Is there really such thing, you know, a “sausage deer?” I would hear old-timers joking about “sausage deer” when I was younger, and way back when I used to bring my harvests to be butchered, some meat processors had sausage options available. Some of these sausage options were quite expensive and costs like these are one of the reasons I began butchering my own harvests decades ago. Some of the offerings also didn’t “meat” my wants or needs. For example, we primarily use our sausages as flavoring agents in main courses such as in my Not So Passé Vodka Cream Sauce recipe, my gumbos, and jambalayas as well as some other recipes, and I like to have on hand particular types of sausages some of these fellas didn’t seem to offer such as Sweet Italian, Andouille and Chorizo. So, what was this half Sicilian to do with all that Summer Sausage or Deer Pepperoni? Don’t get me wrong. I like some good Pepperoni with a glass of Chianti Classico once in a while. But, 20-plus pounds of it? And over the years, I can’t really recall any of my friends or other hunters I’ve known making sausage out of an entire deer. And if they did so, did they really use the entire deer? Or, did they also save some of the top choice cuts for steaks?
I can’t see myself sacrificing choice cuts from the loins and hindquarters for sausage. In fact, the cardinal rule I’ve established for where my ground meat comes from on large game harvests such as deer or elk happens to be the neck, front quarters, flank, and other meat that is around the ribs and lower legs. Additionally, I have observed over the years that the front portion of the hindquarters, which would be the quadricep on a human, and is the front portion of a round steak, is also a good candidate for ground meat or sausage if you don’t have other needs for it. I consider this entire “rough cut” – the muscle group after it is deboned from the femur – to be somewhat of a “tweener” when it comes to my endgame regarding how I intend to cook it. This is because I can use it for steaks, ground meat, or sausage.
My reasoning, developed over years of experience and observations, which guides me in determining how to use this cut, provides me with quite a bit of flexibility. It is good enough to be a steak but will be firmer after final cuts and it has greater potential to be overcooked into a tough piece of meat. So, I won’t use it for steaks unless I am running out of them. On the other hand, this is the cut I designate as a roast if I am going to save it for recipes that call for this type of cut such as my Rosemary and Garlic Large Game Roast and Brace Yourself Brisket recipes. Because when it is slow-cooked and then thinly sliced, it comes out juicy and tender. Lastly and most importantly, I like keeping these cuts from my harvests available as insurance. You see, we love our ground meat and have many uses for it in our cooking. So, it’s imperative I have enough packages of ground meat (and steaks) to get us to the next deer season. I feel the same way about the homemade sausages we enjoy that are mentioned above and offered in “Changing The Game” and, therefore, packaging and freezing these football-shaped “rough cuts” affords me the opportunity to evaluate my meat inventory and determine how I want to use them as the season “draws” to a close.
The strategic process I follow of managing my meat inventory provides insight and influences how I am going to process that last harvest of the season if I am fortunate enough to come up with one. It all depends upon what my inventory looks like late in the season. Yes. I regularly inventory my freezers to ensure that we have enough of each type of cut to get us to the next deer season. Will I make sausage in place of harvesting additional ground meat, or do I need more ground meat to get us to next deer season? Those are my primary questions. Should I use the “footballs” I have stockpiled from previous harvests earlier in the season for sausages, or will I need them for additional steaks or ground meat? I often ponder these questions as I’m shivering in my tree stand towards the season’s end. Obviously, if I fail to score a late-season harvest, it’s going to be the “footballs” for sausage.
So, that is one of the benefits of saving a key portion of each of my previous harvests. It provides me with the versatility to keep using these resources to go from field to fork and create the meals we love to enjoy. Additionally, while grinding sausage is very similar to grinding meat into chop meat, there are some additional steps in the sausage-making process such as seasoning the meat, that are better saved for another day unless you want to tack on an hour or two to your butchering efforts. If I do harvest that “sausage deer,” the portions I am going to use for making sausage, which are the same as what I previously mentioned I would use for ground meat, will also be thoroughly chilled and saved to be processed the next day.
Those of us who are able to hunt where the limits are generous should consider ourselves fortunate to have access to such resources and contribute to such conservation efforts while we can also optimize each harvest by thinking strategically across the entire season when it comes to how we use each cut when going from field to fork… whether you are able to harvest that “sausage deer” or not.
The first few chapters of “Changing The Game” provide more in-depth strategic insight for developing your strategic “game plan” along with detailed instruction associated with how to progress your harvest through each “phase of the game” that constitutes the field-to-fork process.
