Venison out the whazoo!

[AllenOK]

Thanks for all the tidbits of info! I was thinking about taking the shanks in to work, and using the bone saw we have to cut them up, but now, I'll just treat them like Osso Bucco without cutting them up.

I tried to make some venison sausage years ago. It didn't really work out. It "smeared" and clogged up the die plate on the grinder with connective tissue. I don't know if it's just that the grinder wasn't powerful enough to cut the connective tissues, or if the connective tissues in deer are tougher than pig or beef. I do know that you'd have to basically remove ALL of the connective tissue.

If we have a grinder at work, I may try to grind some of the venison there, using the 40 qt stand mixer (much more powerful than a KitchenAid 5qt). Not sure if I'll turn it into sausage, or just use it for chili.

The deer aren't really a problem around here. OK is not as heavily populated as many places back east, and much of the farmland is cattle/horse pasture. So, the deer are pretty much wild, and graze wild. Up in MI, when I lived there, the deer were EVERYWHERE, and were a major problem. They were also grain-fed, as much of the farmland up there is planted in corn and soy. Lots of accidents, and dead deer on the highways.

Yes, I did take some pics. I may try to get them uploaded at a later date, and post them, but right now, on this crappy 56K connection, it takes to long to upload the pics.

[Constance]

Allen, thing is, deer have a lot more connective tissue. When we made sausage a few years ago, I cleaned as much as the silverskin off as I could. After a little practice, you'll get the hang of how to angle the knife so you get the membrane and not the meat. My husband is too impatient to do a very good job, so I take over that part.

[justplainbill]

Pretty tough to split a deer without cutting through bone.
I usually save trimmed bones and meat whose fat is impractical to remove for making soup. The tallow is more easily removable when it solidifies on the top of the broth. Birds (and squirrels) around here seem to prefer deer tallow to beef suet; perhaps because it doesn't soften as readily. Gamyness seems to be mostly a function of what deer have been eating, and how the deer was butchered.
Mad cow disease has me wondering whether splitting deer through the spinal column may have become a bad idea.

[AllenOK]

Back when I first tried to make venison sausage, I wasn't really that good are removing silverskin. Now, however, I'm very proficient in that skill. I'll have to bring my boning knife home from work, though.

justplainbill, I wouldn't worry about Mad Cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, in humans it's called Crutchfeld-Yacob or something like that). Critters get that by ingesting nervous tissue that contains the prion (an oddly-shaped protein, not a germ or virus) that causes the tissue degeneration. The only critters I know of that get this disease are cows that are fed meal made from ground-up beef carcasses, and a tribe of people, in the Phillipines, if I remember right, that used to practice ritual endo-cannabalism.

I've also heard that about half of the people on the planet are genetically pre-disposed to get Crutchfeld-Yacob, and the rest are genetically "immune" do this disease.