Processing deer yourself

Buy the book "charchuterie" off of Amazon. Great recipes. I'd reccomend a sausage stuffer as well. It's a pain in the arse putting meat in a casing with a grinder. Lem makes a ground meat packaging system that is cheap and easy to use as well. Small locations grocery stores that make their own sausage usually have casings. There is a small store near me that gives me all their pork fat trimmings for free if I call and ask them to hold them for me. I buy the butcher a 6 pack when I pick them up. I have a madterbuilt electric smoker and Amazin pellet tray to smoke the sausage. I also use the livers to make boudin.

Now that I have the process down from using the charchuterie book recipes I'm going to start making my own.

I make breakfast sausage with no links and summer sausage. I haven’t got into anything else. They make high temp cheese you can mix with your sausage so it’s all in one, but it’s expensive so I just eat it with sliced cheese. Have a skillet ready and just cook a little of the sausage as you mix it to taste. It won’t change a whole lot outside of maybe smoke flavor.

I have 3 bins probably about 3 gallons each when I process. 1 for trash (or dog treats), 1 for grind, and 1 for steaks/ roasts.

Cut all your meat for grinding into long skinny strips as the grinders pull it through easier. Then put it in the freezer for 10-20 minutes once you are done. Get your grinder ready and go to town. The key is long strips partially frozen and it will go a lot faster no matter the size of your grinder.

I have a jerky gun for ground meat also. It’s a lot easier for me to get ground jerky consistently all cooked the same and venison is way easier to chew when ground. A little more work but worth it IMO. Strip venison jerky is extremely chewy.

Outside of that, only process the cuts you will actually use. I make some packaged to give away like steaks and ground ready to eat and mark them that way. Roasts I will use I don’t trim first because it’s better to trim after it’s thawed as you’ll have less good meat harmed that way. I make a good bit of cubed meat roasts and package them that way because I eat a lot of stews and kabobs with venison.

Biggest problem, to me, is mixing the grind. Only thing I don't like doing. Like someone else said, once you mix, fried a little and taste and adjust until you like the taste.

I do everything but smoke my own sausage, and would love to do that if I had the time.

One thing I do, is freeze all of my trimmings/sausage meat in long flat bags. When its sausage time, the wrapper can be cut away and the meat can be cut into chunks with a cleaver or when slightly thawed a knife.

I take all of my sausage meat to a processor to season and smoke....in July or August when they aren't processing other deer, that way I know my sausage has MY deer in it.

When processing our deer for sausage, we separate each muscle and remove as much silver skin as we can. It can make a world of difference in the quality of your sausage.

cabelas .75hp carnivore grinder
Separate stuffer
Rebel butcher supply seasoning
Waltons pre-tubed natural casings (worth the extra money to me)
Offset wood smoker

Coarse Grind partially frozen deer and pork. Put into tubs and mix in seasoning. Grind through coarse plate again. Put into stuffer. Make your 1-1.5lb links (about 14-16 inches long) Tie ends of sausage casings to each other (so you can hang it on a dowel/rebar in the smoker) smoke @ 225 for 2hrs, but I mostly go off of look/feel. Pull off the smoker and let it cool to room temp. Cut them in half and pack 3 cut pieces into vacuum seal bags. I'm not saying it's the best way or the only way, just the way I do it. My favorite food in the world!
Casings
Seasoning
Grinder

I grind all my own meat but I only vacuum seal pure deer. I’ll mix it when I am about to cook it. Doesn’t make sense to me to mix it before I know what I’m going to do with it.