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I've never been a hunter. My grandfather was a hunter, as are a few uncles and numerous cousins. But myself? Can't say I ever went into the woods to get a deer in my lifetime.
But with that being said, I'm the first to admit I love to eat venison. Doesn't matter in what form -- steaks, strips, jerky, bologna -- it's always delicious, and I'll always take venison from anyone who offers some.
Recently, my two brothers-in-laws got a buck and two doe, and I decided I may as well learn how to cut up a deer for some venison. After all, if I'm eating it, I may as well learn how to process it, right?
For those who have never had to cut up a deer themselves, consider this a bit of a learning experience.
Every hunter has their own way of doing things, though.
The one thing you're going to need is some sharp knives. Even if you think your knives are sharp, go ahead and get a sharpener because you'll need it when you're all said and done with the deer.
Obviously the deer needs skinned first and foremost. Having the deer strung up on two hooks, the deer was cut around its hindquarters and the skin slowly peeled backwards by slicing and pulling the hide away from the animal, exposing the meat and fat of the animal.
The hide was then cut upwards to the rear tendons near the hooves and discarded. That goes the same for the front legs and obviously around the back and neck of the deer, and around the chest.
Venison is obviously the term for meat from a deer, but like any animal in which you get meat from — be it cow, pig or even a lamb — there's different cuts and meats on said animal. And a deer is exactly the same.
Personally, I love the back and neck straps of a deer. Fried up in a pan thinly sliced with some garlic, onion, salt, pepper and simmered in red wine? Doesn't get any better than that for me.
In addition to the back and neck straps, you also have chuck, flank, rump and even ribs. We harvested just about all of that when slicing the deer.
You obviously will need to separate the meat from the bone and tendons of the animal. Once the straps were cut off, we began cutting each up into chunks approximately two inches wide and setting aside. Next came cutting off shanks from the four legs and some round as well from the rear hides. And, if there was a good portion to cut, we would cut out portions as steaks.
As previously stated, I've never been involved with butchering a deer before. So watching my brothers-in-laws and my father get a large container of water to bring over made me raise an eyebrow at first. What do we need water for?
No matter how well you're able to slice a deer and cut meat off, it's inevitable you're going to get some of the fur from the animal on the meat with some stray hairs here and there. One way to eliminate that is using the water to help rinse off the loose hairs.
Every hunter has their own way of doing this, and some may use a torch for instance instead.
The shanks and round are some of the tougher parts of the deer to cut yourself. In addition to dealing with cutting around the bones, there's numerous tendons and ligaments you're going to have to cut around or even completely through. I ran into that plenty of times when a hard ligament disrupted my cutting.
But they say like anything in life, it's about experience, and I can at least check "preparing a deer for meat" off my list now.
Jon Gerardi is the sports editor at the Sun-Gazette and handles the Outdoors section each week. He can be reached by email at jgerardi@sungazette.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JonGerardi.