Deer hunting was tough this year. Deer numbers as well as licenses were down this year (I actually didn't even get drawn for a tag), so we only got two deer this year. We butchered two deer (pic of my brother and his buck attached) and two 250 pound hogs over Thanksgiving weekend.
We made 75lbs of Fry Sausage (pics attached) which is a relatively small batch for us. We have done as much as 200lbs in the past, but with only two deer this year, we were limited on red meat. We actually had to buy 80lbs of hamburger to mix in with the venison to get our red meat to pork ratios correct.
We still take our Fry Sausage to a nearby small town German meat market to have them smoked because of the time involved and we were using my Smokin-It for other things. Attached pics are of the pre-smoked sausage waiting in the walk-in cooler and post-smoke. This little town of maybe 100-150 people is home to a meat market that sells approximately 12K-15K pounds of sausage per year and they just flat out know how to make and smoke sausage. The old guy that makes/smokes all of their sausage is well into his 80s and still makes 200-300lbs of sausage a week. Gotta love that. So, until he quits doing it, we'll be taking it to him. At some point, we may have to build a large smokehouse of our own similar to his (pic attached).
We also made 75lbs of Deer Burger (50% Venison and 50$Hamburger), 50lbs of Venison Bacon, and packaged up 200lbs of meat (pre-measured) for Snack Sticks to be made at a later date.
It was a lot of work and a few sore backs, but we had fun and all filled our freezers for another year.
