a saw on the bones. Bone "sawdust" is the worst thing for creating off flavours in stored game meat. Sharp edges of sawn bones are actually quite hazardous. I have a few scars on my hands from handling sawn or (even worse) quarters split with a hatchet.
So I carry 6 close weave cotton meat bags and a small fine tooth folding saw in the field. Or they are available in my truck. No hoist required. An animal is skinned on the ground, and the top layer taken off before the carcass is flipped over on the open hide and the process repeated. Shoulders are easily removed with a knife. Hind legs too. Use the hand saw to take off the top rib slab, close to the back but not hitting the rib steaks. Repeat on the other side. Then cut the spine crossways between 2nd and 3rd rib stumps. Bag two rib slabs together, each hind leg separately, and each spine section separately. Fronts may be separate or combined into one bag depending on the size of the animal. Each meat bag is small enough to put on a pack frame without getting a hernia or putting your back out. You will have easy to handle pieces, clean meat, no bone shards, and meat still on bone for proper ageing. We've done dozens of animals this way at our camp. It results in better meat and saves effort.
 
Longwalker said:
Why on earth would you split a carcass along the spine into quarters? Is it a requirement of you butcher? It is a much more difficult procedure than is necessary. But I understand that some butchers only want carcasses that look like they came from a commercial abattoir. If that's the case, my comments are not relevant.
I find that home butchered meat is higher quality if I do all the butchering with a knife and do not use a saw on the bones. Bone "sawdust" is the worst thing for creating off flavours in stored game meat. Sharp edges of sawn bones are actually quite hazardous. I have a few scars on my hands from handling sawn or (even worse) quarters split with a hatchet.
So I carry 6 close weave cotton meat bags and a small fine tooth folding saw in the field. Or they are available in my truck. No hoist required. An animal is skinned on the ground, and the top layer taken off before the carcass is flipped over on the open hide and the process repeated. Shoulders are easily removed with a knife. Hind legs too. Use the hand saw to take off the top rib slab, close to the back but not hitting the rib steaks. Repeat on the other side. Then cut the spine crossways between 2nd and 3rd rib stumps. Bag two rib slabs together, each hind leg separately, and each spine section separately. Fronts may be separate or combined into one bag depending on the size of the animal. Each meat bag is small enough to put on a pack frame without getting a hernia or putting your back out. You will have easy to handle pieces, clean meat, no bone shards, and meat still on bone for proper ageing. We've done dozens of animals this way at our camp. It results in better meat and saves effort.
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Thats pretty much what we did when I went elk hunting in New Mexico.
Skinned it on the ground, cut the hind legs off with a knife (it pretty easy to cut right around where the bone enters the hip socket)
Cut the front quarters off, and as much meat as possible from the skeleton (which we left)
Worked great.

As for you comments about bone dust I 100% agree as do all the wives of the guys in camp.
We got fed up with paying butchers to do the deer so we started doing it ourselves
Everything done with a knife, no saw, all deboned. Better quality meat with better taste.
 
I have success using corded Milwaukee Sawall with 12" stainless blade on animal carcass however I noticed some profession shop use Jarvis Wellsaw it appears effortless.




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Longwalker said:
Why on earth would you split a carcass along the spine into quarters? Is it a requirement of you butcher? It is a much more difficult procedure than is necessary. But I understand that some butchers only want carcasses that look like they came from a commercial abattoir. If that's the case, my comments are not relevant.
I find that home butchered meat is higher quality if I do all the butchering with a knife and do not use a saw on the bones. Bone "sawdust" is the worst thing for creating off flavours in stored game meat. Sharp edges of sawn bones are actually quite hazardous. I have a few scars on my hands from handling sawn or (even worse) quarters split with a hatchet.
So I carry 6 close weave cotton meat bags and a small fine tooth folding saw in the field. Or they are available in my truck. No hoist required. An animal is skinned on the ground, and the top layer taken off before the carcass is flipped over on the open hide and the process repeated. Shoulders are easily removed with a knife. Hind legs too. Use the hand saw to take off the top rib slab, close to the back but not hitting the rib steaks. Repeat on the other side. Then cut the spine crossways between 2nd and 3rd rib stumps. Bag two rib slabs together, each hind leg separately, and each spine section separately. Fronts may be separate or combined into one bag depending on the size of the animal. Each meat bag is small enough to put on a pack frame without getting a hernia or putting your back out. You will have easy to handle pieces, clean meat, no bone shards, and meat still on bone for proper ageing. We've done dozens of animals this way at our camp. It results in better meat and saves effort.
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This is basically the way we do it too. We never split the spine.
 
Longwalker said:
Why on earth would you split a carcass along the spine into quarters? Is it a requirement of you butcher? It is a much more difficult procedure than is necessary. But I understand that some butchers only want carcasses that look like they came from a commercial abattoir. If that's the case, my comments are not relevant.
I find that home butchered meat is higher quality if I do all the butchering with a knife and do not use a saw on the bones. Bone "sawdust" is the worst thing for creating off flavours in stored game meat. Sharp edges of sawn bones are actually quite hazardous. I have a few scars on my hands from handling sawn or (even worse) quarters split with a hatchet.
So I carry 6 close weave cotton meat bags and a small fine tooth folding saw in the field. Or they are available in my truck. No hoist required. An animal is skinned on the ground, and the top layer taken off before the carcass is flipped over on the open hide and the process repeated. Shoulders are easily removed with a knife. Hind legs too. Use the hand saw to take off the top rib slab, close to the back but not hitting the rib steaks. Repeat on the other side. Then cut the spine crossways between 2nd and 3rd rib stumps. Bag two rib slabs together, each hind leg separately, and each spine section separately. Fronts may be separate or combined into one bag depending on the size of the animal. Each meat bag is small enough to put on a pack frame without getting a hernia or putting your back out. You will have easy to handle pieces, clean meat, no bone shards, and meat still on bone for proper ageing. We've done dozens of animals this way at our camp. It results in better meat and saves effort.
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Yes.

And in an age of CWD, I am very careful to NOT cut through major nervous system tissue of all kinds. There are many ways to get the meat off an animal that do not require "splitting" the carcass and which will result in cleaner meat with less brute force necessary as well. We "debone" with knives rather than power saw the animal into pieces.
 
Longwalker said:
Why on earth would you split a carcass along the spine into quarters? Is it a requirement of you butcher? It is a much more difficult procedure than is necessary. But I understand that some butchers only want carcasses that look like they came from a commercial abattoir. If that's the case, my comments are not relevant.
I find that home butchered meat is higher quality if I do all the butchering with a knife and do not use a saw on the bones. Bone "sawdust" is the worst thing for creating off flavours in stored game meat. Sharp edges of sawn bones are actually quite hazardous. I have a few scars on my hands from handling sawn or (even worse) quarters split with a hatchet.
So I carry 6 close weave cotton meat bags and a small fine tooth folding saw in the field. Or they are available in my truck. No hoist required. An animal is skinned on the ground, and the top layer taken off before the carcass is flipped over on the open hide and the process repeated. Shoulders are easily removed with a knife. Hind legs too. Use the hand saw to take off the top rib slab, close to the back but not hitting the rib steaks. Repeat on the other side. Then cut the spine crossways between 2nd and 3rd rib stumps. Bag two rib slabs together, each hind leg separately, and each spine section separately. Fronts may be separate or combined into one bag depending on the size of the animal. Each meat bag is small enough to put on a pack frame without getting a hernia or putting your back out. You will have easy to handle pieces, clean meat, no bone shards, and meat still on bone for proper ageing. We've done dozens of animals this way at our camp. It results in better meat and saves effort.
Click to expand...
That is also similar to how we do it! I know a few people that swear by the sawzall and or chainsaw technique but for me it doesn’t make any sense and makes a mess more than anything else!!
 
Longwalker said:
Why on earth would you split a carcass along the spine into quarters? Is it a requirement of you butcher? It is a much more difficult procedure than is necessary. But I understand that some butchers only want carcasses that look like they came from a commercial abattoir. If that's the case, my comments are not relevant.
I find that home butchered meat is higher quality if I do all the butchering with a knife and do not use a saw on the bones. Bone "sawdust" is the worst thing for creating off flavours in stored game meat. Sharp edges of sawn bones are actually quite hazardous. I have a few scars on my hands from handling sawn or (even worse) quarters split with a hatchet.
So I carry 6 close weave cotton meat bags and a small fine tooth folding saw in the field. Or they are available in my truck. No hoist required. An animal is skinned on the ground, and the top layer taken off before the carcass is flipped over on the open hide and the process repeated. Shoulders are easily removed with a knife. Hind legs too. Use the hand saw to take off the top rib slab, close to the back but not hitting the rib steaks. Repeat on the other side. Then cut the spine crossways between 2nd and 3rd rib stumps. Bag two rib slabs together, each hind leg separately, and each spine section separately. Fronts may be separate or combined into one bag depending on the size of the animal. Each meat bag is small enough to put on a pack frame without getting a hernia or putting your back out. You will have easy to handle pieces, clean meat, no bone shards, and meat still on bone for proper ageing. We've done dozens of animals this way at our camp. It results in better meat and saves effort.
Click to expand...

I believe you about bone dust and marrow getting into the meat being bad. My butcher I used for Buffalo wouldn't cut through the bones - said it made the meat taste off.

I want to follow you in the field and watch you butcher - I have very little experience directly and yours sounds like a great method.
 
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