Try And Beat My Meat....I Dare You!

KT was curious about how I handled my meat.  She wanted to hear all the juicy details.  I have decided, at her urging to provide you all with the lurid reality of my meat.  I will warn you up front, this is not necessarily for the squeamish….so…I will now stroke to abandon (pen strokes….or keyboard strokes) for your reading pleasure.

I have told several stories about my youth.  My family history contains commercial fishermen, farmers and hunting.  The stories surrounding that history have generally followed the vein of “we did a, b and c and then we ate.”  In each of those stories there is an element that has been left out.  Not because I thought the reader would be offended (you can always not read), but because I thought it was mundane.  What follows will be a couple tales of processing….hopefully I won’t butcher them too bad!

The most common red meat I had growing up was venison.  We hunted white tail deer every fall during season and sometimes out of season when the freezer was empty.  The excitement of the hunt, the stories of the old timers and the simple joy of being in the woods on a brisk fall day are the best memories.  Processing the deer we harvested was also a time of fun, because while my brother and I did most of the work, we learned it from my Grandfather and Father.  We were not well off growing up, and the self sufficiency I learned from them is something I consider most important.

The butchering process is something, at least for venison, that I do not believe should be transferred to some meat locker.  I would hazard a guess, that most people who hunt do not process their own meat further than field dressing the animal.  I find this to be a bit disingenuous and disrespectful to hunting myself, but I guess, to each his own.

When my son was 12 and had successfully completed the local hunters safety course, it was time for his first hunt.  It was not really his first hunt, because he had been out with me on previous occasions, but it was his first hunt where he would be responsible to shoot an animal.  He was excited.  I remember my first hunt vividly and knew exactly how he felt.  A couple days before opening day, I took him back to the edge of our woods where our property line borders a large swampy area.  I showed him a cedar tree growing on the ridge overlooking the swamp and a small clearing that had a moss covered flat stone underneath it.  I explained to him that, on opening morning, that he and I would come out here and he would sit on the stone with his back to the tree and have a fine view of several well used deer trails.  I would be sitting about 100 yards to his north (until a kid is 16, an adult hunter must remain within earshot of him) in another spot.  I explained to him that the stone he was sitting on was a stone that I had slid up under the tree nearly 30 years before and that I had shot my first deer from that very spot.

Opening morning came and we were up before the sun and quietly sneaking out into the woods to find our spots.  We settled in and waited.  And waited….as the sky began to get light, we heard several distant gunshots indicating that others had had an opportunity that we were still waiting for.  To make a long story short, we saw nothing that morning.  We did hear some crashing in the underbrush of the swamp, but the deer were not in our sight (or our sites!).  We went in for lunch and my son did not want to go back out to the same spot.  “There are no deer there Dad!”  “Yes there are, you just need some patience,” I replied.  Patience is a hard thing for a 12 year old, but he knew that I would not relent and we returned to our spots.

Within about 30 minutes, I heard the roaring gunshot of my old Mossberg 12 guage which my son was hunting with.  I waited for a few minutes and then quietly got up and worked my way over to where he had been sitting.  He was not there.  I whistled quietly and he whistled back from down the ridge in the edge of the swamp.  I walked down the ridge and he was standing there absolutely beaming.  He had shot a very acceptable 6 point buck.  Not only had he shot it, he had shot it perfectly in the front shoulder and the deer only went probably 200ft from where it was hit to the point where it fell and died.

“No deer back here, eh?” I asked.  He just looked at me with a big smile.  “OK, time to dress the animal.” I told him.  But first we needed to drag it out to an opening that was not as muddy and wet.  This meant dragging it over some logs and through a bit of muddy ground, but once that was accomplished I told him, “get out your knife.”  We positioned the animal so that the head  was downward from the body and I had him slit the throat so that gravity could allow as much blood to flow out as possible.  Some people only slit the throat enough so as to open the jugular veins, but I like to slit the throat all the way back to the spinal column, though the windpipe and all.  Even though the animal is dead, blood will flow pretty heavily and this is important.  Next comes the field dressing.  My son had seen me do this several times, but had never actually participated, but this was his deer and his job to do.  Starting just below the solar plexus in the soft tissue of the upper belly, the point of the knife is inserted through the skin carefully so as not to pierce any organs and drawn down towards the groin so as to open the body cavity.  Once the pelvis is reached, the tip of the knife is used with a side to side prying action, being careful not to pierce the bladder or the bowel (although contrary to some belief, it is not the end of the world if you do because it can all be cleaned out).  The pelvis is split and a circular cut around the anus and other parts will allow you to grasp and pull the intestines out of the dear and then the rest of the organs can essentially be spilled out of the cavity and removed.  Some people reach up in the rib cage to remove the lungs, heart and attempt to pull the esophagus out of the animal.  I always split the rib cage and continue the cut up the neck to where it was slit after dispatching the deer.  Since the center of the rib cage is more cartilage than bone, the knife makes quick work.  Then all the lung material and lining can be easily removed, the esophagus pulls out easily and the heart can be placed in the plastic bag that you have been keeping in your pocket.  Once my son had the inside of the carcass emptied and scraped out, it was time to drag the deer back through the woods, across the field and to the farm house.  A short piece of rope made the job easier, but since the deer weighed probably 120 pounds dressed, I had to help my 12 year old son most of the way and finished pulling it by myself the last 1000 yards or so to the house.

Once we had the deer to the house, an old single tree (wagon hitch part) is used to help spread the deer open and hang it from a tree branch.  Small slits are made in the hind legs between the bone and tendon and a small piece of cord is looped through the slit and around the leg and hooked to the single tree (my grandfather called it a whipple tree) and the deer is hoisted up into the tree so that it is hanging head down.  Then a stick is wedged in the rib cage to further open the carcass.  Some people do not agree with washing out the inside of a deer with the hose, but I have always done it.  Now that the deer is hanging, depending on temperature, it will hang for probably 4 or 5 days before the next step.  This allows the natural enzymes and bacteria to begin to break down the meat a bit, making it much more tender and flavorful than had we cut it up right away.  Sometimes though, the temperature is too warm to allow the deer to hang for more than a day and you simply have to cut it up sooner.  If we had a walk in cooler, which we do not, we would hang our deer in there and age them all, but that is not how it works.  We sometimes, if it is rainy, hang the deer from the rafters of the barn.  While we are waiting for the deer to dry age, it is time for more hunting…and hopefully more deer.

Processing the deer is pretty straightforward and my son took this on without a problem with my direction and help.  Much as I had the same direction and help from my Father and Grandfather.  Once it has hung for as long as it needs to, we bring the deer into the garage where I have a nice table to work on.  The deer is rehung from the rafter the same as we hung it from the tree.  The hide is slit up all four legs and around the bottom of the hooves.  You have to be careful  not to slit the tendons that are being used to help the cord tied to the single tree.  Once the slits are made, using your fingers and then knife where necessary, you begin to carefully pull and peel the hide off the muscle.  Pulling down from the top, if done properly, the animal will peel like a banana with very little cutting except around the places you already opened up the carcass.  Once the hide is pulled down the neck to the base of the head, a meat saw (looks like a large hack saw) is used to cut off the head and you are left with a clean carcass.  If you have been careful in the skinning process, there will be very little hair to clean off the now cleaned carcass.  The meat saw is then used cut down the animal into two halves starting at the pelvis and perfectly splitting the backbone all the way down.  Once the deer is halved, the first half is taken down from hanging and put on the table.  At this point , I try and trim any blackened meat from the edges of the animal where we first dressed it and then using the knife and cleaver, I begin to cut the meat into its individualy cuts.  Chops, roasts and trim meat.  Usually one hind quarter will be frozen whole and once solid we will cut it into round steaks on the band saw.  I am always careful to remove any “silver skin” which is essentially the membrane that separates the muscles and allows them to move.  This is tough and chewy.  Many people completely bone the animal.  I think this takes away from cuts such as chops and steaks and leave the bone in.  I do generally bone the roasts though and of course the trim meat is exactly that…small pieces that have been trimmed off the bone or other cuts of meat during processing.  The individual cuts are then wrapped in butcher paper and put in the freezer.  Some goes into a Ziploc bag and is frozen and the last number of years I have used a vacuum bagger to package the meat for the freezer.  The trim meat is carefully cleaned and put into baggies and put in the freezer.  It will be used for stew in some cases, but personally, I like to use it all for summer sausage.

When I was a kid, and even early on that first year with my son, we ground our meat with an old hand crank grinder that clamped to the table.  The trim meat, which was frozen and ground better when it was fozen, was fed into the grinder and you cranked away.  We made our beef hamburger the same way and ground pork for sausage with it as well.  I have since bought an electric grinder.  A luxury that I kick myself for not buying sooner.

A few days after butchering the deer and freezing the trim meat, I got out the old grinder and the trim meat and several pounds of beef hamburger from the freezer.  It was time for my son and I to make summer sausage.  I buy the casings and the spice from a fellow who runs a meat locker south of me and I have found that even though my grandfather used to mix his own spice and cure, that this is not only easier, but much more consistent year to year.  The nice part about buying the spice and cure premixed is that he tells me how many pounds of meat it is good for and that means no calculation of how much salt peter, or sugar cure I need and how it affects the flavor of the spices.  I could do it, and have, but it is more tedius.  The right amount of cure is important because it prevents spoilage and keeps the meat an appetizing color!  It is even more important if you are dry curing a ham or other such.

The trim meat is fed into the grinder, mixing a bit of the hamburger in with it and it is ground once.  This is time consuming, even with the electric grinder that I use now.  Especially so with the hand crank grinder.  We spread the meat out on butcher paper on the table and sprinkle the spice mix on it evenly and then roll up the meat and begin putting balls of meat through the grinder again.  This not only insures a smooth texture, but mixes the spice and cure thoroughly through the meat.  Once the meat has been ground a second time, it is time to put the stuffing cone on the grinder.  I always leave the grinding plates in the grinder so the meat is being ground a third time at the same time as we are stuffing it into the casings.  Some do not do this because the stuffing process is easier without the plates causing restriction in the grinder.  The same process we use for summer sausage can be used for hotdogs and brats and other sausage and we have made each of those, but my favorite is summer sausage.  The difference is the spice, the size of the casing and the size of the stuffing cone on the grinder. 

The casing is slid over the cone and bunched up with  a closed end right at the end of the cone.  The grinder is then cranked, forcing the meat into the casing and the casing is held back on the cone with the hand in order to get the casing full and tight.  Once the end of the casing is reached, a piece of butcher’s twine secures the end and the sausage is set aside.  I think the year that my son got his first deer, between his and the other three deer we got that year, we made nineteen 24 inch summer sausages.  He and I were grinding and stuffing until around 2:30AM that night.  The next morning I started a fire in my smokehouse.  My smokehouse is an old refrigerator that I have taken all of the insides out of so that it is simply a metal shell.  I have a fireplace grate in the bottom of it and I start a fire with dry apple or maple and then cover it in green chips that have been soaking in water for a couple days.  We carefully hang the summer sausages from nails in boards that span the top of the smoker using the butcher’s twine that we tied the top of the sausage with.  The smoking process takes about 10 hours and requires constant monitoring so that the temperature does not get too hot and the fire does not go out.  I like to try and keep the temperature in the smoker around 170 to 180 degrees F.  Once the sausage reaches an internal temperature of around 160, which takes a long time, I will put more wet chips on the fire and let the temperature drop and dry smoke for probably another hour or so.  The summer sausage is removed from the smoker and allowed to cool before wrapping it and freezing it.  We could keep it in the fridge, but it keeps much better frozen.  At least two sticks are left in the fridge and one, we cut into while it is still warm…there is nothing quite like it….

After we made our batch of summer sausage, my son and I took a stick and went to one of the local taverns.  It was late Sunday afternoon.  We brought the sausage in and sliced it up and shared with a bunch of friends who raved over it.  I said to my son, “making it was a lot of work, but now that you see everyone here enjoying it and wanting more it makes it worthwhile, right?”  He replied, “I don’t know Dad, all that grinding and stuffing was really a pain!”  Everyone in the tavern laughed.

We have cattle and hogs and have in the past had goats and sheep. We have butchered all of these animals and the process is much the same.  The animals we raise live a pampered life right up to the end and we appreciate what they provide.  The hogs and beef that we sell to others are hauled and processed at an inspected facility, because that is how it has to be done.  Usually, we process our own hogs and have done cattle as well, but I have found that cattle are just too big to deal with in my garage and usually I will pay the locker to process them for me.

My mother’s favorite meal is leg of lamb.  Cooked with garlic and rosemary, there is nothing that smells quite as good as walking into the house when she is cooking one.  When we started this goofy farming thing, I would raise a couple lambs every year and butcher, pack and freeze an entire lamb and give it to her for her birthday.  One year our ram did not do his job and we did not have any lambs!  I did however have a kid goat that was about 8 months old and, swearing my son to secrecy, the two of us dispatched him and butchered him.  Goats and sheep are only a couple chromosomes apart and actually can cross breed.  It is not a common thing, but it does occur.  In any case, we brought the packaged and frozen kid goat to my mother and passed him off as the yearly lamb birthday present.  Her birthday is always close to Easter, so she invited everyone over for leg of lamb for Easter Dinner.  My sister’s family was there, my family was there and the meal was delicious.  Everyone said it was the best lamb they had ever had.  My son and I were the only ones who knew the truth.  After the meal, when everyone was relaxing, I asked, “can anyone tell me what we really ate today?”  Everyone looked at me puzzled and my son started laughing.  My father looked down his nose at me and said, “You son of a bitch, you served us goat didn’t you!”  I laughed and said, “Yes!”  My mother thought about it a bit and said, “you can bring me kid goat any time.”  Goat is the largest consumed meat in the world and the fastest growing meat source in the United States…and it is delicious!

I hope these little tales have satisfied KT’s curiosity about my meat.  It is a bit different for us having raised or harvested most of what we consume and quite frankly it is a nice convenience to simply go out to the freezer for a pound of hamburger.  If I do say so myself, you can’t beat my meat!