Catch, Butcher, and Preserve a Large Mammal - foraging.straw.mammal PEP BB

I caught a deer this past weekend during the annual gun deer season.  I butchered it in the garage, trimmed the meat in the kitchen, froze the steaks (9 lbs), ground the decentish looking meat (22 lbs) and canned the more sinewy meat as stew meat chunks (15 lbs).  The ground stuff was canned in two ways, half as chili and half as Italian sausage.

Preservation method is freezing in ziploc bags with water.

This hunting season I was super lucky and on opening day of crossbow I got a doe in the morning and a buck in the evening!!! I only hunt with a crossbow and went out many more times the rest of the season, but only saw deer on opening day. I field dressed the doe, but let my husband do the buck because it was dark. We skinned and quartered them together, but breaking them down further and processing them for long term storage was all me.

That night we had heart and eggs with home fries… my favorite part of getting a deer!

I cut everything into chunks except for a nice roast piece that I’ll save to make “corned beef” with for St. Patrick’s Day. While cutting I keep a big jar for all the small thin pieces to use for jerky. Since Christmas was coming I decided to make lots of jerky for gifts and ended up filling 3 gallon jars with it(before dehydrating).

I wanted to can more of the meat this year and decided to try pressure canning ground venison (new to me) as well as chunks. I did chunks with onion, garlic and Italian seasoning in quarts to save on lids.

When I grind venison I then mix it with ground beef in a 4:1 ratio. I then use that like I would ground beef/burgers. I took some of the ground venison and froze it in one pound packages. Then some I browned up most of the way and pressure canned it both plain and with my taco seasoning. I took 3 pounds of just ground venison and mixed it with one pound of ground pork and my Italian sausage seasoning; browned and canned that also.(this was new to me and I thought came out like sausage so happy to have found a way of stretching my ground pork)

All the backstrap/tenderloin was cut into steaks and split into one pound bags for the freezer. We keep the undamaged ribs for Bbq ribs in the pressure cooker, those got put in portions into saved potato bags, then bagged for the freezer.

I’m not crazy about liver, but cut them into 4oz portions to put into rice dishes (hopefully). Last but not least, I take the necks, which are very tallowy, and I put them in the slow cooker, bones and all ( be sure to remove the Esophagus), cover with water, add spices, brown sugar, mustard and cook 6-8 hours. Pull out of liquid, remove bones, pull apart with forks and add bbq sauce for awesome “pulled pork”.

Oh, I also save big fat pieces, put them in onion bags and hang them in the tree for the wild birds when it’s freezing out.

I got a call on Monday that an elk, who had been hit, had broken legs, but was still sitting on the side of the road. I worked with Fish & Game to be able to harvest this cow elk. I had help moving and hanging her, since I'm not strong enough on my own. Then I skinned, gutted, and quartered her. That took 2 days! I ground all the small meaty bits into sausage, and kept all the large meaty bits for jerky. We aren't much of a steak or roast family. That took 2 more days. FINALLY, I have a freezer full of elk! I'm so grateful for the meat, since I didn't fill my tag during the hunting season, and my family depends on the meat. We also kept the organs to eat, and made bone broth, and I'm also trying to tan the hide, which is new to me.  We used all we could of this blessing!