Just banged out 60# of Black Run venison sticks (20# plain, and 40# with habanero powder and pepper jack cheese), 25# each of habanero brats, holly breakfast, mild italian, and blue ribbon with cheddar. Smoked sticks and breakfast and finished in turkey fryer water bath. Made up some label from a wine bottle label template for the finish.

Well my old NY crew was hard at it this past weekend as you can see by the picture. Got 9 deer off a single push. Puts the body count at 22 for the season. Our deer management area has a huge county park and conservative landowners that don’t allow hunting turns this spot into brown gold!
And they still have tags to fill and I’m excited to see the next generation joining the fun!

If any of you follow my posts I CONSTANTLY complaining about manual meat mixing, meat mixers that break…blah blah blah…so this weekend I think I found the answer. My brother in law came through in a big way!!! Got this beauty as a belated Christmas present, Hobart A200 mixer and it even came with the Hobart cart!!! I can’t wait to cram 25# of meat in this and watch it extract some serious protein!!! So pumped!!!

Jonathon Austin :man_raising_hand_medium-light_skin_tone: How can we have so many awesome people on this wonderful community and have the worst emoji’s ever!?! There isn’t even a sausage…how can I get my message clearly across to my meatgistics brethren without proper selection of emojis…just sayin’ :unicorn_face: haha apparently emoji isn’t spelled with an “i” …:face_with_tears_of_joy: :face_with_tears_of_joy:

Jonathon
I’m going to take the 20# and 44# mixers out back and put them down!

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after ya!!!

This weekend was the dawn of a new day, pretty sure the earth stopped rotating for a split second here in ROC yesterday. I used the Hobart A200 mixer for the first time on a test batch. GAME CHANGER!!! I started hand mixing like everyone else and up through every mixer known to man with limited success becuase I like making sticks with cure in them and it turns to cement quickly. So I was able to score this mixer for free and knowing what I know now, I would have dropped $1,000 on one a while ago, even before upgrading the grinder. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up stuffing the big batches with this thing running behind me! I know they aren’t cheap but if you do any volume at all this truly is a game changer! #hindsightis20/20

Jonathon Joe Hell Wait till I get the Hobart mixer officially into the rotation and you’ll get to see a sweet video of a Weston 44 mixer packed with Tannerite!!!

My smartass 21 year old son is always going to the gym and he says he “stays ready so he doesn’t have to get ready”…whatever… But when he asked what I was doing at the clubhouse organizing, doing inventory, and placing my order I gave him a taste of his own medicine! We got three deer in the freezer already. We were light last year but this year looks like a good year in NY, so game on!!!

You guys will laugh but I’m not a big hunter, too cold…I don’t have a problem running the trigger but I HATE gutting anything! But… once that’s done I’m all in.
Harvesting game and processing pigs has always been a social event, the more the merrier and that’s what we do now. My crew has some passionate hunters, perfect for me! We also have “jobs” when we process. I’m responsible for planning and organizing and polling the crew for what we want to make and ordering supplies- thus the Waltons warehouse of supplies. Billy skins and takes off the football roasts and primal quarters. I cut the back straps off and clean then while other free hands debone. Best advice is follow the muscle groups. I don’t saw bones either. Then you can decide to chunk for stew/chili slice for jerky or cut for grind. We will free the big muscles while, once u cut them u can’t put them back together!
My rule is if we get out the grinder we are doing some grinding so we’ll get pork and grind and freeze. Make it easy on yourself we do everything in 5# increments so when we are ready I can pull exact amount to make certain batches.
Just some rainy Wednesday thoughts from the ROC…

I get boneless pork butts from Restaurant Depot. I buy 200# at a time. I grind and vac seal in 5 or 10 # bags. Works great. We also pack chunks of venison in 5# bags as we debone so it’s easy to defrost and make 25 or 50# batches.

I only grind once through 3/8 plate but I like it chunky, then mix and stuff. When I do hot dogs we grinds 3x. Key to regrinding is cold meat. We grind, spread on a sheet tray and put it in the freezer to stiffen it up and put your grinding head in the freezer too. Keep it as cold as possible. You and the grinder to grind not smear.

gus4416 8H

Well my old NY crew was hard at it this past weekend as you can see by the picture. Got 9 deer off a single push. Puts the body count at 22 for the season. Our deer management area has a huge county park and conservative landowners that don’t allow hunting turns this spot into brown gold!
And they still have tags to fill and I’m excited to see the next generation joining the fun!

This isn’t an easy answer… there is no real good way to keep them linked other than putting them into a “globe”. Jon did a video and check out sausage linking on YouTube too. Best way I’ve found to get consistent is to use a sharpie on the stainless table and put 4 marks 6” apart. Twist every other link. If u want to hang them to smoke then use twine or zip ties to hold the link. Make sure u post some pics! Good luck.

JohninPa Lots of opinions here on this issue. Ive always done 50/50. My brother does 60 venison to 40 pork. He likes a drier texture similar to ring bologna. I like the juicer smaller snack sticks with a good snap. 50/50 will let you stretch out the venison too if you don’t have a great year. Pick one and try it. Doubt you’ll go wrong regardless. Post some pics!

spangler2k3 I do this with breakfast and chili dogs. I smoke for 2hours but I always thermal process in a water bath to cook through. From my experience I think…you’d be okay but make sure you grill them to 165F. I like to use the water bath, yes directly into the turkey fryer with water at 170F until the reach 153F then shower with cold water. I think it keeps them moist when you grill and you don’t need to kill them on the grill and break the skins if you’re not careful.

deanlorensen I’d take a look at the coolbot. It runs a large window air conditioner lower than it should go. There are at storeitcold.com. I didn’t get all the compressor and so on, I just bought the walkin that was in good shape 10’x7’x9’ and i have no problem running it with 4 deer in it at 38F when it was 65F outside during archery. The key is the door frame and the corners, all the restaurant supply guys say there are the hardest to get. You may be able to pick up the walls on the cheap to match your door. I cut the hole in ours and I’m no electrician but it took about 10 minutes to get it set up. I haven’t set up the wifi but the idea of being able to turn it on while you’re in the field and cool it off before you get the deer back is pretty cool. I use a 12k old school beast of an AC unit. So much easier than dealing with all the parts and paying a tech to come out for a one off service call unless you have a buddy…
I was in the restaurant business and they were always having issues if you don’t run them on a regular basis. If you just planning on using it for deer season i’d go with the AC unit, you can scoop an old on up on CL for $100 ish and the coolbot is like $300 just googled it and found one at keg factory. I’d also look on their facebook page they usually have some special deal going on. If not call the order in and ask for a coupon…never hurts
You can see in the pic I set up rolling metro shelves on one side for storage and we used an old fire escape to make a rack to hang 4 gambrels off of. You can zoom in on it in the back, also watch the coolbot videos on their website or youtube. It really does work well.
Works great and everyone is jealous. Plus you can get your buddies to bring 12 packs to store their deer in your cooler!!

spangler2k3 deanlorensen I do literally everything 50/50 boneless pork butt from Restaurant Depot or Costco to venison, literally everything…sticks, brats, breakfast, all of it! I do use 1oz of carrot fiber to 20# in sticks. I don’t have pork fat readily available but lucky enough to have some big box retail relatively close. I’ve never had an issue with the 50/50. Now I will say i only grind once on the small plate the #22 butcher series has no issue with it and I grind both pork and venison on the same plate. I live in a very simple world…I’ve stopped over-complicating everything and it makes for a much easier and fun process that ANYONE can help do.

Mschmidt Trust us, everyone on here agrees the 11 is a great piece and really you’ll have to reload a maximum of 2 times for a 25 pound batch. Its not a big deal and you made the right choice! You’ll love how the brats and bags fill off the big horn. We try to share not only the how but also the why. I’ve been at this for decades, and between the collection of knowledge and experience on this board I’d say we’ve been there and made that mistake! This is by far the best, most open and honest group. We aren’t afraid to say we’ve made mistakes that cost time and money from equipment to spices, to processing procedures, we’re just trying to flatten the learning curve so you don’t have make every mistake we’ve made! I see first timers posting pics of very successful processing. If I didn’t have my family experience I wouldn’t have half the knowledge I do now. I’ve learned a LOT from the folks on this forum. Good people for sure!! Can’t wait to see it in action!!