Last of the winter meat

[Chip Euliss]

Son decided to wait till near the end of the archery season to harvest his deer.  It was -2F when he shot it and -4F when we skinned it!!  All done for the year except removing a few coyotes.  Our last deer of the year with my daughter, granddaughter and son.  Now, I just wish I was a master smoker like Idee   Bees didn't fly yesterday or today either

[iddee]

Nice looking family. Good buck, too. I can't take credit for the smoking. My son does all of it. I just reap the benefits. 

[Chip Euliss]

Sounds like a good son Iddee.  My wife smokes yellowfin tuna from our summer trips and it is to die for!  About all I do well at smoking are my bees

[lazy shooter]

I love smoked meat, but like others on this site, smoking is not one of my talents.  My old lady Mexican friend smokes sausage and jerky for me. 

That is a big bodied deer.  What will a deer like that weigh field dressed?  Was it taken with a bow?  And, yes, you do have a beautiful family.  I'm sure you are like me, and that your family is the most valuable thing that you have.

[Chip Euliss]

We didn't weight him since it was so cold but he was a 2 1/2 year old deer and was probably close to 200 lbs live weight.  Here's one the wife shot last year that was 3 1/2 and he weighed 265 lbs on the scale.  We do have big-bodied deer so I'm grateful we have a tractor to haul them home

[lazy shooter]

The big deer your wife shot is about twice as big as our deer.  I'm guessing the deer my grandson shot to be in the 140 to 150 pound range.  That's about as big as our deer get.  Every year someone shoots a 175 pound deer in our county, but that is the exception.  Almost all of our bucks are in the 120 to 140 or 150 range.  That big buck would make my venison requirements for the year.

[Chip Euliss]

Still a nice-sized deer.  I was in California for about 15 years and the blacktail deer there were smaller than our fawns.  Not as fat either so easy to process.  Our deer get really fat and it takes forever to trim it all off.

[iddee]

You're making me feel bad. I've never weighed a deer. I just carry them to the hanger and dress them out.
I can tell you a big one will give about 40 lbs. of deboned meat. Yours are likely that big when they are born.

[Chip Euliss]

It's been over 40 years since I shot a deer in NC Iddee but I do remember they were small bodied and very lean.  Our deer typically have 2-3 inches of fat between the hide and the skin in November.  The one Ned shot last weekend wasn't quite as fat but probably normal for a post-rut buck here.  The deer here are heavy and tough to drag.  I'm fortunate that we have our own place and hunt right here.  Our old John Deere has a bucket and we call him the "Green Hearse" during deer season.  We put a 300# scale on a rope attached to the antlers to weight Betty's deer last year on the forklift.  The largest before that was a field dressed buck that weighed 225lbs after hanging 8 days!

[iddee]

Yes, little or no fat on them. You hang one for 8 days here and it would be rotted away. We skin them within 3 to 4 hours and pack them on ice. Cut them up in 3 to 7 days.

[Chip Euliss]

We skinned the last one quick.  Hung it for a couple of hours and the lower part of the legs still froze solid.  Put him in a heated garage overnight at about 40 and processed the next day.  We usually get them when the weather is a little more moderate.

[riverbee]

that's a nice buck chip.
we recently ran out of beef, our order for another side of beef won't come until mid january. we did have some venison left, very little, but gun deer season came and two of our hunters provided us with vennison in the freezer......harvested does for us, at our request....not bucks.  i do not care for bucks unless as fat as chip's.........and then.......hamburger, jerky, etc......the deal is they hunt for their buck but harvest a doe.  guess growing up in montana and eating what my father harvested left me thinking otherwise...........big bucks, big racks, and tough meat............

anyway, one of the bucks one of our hunters harvested..........in wisconsin, this is an unusual nice buck and was a big boy all around..........

[Chip Euliss]

That's a dandy but I'd guess he would wind up as ground venison.  Our bucks are good table fare till they get older than 4 1/2 but even the older ones are good ground.  I got one 5-6 years ago that was 6 1/2+ and even the backstraps were tough!!

[caesarsfish]

Our deer here in Al. are smaller but you can kill all that you need of either sex.  I had to clean a big doe after dark the other night with a flashlight because it was in the 60's.  I usually grind up the whole deer (except the loin) into deer burger.  Our local butcher has real hamburger (not like the plastic from WalMart) and I use ten pounds of beef burger mixed with 40 pounds of deer meat and the deer burgers are perfect,  juicy, do not fall apart on the grill and do not shrink.  My wife loves the meat this way and she has many ways of cooking it.  We go thru about 200 lbs. of deer meat each year.

[brooksbeefarm]

Didn't go deer hunting this year, but could kill one from the house if i wanted one, We like beef better. This is the first time in many years that our son didn't kill a deer with his bow or rifle? He hunted where i had the logging done and had put a game camera that showed two different 10 point bucks checking there rut. This was after the logging was done, but it might have spooked them? He did knock one down with the front end of his truck going home , but it got up and run off. Jack

[Chip Euliss]

He did knock one down with the front end of his truck going home , but it got up and run off. Jack

Ouch!!!

[lazy shooter]

Our deer must be about the same size as Iddee's.  I weighed the boned out meat from a mature doe a couple of years back.  She produced 37 pounds of boned out meat.  All of the fat and white film had been removed.  Our good sized doe's dress field (gutted and legs off at the knees) dress about 110 pounds.  We too, have very lean deer. 

I dressed out one doe this year strictly for sausage.  I have found another sausage maker and I want some summer sausage with cheese and jalapeños in it and some German link sausage.  I love sausage.