Meat grinder size suggestions

I worked one summer in a meat market and made sausage almost daily. Helpful things are plastic meat lugs, a foot switch for the grinder. We had a very large grinder. We would run the meat once, into the lug, mix the seasoning, and run a second time. This time it was cased. Soak the casing for 24 hours before use in water and put food grade mineral oil in a spray bottle to help with lubrication on the casing. The hardest thing was running the meat into the casing and not busting it open. Just a little practice and I was turning sausage out like crazy

Unless you're doing multiple deer at a time the .5 will grind faster than you will be able to feed it. I made sausage for the first time this year and there are lots of other things to spend the extra money on besides a bigger grinder. You won't notice any difference. Grinding is the easy part. Deboning, trimming, cubing, stuffing, bagging, and cleaning are what a deer processor gets paid for.

Really all you get with the larger grinders is the larger neck and allows you to put bigger cubes. The easiest part of grinding meat is cutting meat into smaller cubes.

My 1/2 hp with a #8 weston can eat deer faster than I can feed it. Takes longer to clean than grind even when doing a few deer.

Now if you were wanting to grind frozen stuff or bones then get some HP.