Time To Process Your Deer
Now that you've harvested your deer it’s time to get it skinned and ready to process. We like to skin our deer as soon after the kill. Its easier and helps cool down the animal. We've found no reason to hang deer for days after the kill. Venison processing is fun and easy so let’s get started with processing the harvest.
Tools For Processing
Here is the setup we used to process deer. We have affiliation with any of the companies that we use to process our deer. If you intend to process multiple deer at a time your going to want your table height at a comfortable height. 36 to 38 inches works great and the reason is so your not bent over cutting (saves on your back). Having a knife that is flexible and hold an edge is a must then trimming meat. A flexible knife also works great for removing silver skin from the meat. Another tool needed is a good steel to keep your knife sharp in between using a wet stone or electric sharpener. Good cutting boards like HDPE poly boards are also a must. These types of cutting boards are dishwasher safe and BPA free. You’ll need freezer paper for your cut meat like steaks, chops and roast. Vacuum sealer also work great and can give the meat a longer freezer time. Food safe lugs work great for putting meat in throughout the entire process. Lem makes plastic meat lug liners that make it so much easier to keep your meat clean and easy to transfer from lug to the refrigerator in between each process.
Adding Pork Fat When Making Sausage
When making bulk sausages we add some fat to the mix 80% venison to 20% pork fat. Pork butt works great if you can't find pork fat. We cut the pork into 2X2 inch pieces and freeze them until we grind.
Walton's Mix called “Willie's Snack Sticks” is easy a great tasting snack stick with just the right amount of heat. I used 70% trimmed venison and 30% pork butt to make 25lbs of sticks. I will defiantly make these sticks again.
1 package Willies Seasonings
1oz Sure Cure
6oz Sure Gel Meat Binder
4oz Encapsulated Citric Acid
19mm Collagen Casings
1 Quart Ice Cold Water
All of these products can be found on Walton's website- https://www.waltonsinc.com/
Here's a link to the complete process- https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/182/how-to-make-homemade-snack-sticks?lang=en-US
PS Seasonings Mix called “Garlic Summer Sausage” is easy to make and enclouds everything but the meat. I used 70% clean venison and 30% pork butt. I like to have my grind meat very cold to partly frozen. I mix by hand the venison and pork chunks together and then add the seasoning mixing again by hand. Now comes grind with a 3/8” plate and then regrind through a 1/8” plate. Mix the cure into 3 cups of water and add to meat mixture and work it in by hand until it become very sticky. I then placed the mixture in the refrigerator to keep cold. Soak the fibrous casings in warm water for 1 hour then gain off all the water and stuff.
Smoking process
Insert temperature probe into center of one stick. Put in smoker at 100°F for one hour. Turn heat up to 110°F and smoke four hours the turn the heat up to 165° and smoke until internal temperature reaches 148°(this can take hours to reach). Remove from smoke and place sticks into ice water for twenty minutes. Remove from ice water wipe of any excess water and place in refrigerator overnight. www.psseasoning.com
Grinding Venison and Pork with 3/8” grinding plate first time then second grind with 3/16” plate
Wisconsin is the brat capital of the world so when in Wisconsin we made brats. PS Seasoning is a company from Wisconsin and sells some of the best seasonings for brats you can buy. We made both Sheboygan style and Ball Park Brats using both venison and pork. I prefer to mix with more pork than venison because venison is so lean. Pork butt is a great choice and I cut some of the fat off, so the brats don’t get to fatty and flare up when grilling. These brats we mixed 70% lean pork with 30% venison. You may ask why so much pork and I say brats are traditionally all pork so that is why I like the 70/30 mix.
Check out PS Seasoning for direction to their brat seasonings and directions www.psseasoning.com
From rubs to sausage making PS seasoning has some great products for the home processor.
Lem has a full line of quality wild game processing equipment.
Legg's has great custom seasonings for the home wild game processor.
Walton's has everything needed to process your next deer. From grinder to smoking equipment Walton's offer great products to help you make your own snack sticks, summer sausage, jerky and more.
DipStix offers seasoning and rubs for grilling and smoking along with dip seasoning.