Whenever I drop off a deer at the processor, I ask if I can get stew meat and they always tell me my options are sausage or hamburger meat. I've asked them why no stew meat but can't remember their responses. Anyone know why that is? Is it just too time consuming for them? If I want to make my own stew meat, from meat left over after steaks and roasts, is there some way to ask for the scraps to be left alone?

Sounds like you might need a new processor. I usually just cut up a roast or something for venison stew, and it is good.

keep a ham and cut it up... done and done

Use a different processor. I've never had one tell me they could not do stew meat. Chances are you could easily find one that will do what you want.

Maybe it has to do with packaging... they don't want to mess with a vac sealer?

Maybe they don't actually give you your deer back, and they don't want to keep track of what's what?

So some *will* do it? I guess I should start calling processors in this area until I find one who will.

Take more time but we used to do what the customer wanted to make them happy . If it was me i would have told them well if you dont want to do it i will take where they will .

I would just cut up the roast into stew meat myself and know that the stew meat is good quality meat, or just tell them to cut the hindquarter into stew meat.I can assure you that most processors like to keep it simple and you cant blame them. Do not know what you a calling scraps. Most of the trimmings on a deer would not make good stew meat anyway.

that processor is (1) lazy, (2) smug, (3) not worth your business

His shop his way of doing things... I wouldn't spend the money for someone to cut my meat up in chunks when I could do it and have it packaged in half an hour

I ask for all the roasts, and for steaks from the loin and tenderloins. Whatever is left they will use for sausage and/or hamburger. I don't know what all that is, but I have gotten a *lot* of sausage and/or hamburger. Maybe they are giving me meat off someone else's deer for the sausage, because I think they make a lot of money off sausage -- at least they charge a lot.

i guess i'm old fashioned we NEVER take any of our kill to a processor which seems to be very uncommon these days....we get our stew meat from trimmings off of different cuts but the majority of it comes from the neck and backbone.

no issue here cut up my own
find another processor

2X
stew meat is just a cut-up roast. not 'scraps'

A big part of the sausage is they typically will mix it with a certain % of pork for fat content. Back in the day when pork was an easy $0.99 a pound my uncle had some sausage made and the processor charged him $2.98 a lb for pork for his sausage. Just another way to squeeze an extra dollar, I guarantee you the processor wasn't paying $3 a pound for pork when you could go down to the grocery store and buy it for less than a dollar.