Whats the best thing to do with deer meat?

My family always butchered it ourselves.

You can cut it up into steaks, just like any other large mammal. We always used a portion of the meat for jerky, as well. The heart makes REALLY good jerky.

...I've butchered many of my own deer, and in the last few years, I've farmed the job out to deer coolers. Butchering your own deer is certainly more fulfilling, and is the only absolute guarantee that you get YOUR animals savory cuts!
....Here in Georgia the average going rate to cut and package the animal for you is running around 60 dollars at most coolers, just a few years ago it would have been 40 dollars.
.....If you opt to butcher your own deer, read as much as possible on it first. It is NOT simply carving the beast into chunks, at least not if you want quality eating to be rendered at the table. Knowing how the muscles lie, how the cuts should be made in relation to those muscles, and to the grain of thier growth, all is important to the final quality of your cuts of meat. Even how tender and flavorful your cuts will be with proper cooking, is influenced by proper cutting.

how to you prepare that heart for jerky, ie soaking marinating etc

I have my butchered. Last year it was just under ninety bucks.
I get as many steaks, and chops as he can get, a couple of roasts, and the rest is ground with 25% pork.

I butcher them myself....get a book on butchering, it will have all the info you need to know.

There is a local guy here who will skin,gut and make the meat up for $40.I usually have it ground and mixed with about 20% beef fat because it has so many uses.Burger ,spaghetti,tacos,etc.You really need to let it hang in a cooler for 4 or 5 days to make it the best it can be.I have made up a bunch myself and put them on ice for a few days.But,for $40 dollars I would just as soon let somebody else do it.

how to you prepare that heart for jerky, ie soaking marinating etc

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Well, I haven't done it before. Last time I had time to hunt deer was when I was 14 (about 7 years ago), and then my father cooked the jerky. From what I remember he cuts the meat into thin 1" wide strips that are about 4-5" long, then makes a marinade and soaks the meat for several hours, possibly as long as eight or so hours. Then he puts them in a smoker, and cooks them for about a day. If done right, ti should come out fairly tender and flavorful. I don't think I've ever tasted any commercially made jerky that even holds a candle to it.

I butcher the deer myself, my loving bride agreed to get a meat grinder for her Kitchenaide mixer, and I make my own burger and caseless summer sausage. Good way to get exactly what you want from your carcass. around here, butchering can cost an arm and a leg, they want you to agree to choice A, B or C for the meat.
As far as how to, check your local library, they should have a few books on the subject, failing that, most any book store will, or Gander Mountain, Bass Pro and Cabela's certianly will.
You really can't mess it up, the deer is already dead. Give it a try.

I butcher my own. I do a better job and never worry that I am not getting my deer. I was with a friend a few years ago that took his buck to a butcher located near where we hunted. When he got the processed meat from the butcher, he recieved a heart and liver...he left his buck's heart and liver in the gut pile! Best case, he got another deers heart and liver. Worse, another species of heart and liver. I am sure that most shops will not ever have this problem, but it soured him on having meat butched and made me happy I have always done my own. The meat that have been given that was done at a shop also did not taste quite as good. I believe it is because of bone marrow that is on the meat when they cut bones. I cut all my meat boneless.

I've always done my own. I keep the backstraps intact; same with the inner tenders. I keep the hams for barbecue roasts.

The rest goes to deerburger. It makes the best spaghetti sauce I ever, ever threw a liplock on.

Recipes is for another thread.

Art

A good book on how to butcher a deer is More Than A Trophy by Dennis Walrod.

We've done our own and have also used these fine folks:

http://www.talkdeer.com/

They do great jerky, slim jims and bacon. Costs us about $100 per deer to get steaks, burger and other products.

Whether we do it ourselves or not, just depends on how many we get and time available. There is nothing, though, like coming home and having everything neatly wrapped and packaged to just throw in the freezer.

I've always done my own. I keep the backstraps intact; same with the inner tenders. I keep the hams for barbecue roasts.

The rest goes to deerburger. It makes the best spaghetti sauce I ever, ever threw a liplock on.

Recipes is for another thread.

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That pretty much sums it up for me, although I typically use 1/2 the grind meat for burger, the other half becomes venison sausage. My family loves venison sausage!

I cut up some of the rear hams into round steaks to pound thin flour and fry. Then serve with brown gravy!

What Art and Charles said.

I use to have mine cut up by a butcher, but for the last 4 years or so I have cut my own deer meat up. When I cut it up I know how it was handled and not thrown around with some filth at the meat cutters place. I leave some of the hams in large form for roast. I slice some for steaks and the small left overs is the stew meat. I vaccum seal all my deer meat and it last a long time in the freezer. Killing deer is easy, its after they hit the ground is when the work starts. I have spent hours cutting up deer meat but it is worth it. I can't wait til opening day, because I am out of deer meat. Man I can taste those steaks now.

I've always cut up my own deer, actually Dad and me do the butchering together. Not because we're cheap, but rather it's a labor of love, so to speak. After what I saw at a deer processer last year, I will never take a deer into one of those places.

I'm a refrigeration mechanic by trade, and I was called to a processer for a refrigeration problem. The place was clean, the equipment was newer, but the guy straight out told me, you don't always get your deer back. They weigh your carcass on the way in.... you get a percentage of that weight back.. might be some of your deer, but not always. Then he tries to give me some loin steaks right off the cutting line, with no regards to whose deer it was. I politely declined.

So no matter how careful you are with your kill from the time it hits the griound to when it gets to the processer, it might not do any good.

My family and I have been killing deer for a long, long time. So most of the local butchers who use to cut up our deer have either died or retired. There are still a few around, but I don't know them personally and wouldn't trust them to take care of our venison right. Then there are those massive meat cutting operations where they take in hundreds of deer every year. All the venison those guys butcher goes into large bins and the meat the hunter gets back is based on a percentage of the weight of the animal he or she brought in - you take your deer to those guys and you get back meat from Joe's, Fred's, Barb's and Kathy's deer. You might get some of your own if you're lucky.
Consequently, we've been butchering our own for the past ten years or so. It's not that difficult, especially if you get yourself a good meat grinder. Our's is the KitchedAid one that attaches to our big mixer - we got a coupon for a free attachment when we bought the mixer. It works great!
Mostly we cut our venison into steaks and chops. The backstraps are kept separate of course, and we save a couple of packages of stew meat rather than grind it into burger. We're not fond of venison roast, so we cut very few of them. However, a couple of deer bones with a little meat left on them to simmer all day in a pot of pinto beans is hard to beat. And my wife's chicken fried venison steak with biscuits and gravy is like the 30-06 of meals - if you ever have it for dinner, every meal you have from then on you'll compare to that one. As Art Eatman said, recipes are for another thread.
We absolutely do not add beef suet or fillers of any kind to our venison burger. We didn't even let the butchers do that when we use to take our deer to them to cut up. Instead, what we do now is the same as we did then - we package the pure venison burger in one pound packages and we buy the cheapest beef burger we can find. The beef burger we buy is the 70/30 stuff I think, and it comes in 5lb "chubs." We divide those "chubs" up into 1lb packages and freeze them. Then when we make a meal which requires burger, we get a pound of venison burger out of the freezer plus a pound of cheap beef burger, thaw them, and mix them together. We mght use one pound of the mixed meat for burgers one night and a couple of nights later use the other pound for spaghetti. Or if our daughter, our son-in-law and our three grandsons are coming for dinner, two pounds of burger might feed us if we have some side dishes.

Backstraps are prime cuts for grilling.

Hams are cut into roundsteaks

Shoulders and neck meat is sliced thin for steak um style sandwiches.

Rib meat including the brisket is used for jerkey.

Scraps are ground with a little bit of beef suet for burger.

From day 1 I've always processed my own deer n hogs. I always de-bone and never cut into a bone for any reason. I detach the hams n shoulders at the joint.

We have always done our own. Back straps are butterflied and 90% to 100% of the rest is deerburger, depending on what the girls want. We grind with a Bosch I think is the name, grinder, adding 10% or less beef suet for dryness, and wrap it all too. Mmmmgood stuff.