Venison Summer Sausage

Make Your Own Venison Sausage

You have harvested your trophy deer; now what? It has to be processed, right? It can be very expensive to have venison summer sausage made with your trophy deer meat; $2 - 5.00 a pound. Many deer hunters bring their venison to a meat market, a butcher, or some sort of big game/meat processor. During and right after the deer hunting season these meat processors have deer brought into them by the tens, if not hundreds. Most will not separate the venison meat they use for making sausage. It is all mixed together. Made in bunches and a lot at a time. Young deer and old deer, deer feed that fed on corn and clover, and deer that eat scrub oak and brush. Some deer that were meticulously taken care of and those that were dragged through who knows what. The point is, you probably won't get your own venison meat, the deer you shot, back. You'll get venison, but it will be a mixture of a lot of different deer taken from different areas, by different hunters, with varying field care styles. Wouldn't you like to know you are eating the deer you harvested?

Processing Expense

We want our venison processed; de-boned, cut up, wrapped, and frozen. It will cost somewhere around a hundred bucks or so to have someone do it for us. Then we start thinking; wouldn't some venison summer sausage be great to have? You bet it would. But it can be expensive and you will need to plan for that expense. Venison sausage, made up with your trophy deer meat, will cost you anywhere from $2.00 to $5.00 a pound. That summer sausage, breakfast links, cheese sticks, jerky, and so on; can add up to several hundred dollars real quick. Is it worth it? Of course it is. But for the cost of doing 3 to 4 deer, you can invest in the equipment to make your own venison sausage at a fraction of the cost.

Venison Processing Equipment

1. A good quality meat grinder with stuffing attachments; like this 3/4 horsepower L.E.M. grinder, will do the trick. It retails for about $350, sometimes less when it's on sale. It is worth it, and will last a lifetime or two.

Making Venison Summer Sausage

2. An oven; or a smoker. You can find a great smoker at most sporting goods stores in their outdoors cooking section.

Ingredients

1. 8 pounds of lean venison meat - ground

2. 2 pounds of ground pork fat - I like to use very fatty breakfast pork sausage. Mix together and then do a final fine grind of all the venison and pork fat mixture.

Grinding venison sausage

3. Liquid smoke, 1 to 2 ounces mixed in - if you don't use a smoker.

Venison Recipe - Use A Kit The First Few Times

You can find great venison sausage making kits at most retail hunting/sporting goods stores or in their catalogs. Or, go online and do a Google search for venison sausage kits. Everything you need to make great summer sausage is there but the equipment I've listed above.

It Is Easy - You Can Do It

Stuffing sausage casings

Venison Sausage

It took me about 3 hours (not counting oven baking time at 170 degrees - about 4 hours) to make up these venison sausage sticks. Just fallow the directions in the venison sausage making kit and process your own trophy deer meat. Yum! Yum!