I know we’re out of season, but this seemed to be a good topic. Butchering applies to all animals, and whether you’re taking something small or large, there’s a level of skill to getting it done. The video is self explanatory, and it’s pretty good. I learned things watching it, and I hope you do, too.
I wanted to talk about butchering in general, though, for those who may not want to sit through an hour long video (though I do recommend doing so when you have time, it’s VERY good). In my very strong opinion, the hardest part about harvesting an animal is killing it. Once the animal is dead, it doesn’t really matter what you do to the body. It’s not going to complain or suffer in any way. So if you can shoot or otherwise dispatch the animal, know that the butchering can go as slow as needed and no one’s going to judge you for your cuts.
The purpose of butchering is to get the meat off the animal and into usable pieces. When you’re talking about large game like deer, elk, moose, bear, and the like, you will be dealing with parts rather than a whole animal. Like in the video, your butchering will consist of taking pieces off the larger carcass, and then preparing them for freezing or otherwise preserving them for long-term storage. Smaller animals like chickens, ducks, geese, possum, squirrel, etc. are small enough to allow you to work with the whole animal, and so the process is slightly different. You can prepare the entire carcass for freezing or preserving, which can be easier (but occasionally is more tedious).
The first order of business with any animal is to remove the guts, the viscera. Generally speaking, this involves opening the stomach cavity from the anus to the ribs, and then carefully pulling everything out. In larger animals this is pretty easy except for the first cuts. I always worry I’m going to puncture something when I’m cutting around the anus, and you don’t want that because you don’t want fecal matter in what’s going to be your food. Basically, you have one long connected tube (or more correctly, set of tubes) that go from mouth to ass, and you need to remove it all. There are internal organs that can be eaten, like the heart, liver, and kidneys. Technically, brain is also edible, as well as other stuff, but the other areas are very much filters for all sorts of things. Liver and kidneys, while filters, aren’t likely to pass anything on to you (especially after both freezing and cooking), but I always avoid the brain, lungs, and other stuff. The sole exception to this is that you can use the large intestines of some animals to make sausage casing (generally you would use pig, but technically any large animal intestine will do), but it requires a lot of cleaning to make it safe. Hides on larger animals can be removed first or last, depending on how you’re storing it during processing.
With little animals, it’s much more of a “cut, pull, scoop” method, and you get everything out in one fell swoop. With smaller animals, you may want to remove the hide first, as it can usually be removed fairly easily by making cuts at the front and rear paws, and neck, and tail, then slowly pulling it away and removing it like a sweater. Hides can be kept and processed for use in lots of things.
Once the inside cavity is empty, you need to clean it. For larger animals, this might be nothing more than giving it a sluice with your hose or a bucket of water (and that’s okay because you’ll clean the pieces separately), and for small animals you can just rinse them in the sink. Be sure to have a strainer in your sink, because blood, hair, and lots of other things will come out of and off the carcass and you don’t necessarily want those going down your drain.
Now you’re at the point of dealing with the meat. For small animals, you may just want to wash and freeze the carcass, as is. I don’t see much point to trying to debone squirrels, for instance. For birds, you may want to quarter them or separate them into pieces (legs, thighs, breasts, and “carcass for soup”), or just leave them whole. There are tons of videos on how to process birds, so I’ll let you look those up yourself.
With the larger animals, you will process each piece separately. We usually hang our deer up a tree out back, and take a couple of days to process it. This keeps most of the mess out of the house, and allows the animal to be chill with fall or early winter air while we deal with it. You hang larger animals up by their hind legs, generally by putting a clamp or gambrel between the legs and hoisting them up to a good working level. When we’re processing deer, we will work with whatever’s lowest, and then move upward. It just makes life easier.
Don’t panic over getting every last bit of meat. The first few times, it’s not going to happen. Don’t beat yourself up. Carve off the larger pieces however you can, and process them in a place where you can stay clean and warm. Generally speaking, the “best” parts of larger animals are the backstrap and rump areas, and if you have the carcass strung up, you’ll be able to see how the meat attaches to the bone. Simply use a large knife and carefully and gently nick at the “silverskin” (a collagen based skin of sorts that holds stuff together inside animals) to remove as much of it as you can. Silverskin is something you want to remove as much of as you can, because it adds to the gamy flavor of meat, and it’s very tough. It can contract during cooking, and cause meat to curl or not cook well, too. You won’t get all of it off, but do your best.
Cut meat into pieces that are useful sizes. If you have a family of five, aim for two or three pound pieces or packages. If there’s only two of you, go for one pound packages. There’s no rule that roasts have to be huge, after all. You’re butchering this animal for yourself, so make sure to put it into a size that you can use and enjoy. Each piece of meat should be thoroughly rinsed and inspected before being set aside for preservation. Make sure there are no bullets, hair, blood, or dirt stuck to the meat. It should be ready to cook when you take it out of storage.
When you’ve gotten all the big pieces of meat off your carcass, you can use a saw to cut it into manageable sized pieces. Now the real work begins. There will be a ton of meat still left on the carcass, but in small bits and pieces. You can go in and take all that off. This is what gets mixed with beef or pork fat, and ground into “ground meat” for delicious tacos, meatloaf, and other ground meat meals.
When we take a deer, we tend to process about half of it into ground meat. We use ground meat in so many recipes, and it tastes very much like ground beef if you use beef fat when you make it. We use a hand grinder, which is tough but not impossible. I like it because I can get a real feel for the meat, and if there are bits of bone I missed, I can catch it before it messes up my grinder. Also, I don’t have to worry about grinding my fingers. There are charts online, but I like to do about 20% fat, 80% meat because deer is a very lean meat in general. Having fed it to my kids many times and straight faced told them it was beef, I can say that most people can’t tell the difference. Only do that with the ground meat, though.
Remember, the animal isn’t going to get upset if you don’t carve it right. You can watch videos and look at charts to get “proper” cuts of meat, but the end of the process is the same: meat in the freezer, or canned, or turned into jerky, or whatever you’re doing with it. It becomes meals. You’re not serving Gordon Ramsey, so if it isn’t cut quite right, who cares?
If you guys have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. I’m not an expert at this stuff, and my butchering isn’t all that pretty. But I do produce meat that tastes incredibly good, whether it’s from a large or small animal.
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