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Butchering

Redhunter1012

Senior Member
Supporting Member
I know quite a few of us take care of our own deer. I was wondering if anyone else does other critters. I help my nephews butcher chickens occasionally. Tonight I'm getting a Hog off a former co-worker for $125. We have to shoot him and bring him home. Probably skin him tonight and pack with some ice and butcher tomorrow. The hog is about 300 lbs, so i should get close to 140 lbs of meat. With vacuum bags figured in, I will have about $160 invested. If I have time, I want to scald and scrape the head, and put it in my big smoker all day Friday. It's homecoming night at our school down the road so I think it would be cool to take a whole hogs head to the tailgate. This will be probably a dozen or so hogs I've butchered since I bought this house in 2005. It's a little bit of work, but the sheer amount of meat for the money is crazy, and I love to do it. Plus I just hate buying meat from grocery stores if possible
 

Beentown

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
15,740
154
Sunbury, OH
I do pigs often. It surely pays off. That is a great price BTW.

My latest but not butchered.



Me on the right.
 

giles

Cull buck specialist
Supporting Member
BTW, plenty of recipes online. Pick one with the spices you like or make some mixes of you own. I prefer to make some spicy for myself and just plain salt and pepper for the kids.
 

Redhunter1012

Senior Member
Supporting Member
Yea, the price is excellent. He is actually only asking $150 for them from regular customers, but always gives me a good price. My wife's parents are going 50/50 with me, so I cant do any spices really, since they basically use my freezer too, and they are giant vaginas about anything they eat. . I do some small batches of sausage patties with seasoning though. I then use a 1/3 measuring cup for a scoop of meat, put between 2 wax papers on a small pie plate, then press with another and freeze them on cookie sheets before stacking and bagging them. One of our treats while butchering is when we remove the backstraps and ribs, I season the spine with cajun seasoning and throw in the smoker for a couple hours. Then we just pick all the small morsels off, and damn, what a treat. I do like to keep the hocks, and ankles too for smoking then using in bean soup.
 

Redhunter1012

Senior Member
Supporting Member
Butchering a hog isnt any different than a deer for the most part, unless you want to scald them to keep the skin. If your just after meat, it is the same as long as you understand the different cuts. One benefit I didn't mention is I get to keep some fat for adding to deer burger later in the year if I want.
 

giles

Cull buck specialist
Supporting Member
Butchering a hog isnt any different than a deer for the most part, unless you want to scald them to keep the skin. If your just after meat, it is the same as long as you understand the different cuts. One benefit I didn't mention is I get to keep some fat for adding to deer burger later in the year if I want.

That is something we do as well. We keep a couple of bags of pig fat to add to our deer logs and such.
 

giles

Cull buck specialist
Supporting Member
dont you just need a pot of hot grease and a strainer?

I don't see why I couldn't use my turkey frier...hmmmm, honestly never thought about it. My uncle in TX has a big cast iron witches pot that he would build a fire around and did it that way. I'll have to look into it, that's some good eats!
 

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
48,879
274
Appalachia
Besides the wild game I bring home, my wife's family still gathers to butcher chickens, beef and hogs in community fashion. We buy right off the farm, then have a duty to help with the butchering. They have a great facility for it, which really makes it nice. When we did our hog, there were 60 people there and we did 24 hogs in 7 hours.
 

Dustinb80

#FACKCANCER
Supporting Member
18,172
187
S.W. Ohio
Many hands make light work. I would love to see something like that in action in person. I've watched a couple videos of events like that.
 

Redhunter1012

Senior Member
Supporting Member
Besides the wild game I bring home, my wife's family still gathers to butcher chickens, beef and hogs in community fashion. We buy right off the farm, then have a duty to help with the butchering. They have a great facility for it, which really makes it nice. When we did our hog, there were 60 people there and we did 24 hogs in 7 hours.
Ho Lee Shit Dude! Thats a ton of pork. The biggest butchering party I can remember for us was about 10 of us doing about 10 deer in a 12 hour period. 3 of those were big bucks that had to be caped. Makes for a great nights sleep. I'm taking a 20 minute break right now since I'm going solo. Started at 8:15 a.m. and all thats left hanging are the back legs. Everything else is seperated into roast's 2 backstraps, 4 strips of baby back ribs, and meat for grinding. I figure another hour to get the roast's off the back legs then everything else will be done in the kitchen
 

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
48,879
274
Appalachia
Hogs once a year in the spring. Beef twice. Chickens as needed and is a much smaller gathering. They have industrial meat packing equipment and a cooler. One room for breaking the hog down, one to make all the sausage, links, patties, etc. and another to package. There's a big feed with fresh head cheese, liber and onions, brains (tasty as fugg) and other fresh items. It's a good time. Usually start with a plate of brains and a Busch Light, then I take my place at the table where we break down stuff for grinding. I just drink beer, shoot the shit and chunk up meat...
 

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
48,879
274
Appalachia
My wife is from a tight knit German Catholic family. He grandmother was one of 18 kids and one of her sisters had 18 kids. The sister that had 18, her family leads the charge from raising to butchering. It's been going on for generations. I feel privileged to be part of it. They welcomed me with open arms when they saw I could drink beer, butcher and not get hurt! lmao