How about we cut up our own big game animal this year?  It would save at least $50 and we would be sure we got all the meat we could off the animal.  There would be no doubt as to whether that butcher at the local shop ripped us off of half our meat either.  OK!  Let’s do it.

But I don’t have a clue as to where to start.  Well, first off you need to go out and get you a game animal…LEGALLY!  No poaching!  Meat from a poached animal will be tough, gamey and cause you all sorts of intestinal problems so rightfully deserved.

Alright then.  We have ourselves a deer or an elk or a moose or a buffalo or a big horn sheep or a mountain goat or an antelope….whatever.  We will have to take good care of it in the field if this cutting up our own animal is going to work in our favor.  Field dress the animal as quickly as possible.  If the weather is warm, get that hide off of it fast!  Warm weather hunting causes a lot of lost game meat.  Once the animal dies, it’s internal temperature rises drastically and you need to cool that meat as quickly as you can.  Get that hide off of it!  Cut the meat off the bones and put it in bags in an ice chest with ice to cool as quickly as you can.

If you are lucky enough to be hunting when it is cool or even cold outside, you can leave the hide on the animal and hang it for several days to cool down and begin to age.  Aged meat is tender meat.  Did you know that aging meat is actually allowing the natural process of decaying to begin?

Now we have our animal either hanging up or in bags in the cooler.  When we get home we need to clear an area large enough to handle 1/4th of the animal at a time.  In the case of large game like elk and moose, we might be handling portions much less than 1/4th, say 1/8th.  At any rate we need space.  Space enough for the meat, space enough for the meat we are cutting off the bone and we need space to wrap the meat up.  So for most of us that would be pretty much an entire garage or kitchen and dining room table.

Suggestion:  Make sure it is alright with the spouse before you set things up in the kitchen.  Female spouses are more likely to give you a real headache if they are not involved with the decision to cut up your own game meat.  Especially if it involves the kitchen.  And I might suggest, don’t use that classy dining room table with the scroll work legs.  Find yourself a sheet of plywood  to do the work on.  A one time expense that you can use year after year.

Now we skin the animal or take out a bag of meat from the cooler.  The bags of meat in the coolers have already been removed from the animals bones and so you just have to start cutting and piling up the meat.  Sounds simple huh?  Well there is a bit more to it than that.  So pay attention here.

Let’s say we begin with a front shoulder portion of our animal.  This is most likely where you will begin anyway, as the animal is probably hanging from its back legs out in the shed.  The animal is skinned and we can easily see the front shoulders.  Cut the leg off by beginning between the leg and the rib cage.  Front shoulders have no connecting bones between the leg and the main body of the animal, only muscles.  You will  learn a lot about the animals anatomy doing your own cutting.  Once removed from the main body, don’t let it touch the ground, carry it into the cutting area and lay it on the plywood.

AHHH!  A leg of animal lies before us!  What a wonderful sight.  Food for the winter and quite possibly into next seasons hunt.  The task before you only requires some basic tools, one being a sharp knife.  Nothing special is needed but if you have one available, get your fillet knife out for most of the work.  But if you don’t, you can get the job done with your hunting knife.

Remove all of the meat from the bones and make a pile of pure meat.  Toss the bones to the dogs or into a trash bag.  Now, you must make a decision.  You can continue to go out to the shed and cut more portions off the animal at this time, or you can cut up the pile of meat you have before you and wrap it up and put it in the freezer.  Your choice.  As for this writing I will continue to explain what you are to do with the pile of meat and you determine how high that pile will be before you start to cut it up into smaller pieces for packaging.

So, before us is a pile of meat from the front shoulder of our animal.  I like to make three piles out of my meat.  One pile is called “Steak”.  One pile is called “Chops” and the third pile is called “Jerky Meat”.  Let me define each:  “Steak”, there is no negative thoughts when you open up the freezer to take out some meat and you see the word “steak” written on the package.  You visualize a hot, juicy T-bone laying on a plate next to a baked potato with sour cream, chives and butter steaming up and next to that a fresh batch of cooked asparagus.  MMMMMM.  “Steak”!  And so it is with your freshly cut meat.  If it is large enough to be classified as “steak”, then so be it.  Put it in the pile you designate as “steak”.  You decide!  “Chops”!  Chops by my definition are small steaks.  I will however take the “backstrap” (I’ll explain that in a bit), and those whole pieces of meat will be cut into “Chops”.  But to that pile will be thrown pieces of meat too small to qualify as steaks.  “Jerky”, all the rest of the meat!  Pretty simple isn’t it?  The best of it all is “YOU DECIDE” what the meat is going to be called and if the decision is so tough as to not be able to make, toss it in the jerky pile.  You won’t be disappointed.  You do know there is the Bears Butt Jerky Recipe in the “Recipes” section of this blog?  So you have total control.

To cut up the pile I like to follow the natural joining of the muscles and cut each one out.  If I have a muscle that is relatively large, I will cut across the grain of the meat in 3/4 inch slices.  If the slice ends up as large or nearly as large as my palm, it goes in the steak pile.  Smaller into the chops and smaller yet goes to jerky.  Each quarter of the animal will have some of each meat type.  More steaks on the hind quarters.  More jerky on the front quarters.  Seasons of cutting up your own game animals will show you exactly what I mean.

Another good thing about doing this yourself is no matter what the cut of meat looks like, it is your creation and it will taste very good.  Don’t expect to get cuts that look like the butcher shop in the store.  They cut through the bones to get their t-bones and rib steaks.  You have omitted the bones from this equation and for a good reason too.  The marrow in the game meats will cause the meat to taste gamey way before its time and nobody likes bone shavings in their meats.  Don’t expect the marbled fat like a good old T-bone has either because game meat fat needs to be trimmed entirely off.  Fat too makes your game meat taint before it’s time and give it a nasty gamey taste.  Cut it all off!

While you are having such a good time cutting up your meat and making the calls as to the pile the cuts are going into, pay close attention to the animal hair that may be on the meat from skinning it.  You want your finally packaged meat to be “PAN READY” when you wrap it up.  By “Pan Ready”, I mean when you thaw it out, it is ready to be fried, broiled or whatever and no more preparation work needs to be done to it.  No picking out hair, or trimming off crusty dried meat, or fat or anything.  It is ready for the pan!  Got it?  Good!

See, this is easy isn’t it.  Skin.  Cut big chunks off the carcass.  Cut the meat from the bones and make a big pile.  Cut the pile down and sort it into three piles.  Junk goes in the trash and good meat is on the table ready to be wrapped and frozen.  Steaks, Chops and Jerky!  This works for all four of the quarters of the animal…any big game animal.

Now let’s talk about those backstraps.  Along side the backbone of our big game animal from just forward (toward the head) of the rear quarters and extending up the backbone to about mid front shoulders are two very large (relatively speaking) muscles.  One on each side of the backbone.  Using your sharpest and thinnest knife, work your way down alongside the backbone.  Cut until you feel the knife tip hitting bones that are down to the animals inside cavity.  Your thin bladed knife should begin to bend and follow those bones out to the side of the animal.  Work these muscles slowly and deliberately from one end to the other and you will end up with two long, almost round pieces of meat.  These pieces of meat are what I cut into 3/4 inch thick slices, across the length and call “chops”.  Toward the shoulder end I usually toss the last 6 inches into the jerky pile.

Now, while we are cutting away at the carcass of the animal.  We have removed all 4 quarters and the backstraps but we still have the rib cage.  There is a whole lot of meat on the rib cage that is good for jerky.  Some folks will cut the ribs out and cook them like beef or pork ribs and I have tried them and they are very good.  But you can’t freeze them as they take up way to much freezer space.  At least in my opinion and besides you are freezing bones and you know what I said about bones in game meat.  I would rather cut the meat out and off for jerky.  Cut all of the meat you can get off the ribs and you will be surprised at how much meat there actually is.

Well you are almost done.  The carcass should be all in the garbage can by now, or the dogs are scattering the bones all over the yard and the magpies are gathering and picking at the little meat that is left or all three things are and have been taking place.

Let’s wrap those piles up.  You will have to purchase some “freezer wrapping paper” up from the local butcher or grocery store and some freezer tape (masking tape will work too).  Some of the big discount warehouse stores carry large rolls of the stuff.  Smaller stores carry it in 25 and 50 foot rolls, sometimes even 75 foot rolls.  At any rate you will need some of this paper.  It has a thin layer of plastic on the inside of it and this makes it work to help stop freezer burn.  Freezer burn?  That is what it is called when meat is in the freezer and cold air can get to it.  It actually turns the meat dark and dries it out.  When you go to cook the meat it’s best to cut that portion off and throw it away.  That is why you want to protect the meat all you can so you don’t lose a bunch of good meat.

To almost guarantee you will not ever have freezer burn you can first wrap your cuts of meat in plastic wrap like Saran Wrap or some similar plastic wrap and then wrap once more in Freezer paper.  Or, double wrapping in the freezer paper will do the same thing.

I like to put enough pieces of meat in each package for a meal for me and my wife and a couple of extra pieces for the next day’s breakfast or quick snack.

Once wrapped, I mark the package with the type of meat (i.e. deer steak) and the year of harvest (i.e. 2011).  This holds true for both the steaks and the chops but the jerky meat is loaded up in as big a package as I can wrap and it usually ends up close to 5 pounds in size.  I will grind the jerky meat up at a later time and make my jerky.

This all might sound complicated, but it really is not.  A few basics and some practice and you will be cutting up all your big game meat.

Bears Butt

Sept. 2011