Gleaning Venison

In the past, my husband and I have had time to go deer hunting and have been able to put venison in the freezer very economically.  My husband doesn’t have time to hunt anymore because of his job.  Since we always took turns watching the kids while they other one hunted all the extra hours he is working means I don’t get to go hunting either.  However, we both like venison and it is such a cost effective meat.  So about a month ago, I called a local meat locker that works up lots of deer during deer season.  I asked them if they ever had hunters that didn’t want to keep the meat from their deer and he said that they do.    I was able to put my name on a list to get two deer by just paying the processing.

We got a call that our deer were done.  I had requested that it be cut into stew meat (that I will can), deer burger, deer steaks and the loins. The kids helped me weigh out the meat as we put it into the freezer.  We ended up with 109 lbs of boneless meat and paid $130 to have it processed.  Typically we would process our own deer but we have to buy the hunting license etc.  so I think that it worked out about the same money wise.  At less than $1.20 per pound I am very pleased with our purchase.

This is how the meat came packaged.  It is all in vacuum sealed bags with labels identifying the different types of meat.  It was certainly less work to have the processing done by someone else. 🙂

In the future, I hope we will have time to return to hunting but in the meantime this works for us.  Does anyone in your family hunt?  Do you process the meat yourself or have someone else process it?

Blessings!

Jennifer