Schmucker Deer Processing (2024)

FAQs

Is it worth processing your own deer? ›

By processing deer at home, you control the final product. You can cut, package and label each steak, sausage or package of ground venison to your liking. For some hunters, this is the most important reason and primarily why they do it themselves and it teaches the younger generation where their food comes from.

Butchering deer isn't difficult with the right knowledge and tools. Processing at home or in a camp, provided you know what you're doing and have access to the right gear, takes only a few hours from skinning to cleanup for a mature deer.

Steps to Processing a Deer

The process can take anywhere from a few hours to a whole day, depending on your skill level, familiarity, and the cuts you're preparing. Skinning – after you get the deer back home, the first step is to remove the hide so you can access all that delicious red meat.

Start at the neck of the animal and move down to order cuts. Neck roasts - Our old timers always get the neck roast and cook it down for stews. What can I do with SHOULDERS? Roasts - The shoulders of a deer yield a smaller flat roast with the flat shoulder bone intact.

For more tender venison, butcher and cook deer after rigor mortis has reversed – when the muscles have had time to relax. This is achieved by hanging deer after field dressing.

To create a mount worth taking up real estate in your living room, you need to know how to cape or skin a deer the right way. If it's above freezing, cape out as soon as possible. Otherwise, complete it within 24 hours of kill.

It was so massive that my friend and I couldn't move it — or even turn it over — to gut it. Instead, we ran a knife down the backbone and then down the legs, skinning out the side of the animal that was facing up. We then removed the quarters on that side along with the backstraps and put those in game bags.

Collecting roadkill for eating is legal in over 20 states, including Vermont, Washington, Oregon and Pennsylvania. The most recent addition to this list is California; in October, legislators legalized roadkill harvesting from three regions in the state with "high wildlife collisions," The Sacramento Bee reported.

Further breaking it down, it will ideally yield 83.08 pounds of boneless meat. The deer's realistic meat yield is about 58.15 pounds. Because waste can vary between deer to deer, we suggest using the “realistic” figure as a gauge. In the above example, the buck's realistic meat yield would range from 58 to 68 pounds.

The consumption of raw venison has been linked to a number of parasitic and bacterial infections with symptoms ranging from mild to fatal. As these case studies show, the risk of illness, though rare, is very real.

Can you eat deer meat after 3 years? ›

you could have something frozen for three or four years, it'll still be safe to eat. as long as your freezers remained on. and that meat has remained below 40 degrees.

If you wait too long to recover the deer, the blood will spoil and ruin the meat. The old bowhunters' rule is to wait eight to 12 hours before following a gut-shot deer. If you wait that long when it's 50 degrees or above, your intentions may be good, but there's a good chance you will lose that meat.

Deer meat is called Venison. A baby deer is called Fawn. There is no term for Fawn meat, cause people do not generally eat it...oh wait, here a delicious “Grilled Fawn Chop on Mash” by @chsch_rest Chef @stvolkoff - incredibly tender, juicy & delicate: fantastic! - # foodp*rn #yandslife.

The deer stiffens during rigor mortis in the 24 hours after being killed. If it is processed during this time, the muscles shorten and contract causing the meat to become tough. You should let your deer hang for 2 to 4 days at minimum before processing to avoid this.

The Science of Shooting Does

Taking does controls impact on habitat more so than taking bucks because each doe killed also eliminates the potential to produce future deer. Conversely, taking a buck eliminates only that deer and not necessarily potential offspring because other bucks will breed in its place.

The deer stiffens during rigor mortis in the 24 hours after being killed. If it is processed during this time, the muscles shorten and contract causing the meat to become tough. You should let your deer hang for 2 to 4 days at minimum before processing to avoid this.

Further breaking it down, it will ideally yield 83.08 pounds of boneless meat. The deer's realistic meat yield is about 58.15 pounds. Because waste can vary between deer to deer, we suggest using the “realistic” figure as a gauge. In the above example, the buck's realistic meat yield would range from 58 to 68 pounds.

Regardless of whether the animal will be skinned and processed in the field or at home, it needs to be gutted immediately.

Hunting for your own food is now cool. One reason is health benefits. Game is pure protein, with no preservatives or additives. Venison has one-third the fat of grass-fed beef, and only a third of that is saturated fat.