I was blessed to have grown up in farm country and learned to bone meat about 8yrs old. We didn't live in abundance, but we grew nice gardens and animals. We might not have had much but we ate good. We all butchered beef, hogs, deer, and very seldom a bear. Neighbors helped each other, get this....... for FREE! We all did the same stuff and cutting, boning, and wrapping a steer or a couple of hogs was a big job for a husband and wife, so we all helped. On hot summers we teen boys helped neighbors bale hay and pick rock for maybe a couple of dollars, or just lunch and a couple of cold beers when we were done. This was only in the 1980's. What a blessed childhood! Today you are lucky if you can get your kids to mow your own yard by paying them. Cutting meat is not hard. Beef we aged sometimes, but I have cut plenty of meat the same day as the kill. It does cut a little easier if it is chilled if you can do it. A very sharp knif makes it easier. I use Rapala fillet knives. Gut and skin it. Cool it as best you can. Take it apart in pieces, places where it is connected together. Cut it across the grain. Don't forget to make a couple of rump roasts. Remove the meat next to the spine in one long piece with a fillet knife. Slice steaks from it in the thickness you like to cook. Remove as much fat as prudent, all of it for venison. Buy a good hand grinder. Cut meat to be ground into 1/2 inch thick pieces across the grain and remove as much connective tissue as you can. This helps keep the stringy stuff from plugging up the grinder. Some of this stuff makes awesome stew/chili meat, so don't grind all of the smaller stuff. Buy a larger roll of wrapping paper from the butchers at the grocery store before going hunting, and a few rolls of masking tape, and a new permanent marker. Tear paper off on the edge of a table in large squares. Wrap it 2 times, wax side in. Use enough tape to keep packages together. Write kind of meat, type of cut, and date. Make packages to the size that your family needs. When you put it in the freezer space it out so the cold gets around the packages. Meat put into the freezer in a box often rots in the middle as it takes too long to cool. Eat tenderloins from inside the animal, along the spine towards the hips inside, fresh. They are too good to freeze. Fried until brown, add onions and a stick of butter, a bit of seasoned salt and enough corn starch to make gravy...MMMMMM! Don't forget the liver. Fresh pork or venison liver are a treat around my house. If it looks smooth and healthy take it home. Slice a big chunk of it off, but stay away from where it is connected. Leave some of that for the woods. There is a gall bladder in it and if it gets punctured it ruins what it touches. I slice it into 1/4" slices and rinse it in cold water and soak it in milk for dinner tomorrow, as tonight is tenderloin time. I fry it with bacon and onions. First I drop it into flour, then into the pan. Keep enough bacon frying to keep the pan greased. Good stuff, even my kids like it. I am too cheap to pay anyone to do what I can do myself. I have thrown the whole slab of ribs on the grill and ate them on a butchering break. I separated them from the spine with a sawsall. Kinda fun to eat ribs like the Flintstones. You will learn to do this and get better each time. Your hunting friends may even ask you to help them. Then you can ask the same from them when it is your turn. Make them buy the beer. I am learning to make sausage. That is fun also.
