Meat shortage?

I cut up my own deer. I do an OK job. My cuts aren't particularly pretty, but they eat alright.

I'm not a successful enough hunter to practice it a lot.

Years ago when I was in my senior year at Purdue I was taking a Wildlife Biology Class in what was the Purdue Meat Processing Building.  Right next to our class room there was a meat processing room. They had a big glass window where you could see inside and watch the guys processing all types of meat. Pigs and cows were the main things that they were cutting up. They would boil the hair off the pigs and they had a overhead conveyor that the meat hung from the ceiling.  They would take a chain saw and cut the cows down the middle. I use to go to class early just to watch them working on the meat.  That is the class were I met Mark Reiter and became friends with him. He's retired now and is building a new house on 40 acres of prime hunting land.  It seems to me that cutting up a deer can't be that hard.  Just hang it up with a pulley and take a sharp knife and or a chain saw and cut it down the middle in half.  Then get a picnic table and start butchering.  Wrap the meat in some parchment paper and stick it in the freezer.  If I were younger I think I could handle that myself or with the help of a friend or two. When there is a will there is a way. How do you think your grandfather did it back in the day? Back then they didn't have meat processing plants. 

Meat Prices have risen here in Newburgh IN.  Ground Chuck when from $3 something a pound to over $10 a pound and may rise or fall some more in the coming days.  There was a story about the Butcher Block Meat Store in Newburgh, IN on Channel WFIE 14 TV the other day.  The owner of the store was talking about the lack of processors and he said that was the reason for the shortages.  He said that the demand was still high and thus the increase in prices.  I was just shaking my head.  I have some gray squirrels in my back yard that will be eating the blueberries in the yard when they get ripe in about two more weeks. I tried to shoot them but kept missing as my Primos Shooting sticks were rusted on the inside and not working.  There are 4 young of the year gray squirrels living in a hole in the maple tree about 30 ft. up.  For the last 2 or 3 years this one momma gray squirrel has raised two litters of 4 each in that hole in the tree. So now all I have is gray squirrels in my front and back yard. I'm afraid that they may run out of trees and start eating into the house or getting into the attic.  All the fox squirrels have been chased away across the street into the woods over there.  And the house behind is full of various trees that the owner planted years ago. The area behind the house use to be a farm field for at least a half mile by half mile in size.  But it's been developed into about 5 to 7 houses and manicured yards.  I wish it was still a farm field.  So I went online to see how to repair the shooting sticks that were not working.  I can't fix either of the legs.  The inside metal rod is frozen stuck and nothing is getting it moving again. I tried Heat, PB Blaster, Seafoam Fogging oil and pounding on it with a wooden block.  It's rusted solid shut. And I never used these sticks in the rain.  Anytime I used them it was in the yard. Only once or twice did I take them out hunting and they never got wet.  So I guess just condensation due to temperature changes got the inside of the tubes wet and cause them to rust. This was the first generation Primos Shooting Stick and it's a bipod.  They were great when they were new.  I need some shooting sticks and need to figure out something better that will last for a while.  On the YouTube channel there were a lot of comments under the repair video and it seems like a lot of other people have the same problem with the Primos Sticks.

www.primos.com/shooting-sticks/trigger-sticks/

First TP was in short supply and also tissue and disinfectants were not available.  I went to get my pneumonia shot Thursday morning at 6 am and the pharmacy is right next to the aisle where they keep the paper products.  I found a package of 12 mega rolls of double ply Charmin TP.  I was surprised. I picked up one package.  I have some Charmin at home but it's all single ply and is horrible.  

Mouse, you can make that single ply tp into double by folding it over on itself. This advise comes to you from a Purdue Engineer.

For a long time, I`ve felt that the IDNR needed to do something to encourage qualified meat cutters to get involved with processing deer and ensure that there are plenty of good deer processing places available. Even though some may think that who cuts your deer, or how they store it and handle it before, during and after cutting has little impact on how desirable that venison will be on your plate, this all factors into what that meat tastes like. I` ve pulled up to places before and seen 30 deer laying in a gravel drive, in the sun, waiting to be drug inside to be stored, who knows how. I just won`t drop my deer off someplace like that. It would be a bad deal for the IDNR, as well as farmers, insurance companies, and those of us who deer hunt, for guys to drop out of deer hunting for lack of a good place to get your deer cut.

NW Indiana report...

3 diff Walmarts had little fresh meat.

2 small country stores had 1/2 normal

Our main local market, fully stocked!!! I can see why tho! Cheap burger $8.99/lb. Round steak $10.99/lb, NY, ribeye, tbone, all $15-18.99/lb.

Never seen anything like it!!! Good luck people! We will continue eating our own harvested and butchered game.

If it runs out, will go get more. We ain't paying those prices, and we aint eating hotdogs to survive!

Do it yourself. It really is not bad especially when you are worried about the quality of care. It does not add much effort to a weekend hunt. Quartered and hung they do not use much room and are easily handled.

While not always ideal, I have found that you can do a pretty clean job of butchering just about anywhere when you have to. I froze the above pictured meatpile into gallon-sized Ziploc bags, then thawed and ground up in my basic kitchen at home. I do several critters like this every year.

I used to take all my stuff to a processor, and he did a good job. It just got to be too expensive and impractical for me. Nothing wrong with using a processor though, if you find one you can trust.

Just hang it in cool place. Cut off a leg at a time and work on it on kitchen table. Easy.

Space issue for sure, plus, it would be a race to see ho would kill me forst if there were a deer hanging in the driveway, the neighbpors or my wife.