Butchering Questions

[Rifleman99]

This is the first attempt at butchering my own deer and I just had a few quick questions. First off, I wanted to get the deer skinned. I read a few different articles on people who skin it and let the meat hang and others who do it all at once. I'm in a bit of a time crunch this week with a lot of family coming over for the holiday so I skinned the deer last night. Did I make on big mistake by doing this? I have the deer hanging in my Garage and it keeps pretty cool in there. I was planning on cutting the meat off tonight because I'm a bit worried about the warmer temps coming in later tomorrow. Will it be ok in my barn for the day as long as it stays cool in there or should I play it safe and quarter it up?
Thanks in advance
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[andy capp]

I think it will be fine. I honestly do not skin it if I do not intend to cut it right away. My friend did it last year,the whole outside turned in to what I would consider jerky, due to being exposed to the air.

[Rifleman99]

I think i'm going to quarter it up and come back to packaging it on Friday. When I quarter it up, should I put it in something to keep the air away from it in fridge (like garbage bag or something)?

[gman12]

I did that last year myself and left it hang for 2 weeks, all of that , that was dried out had to be trimmed off. Just alot more work. I will leave the hide on next time.

[kroppe]

To save time, you can cut the leg at the knee, cut out the hip joint and wrap the hams and freeze them. I would want to cut, trim and slice the backstraps and tenderloins. The front quarters you can cut into shoulders, wrap and freeze. Same with the neck. This gives you 5 large pieces with bone in, plus the backstraps and loins. Saves most of the labor.

[TrekJeff]

Rifle,

You can easily skin, quarter and wrap in a garabage bag and store in your frig. If you don't wrap in a garbage bag you will tend to get a dried out film over the meat. This isn't really a bad thing, it can actually help when removing the connective tissue from your quarters. When you get to the point of steaking out the rear quarters one bit of advice is try to take the muscles off whole. You'll have about 4 different muscle segments in the thigh portion. A football, wide flat muscle and two or three smaller ones. The wide flat muscle will be the inside of the thigh. This will be the one that you cut into at the pelvic area when field dressing and it probably looks like crap, dried out. Don't worry about that meat that looks dried. It's only a thin layer of meat over the thicker roast. When I steak out that piece I just cut from the fresh side to the dry side, flip it over and the dry strips just go into the burger pile, leaving some nice looking steaks.

I just got done cutting up two deer from this past weekend. Life is good when the freezer is almost full:D