I usually take a little bit of meat down there to the place too, but it’s usually only around 20 lbs or so.So anyway, I know processors don’t have the time to clean up the meat the way I do. Some places do just the bare minimum and that’s it. The place my brother took his deer to must have been one of the places that does just the bare minimum.
I got my meat back from the processor and it was delicious as usual. I tasted some of my brother’s summer sausage and it had a wild, fatty, taste to it. The way I look at it, it’s his own fault for being too lazy to skin and debone his own deer!
As an example of why I process my own deer, I took some pictures of some of the stuff while I was working up the button that I got last weekend.
One of the hams from the button buck
A large section of fat off of the ham.
A gland of some sort that is inside the fat.
Some of the cleaned up roasts
Scraps, fat, membranes, etc that gets taken off and pitched.
Another gland from one of the shoulders.
The smaller scrap pieces of meat, cubed up and ready for grinding.
The ground meat
And of course, ya’ gotta have something to clean up any little scrap pieces of meat that may “happen” to make their way to the floor.
With the meat, I take my time and get virtually every spec of fat off of it, plus any little pieces of crud and hair that may have gotten on the meat while field dressing or skinning. After skinning and deboning, I’ll put the meat in a cooler with ice water and keep it soaking. Daily, I’ll drain the water, grab a piece or two out of the cooler to work up, and then ice back down and fill the cooler up with water again. The process will get repeated daily until I get everything done up. Soaking the meat out gets a lot of the blood out and, I think anyway, gives the meat a better taste.
Out of a deer, I’ll make roasts out of the bigger pieces of meat in the hams, and then there’s the backstrap and tenderloins. All of the scraps and smaller pieces of meat from this will get ground. The rib cage I’ll cut into sections about 8” wide and freeze like that (man they’re awesome on the grill!). The meat from the neck and shoulders I’ll clean up, but freeze it like it is and eventually take down to the processor to have made into summer sausage, salami, brats, hot links, etc. We’re not real big on deer steaks and usually get our fill of that with the backstrap. The roasts we cook as roasts or cut up into cubes for vegetable soup or other things. The burger……… spaghetti sauce, chili, tacos, mix with a little hamburger and make burgers, etc.
By doing my own processing of the main parts, it saves me about $100 at least, the meat is super clean of any fat/hair/crud, and I know I’ve got MY meat once it’s done. With the processor I take the little bit of stuff to for sausage and such, I reason I use that guy is that he guarantees that each customer gets only their meat back. I’ve tried making summer sausage and it’s not the best in the world. This guy is much better.
Ya’ll get yourselves a vacuum sealer, a grinder, and “roll your own” too!
big doe....should have gotten bout 45lbs meat from her, got my box of meat a few days later and it only had 18lbs in it 
....only time i ever had it done other then doing it myself out of 56 deer since 1982.........bob