First and I think most important, butcher the deer yourself. It is not that difficult and no way mysterious. Once you get started removing the meat from the bone it is all self explanatory. The biggest problem with butchers is they rely too much on the saw. The gamey taste that so many complain about is not in the red meat. It is in the velum between the folds and muscle groups, in the fat, and in the bone marrow. When you simply run a quarter of venison through a saw you are using the best tool for distributing the gamey taste to every cut it comes in contact with.



There is no steak on the shoulder. Trying to make steak of any cut other than the backstrap or hind quarter sets you up for dissappointment. The shoulder is excellent meat and after being boned should be cubed up for excellent stew meat or sausage if you like.



The backstrap speaks for itself. Simply bone along the backbone ridge and off of the ribs. The best way of butchering the hind quarters is to first remove them one at a time from the pelvic bone. It will take some experience to remove the quarters cleanly. But don't worry about your first efforts, whatever you botch up makes excellent stew meat to add to your shoulder. Once you have the removed quarter examine it. There are lines to follow for undoing the muscle groups. Use the tip of a fillet knife and slit along these lines and pull with your other hand to separate the muscles from one another along the vellum folds. The entire quarter will come apart this way. Some of the muscles will be flat and diagonal, some will be round and straight. But all will be separated from each other by the gray vellum that allows the muscles to slide against each other as the animal moves. Use this vellum as your road map to disassemble the quarter.



Once you have separated the major groups, slice the steaks perpendicular (across) to the grain. This is the advantage you have over a butcher. A butcher will simply stiffen the quarter in the freezer and run the whole works through the saw. It is a sure bet that over 80% of the quarter will be sawn at an angle to the grain and not perpendicular.



Your steaks will be made up of one muscle. When thawed any remaining vellum will be on the outside edge and easily removed, which you should always do. A sawn steak will be comprized of many muscles usually in small pieces all with vellum in between. This vellum is what makes the difference between gourmet and dog meat.



Take the plunge. Do it yourself! You'll throw rocks at butchered venison from then on.



(ron'z comments - i trim the silverskin (what he calls vellum) off BEFORE i cut the steaks. other than that, this looks like a good basic run-down of the process!)

Excellent post. I find it sad that someone would actually have to post this information though, as it should be relatively self-explantory.

Scott

One thing you also want to try.
Wrap your meat cuts in the plastic wraps available in commercial size rolls from the big wholesale warehouse stores in the big city (when ya just have to go there anyway)
Wrap cuts tightly in that and then place in a 1 gallon freezer bag and it will keep a LONG time (we are eating meat right now from season BEFORE last). Squeeze out all of the air you can before zipping up the last inch of seal

A bit pricier (ok so this is a second suggestion) is one of those vacumn bag packing systems. The plastic is thick and seems to keep food very well.

I think my way works great and takes up far less space that of wrapping with double paper.

Talk about space savings, although one loses some flavor in certain cuts, think how much space all of those bones use up in the freezer.
Those boneless cuts leave room for other things . . . like tofu !!

Vacuum packing works even better!

Scott

i just got a vacuum packer recently. looking forward to trying it out this fall!

Thats what I do and it works great. No freezer burn after a year even. Kinda pricey though.

I find its more valuble for fish and poultry because they burn quicker and there is less packaging than for a monster mulie.

for fish, i use a ziplock freezerbag, then throw as much fish in as i want in there. when that's done, i top off the bag with water and seal it, laying the bag flat in the freezer. the water-pack really works well to protect the fish from freezer burn.

i would guess that this would work with poultry as well, maybe even big game steaks, but i have not tried it.

Ray Atkinson: How do you go about "double dipping" the steaks in flour? Do you add some moisture to the already dipped once in flour steaks to get more flour to adhere to the steak?

Chilli with venison - now that sounds good!

I have some cuts of venison thawing out as we speak here. The package is marked "Filet Mignon" - Deer 2003! Aaahhh - I can't wait for dinner!



TasunkaWitko: Thanks for the update on the wintering critters!

I will tell you this in all sincerity! Now that I have lived 6 winters here in Montana - I am absolutely AMAZED at the endurance and stamina that the wild creatures here possess! I mean it like this - one early morning just before sunrise on the coldest day of this past winter my dog wanted out! I had been sleeping naked in my bed next to the heat radiator (the VarmintWife) and I was toasty warm and a bit sweaty! So I figure what the heck I am tough I will walk out on my porch while the dog does his business with no clothes on! Well I was doing pretty well for the first 30 seconds! But then a gust of wind (about 5 MPH!) hit me and I nearly died! It turned out to be 29 degrees below zero at the time (thats 61 degrees colder than freezing by the way!) and the first thought that went through my head when that breeze hit me was - how in the world do the wild creatures live with this?

I beat a hasty retreat back to my bed and contemplated just how hardy that the Big Game animals really are! I would last out there about two nights during the winter -at most!

Thanks to the powers that be for making our woodland creatures so strong and adaptable!

Hold into the wind

VarmintGuy

Something else you should try before frying up a batch, rather than soaking vinison in sweet milk, vinagar and water, of coke or whatever other witches brew you might use, just run hot water over it until it gray in color then fry...it will taste like beef, if you like beef.....

these are all good solutions if a person wants to pretend that they aren't eating wild game, but to be honest, if i wanted to eat something that tasted like beef, i would eat beef.

i saw that double-dipping was mentioned! i also double-dip mine when i pan fry it with some kind of breading. i simply dip it in milk/egg mixture, coat the meat, then repeat the process.

Depending on what venison you are cooking, some of it is much more gamey than others. If you don't cook our coastal blacktails right, they are hardly edible.
Hang in a cooler for at least 2 weeks.
Cook only red meat, no bones, fat or such.
Marinate in equal parts olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some onion and garlic for 12-24 hours. Except the backstrap, that you can dip and pan fry.
Then BBQ VERY RARE.
Bon apetit.

Don't throw away those vacumn packer bags. Turn them inside out, put them in the dishwasher and they will be good the next time around. Trick is to use scissors and cut straight close to seal. Your bag only gets a little shorter each time if you do this. If the bag has trouble sealing, seal the other end again.

I double dip 1st with flour straight out of the marinade (my fav is milk/garlic/salt/pepper), then again with some egg in the marinade, then finally with bread crumbs.

Deke.

Blacktailer. I have never noticed our deer to be that gamey. Maybe I just haven't killed an old enough buck or one that was headed into early rut. Compared to a sagebrush muley these little fellers are sweet to eat.
I cannot tell you how many deer I watched my Father ( meat cutter for over 50 years) and Uncle cut for the local hunters returning from the game fields. They would hang them in our walk-in cooler for anywhere from a week to 20 days until the deer had a black hide on them that you could hardly cut. That hide kept the moisture in and the steaks were really tasty when it came time to eat. It was a long time before I was ever allowed to cut into an untouched animal. Mostly I had to relegate myself to trimming and grinding.
I agree that the saw is no way to cut an animal unluss you are in a hurry and aren't worried about bone dust and the flavor of aged marrow. Sometimes my dad would use a hand saw to break an animal or seperate a hind quarter but he always took the time to wash the area thouroughly with warm water and fresh towels.
I would like to comment on the freezer burn problem.
Most freezer burn does not take place due to length of stay in the box. Although some burn will occur after several years. Most burn happens because of slow freezing. We had a special freezer section near the circulation fan at the back of the freezer that would freeze meat within an hour or two at most. It had racks and each wrapped steak was stacked individually to allow for good circulation. This technique doesn.t allow the moisture in a steak to seep out under the pressure of the other meat on top. Most people just pile the steaks one on top of the other and the sheer weight sqeezes the juices out which slowly freezes on the outside of the steak causing a burning action. Try it sometime when you go shopping. Pile a few of those 24 packs on top of your tops or porters and see what you end up with on the bottom of the bag.
Good heavy freezer wrap- the kind with wax lining is best for that first wrap. We usually followed with a second wrap of regular white "butcher" paper but I have been using Freezer bags as suggested above and having good result for my second wrap. I always use the heavy duty waxed wrap first.
If ya'all really wanna make some chili. Use the tender meat trimmed away on the neck of your deer and remember to soak your pintos overnight and then change the water before cooking. You will probably have to pick out a few floaters and maybe even some rocks- Damned hard to find good beans these days- but it will really improve the flavor of the beans which are key to a good chili.
Oh, and by the way. We used to call the FNG a butcher until they learned how to turn a full steer down to a pile of bone and a case( an over the counter display) full of cuts before he was graduated to
meat-cutter.
Frank

Other than during the rut, I think the big bucks, if they are fat and prime, eat pretty darn well, ocassionally we have to chew a bit more, but then they produce a lot more meat....

I just like deer meat, actually I prefer it to elk, guess because I was partially raised on a big cattle ranches in Texas Big Bend country and in Mexico and on deer meat, cattle were sold for money, then deer got commercialized and people paid to come and hunt them and we had to start eating beef, took me forever to get to where I liked beef..and ruined my hunting also..

I'm with you Ray. I love deer and especially like it on the Bar B Q slow turned and basted through at least a pair a tall JD's with rocks if its a hot day. Or a cool day. Or an overcast day, or a day with some sun or moving clouds, or..
You get the picture.
Frank

Most burn happens because of slow freezing. < !--color-->
From my cannery days...
What happens with a "slow" freeze " is that it causes "long sharp' ice chrystals to form within the meat or fish,that pierce the cells and cause moisture loss,which translates into dry tough meat when thawed. The faster the freeze,the shorter and blunter,the chrystals will be, and the meat will retain its moisture and flavor better. If you have access to a commercial freezing system all the better.Some cannerys,butchers,and commercial freezing centers offer freezing services,but if not available,don't just dump it into the freezer in a big pile,but spread it out and leave air spaces as Frank described.

OK, i'm in the market for one of those vacuum packers now-- any suggestions??

I bought one of the vacuum units this last year. I caught a sale on the old narrow 8" style at less than 1/2 price of msrp and while it works just fine I would suggest the wider 11" unit as being easier to pack large items or thicker cuts with. As far as using one of these with fish it is super. The trick however is to place the fish on a piece of wax paper or saran wrap on a cookie sheet in your home freezer until it just begins to crystalize or even lightly frozen solid, then pack in the cryovac airless wrapping, this preserves the natural juices that get sucked out of wet fish or any other kind of meat for that matter without burning the surface of the meat.
We catch Striped Bass in large quantities on a seasonal basis and have used the water and gallon bag method for years but unless you double bag and get every last bit of air out the fish will begin to freezer burn in about 4-6 months. Breaks my heart to have to throw out freezer burned fish.
One other comment. Last fall we bought a gas powered ice box styled chest smoker that allows us to smoke multiple things at the same and pull something out from one of the three trays when it is done and leave the rest of the stuuf undisturbed to cook some more. Found them at Lowe's and some other chain stores for $150, made in Tennessee. Hickory smoked Striper fillets are heavenly even months later using the vacuum bag system. If you know that the vacuum cryovaced package is going to need to last long periods of time then just double seal the ends. I always use the rolls of cryovac rather than a precut bag and the resealing of a previously used bag has worked perfect for me. I need to go buy a second freezer now 'cause my other half is taking advantage of all the seasonal meat sales she can find as she knows the vacuum bag deal really works.
She drug in some whole pork loins last week to be smoked and cryovaced, found them on a sale at $1.59 lb. Next years vension is already being planned for and the neghbors ain't gettin' none of it!! LOL!!Ron