Beware of Junior's on Hwy 59 north of El Camo. Vinison returned to us was very old. Worst experience with a Processor in 30 years of hunting and dealing with Game Processors.

Learn to process your own game. It isn't hard to do and it is the only way you can ensure everything is up to your standards. I've never understood why so many hunters choose to pay someone else to process their meat. I can cut, wrap, trim, grind and vacuum package a full deer in less than 2 hrs.

Give praseks a try

Praceks is hard to beat

Avoid all of them if you want good tasting meat every time!

We only do our own....went together and bought a meat grinder, sausage stuffer, and ban saw....only way to go.....

Did my own last season.

Didn't take long

Made cheddar and jalapeño sausage. Was great.

Have done it myself for longer than I can remember. Get the cuts and grinds you prefer and adds to the satisfaction of the hunt.

Doing it yourself is hard but worth it.

Will never take another deer to processor if for no other reason cost. Cost me over $200 to get a 55 lb dressed doe turned in sausage of various types. The sausage is not great and very gamey. Rather have donated it and bought $200 worth of ribeyes.

Westtexan, Yeah, i wonder who got your deer. BTDT. Gut at kill site, cool, skin, quarter, put on ice in shade 4-8 days, freeze shoulders for roasts, cut backstraps in half and freeze, debone hams seperating muscles and package to freeze in meal sized portions, freeze tenderloins or cook them then, save scraps for stew or sausage. Freeze neck to pressure later for stew or chili.

When ready to eat, thaw and grill or slice and chicken fry. Ive done my deer for 55 years to keep marrow from bone getting on meat.

In late season if weather is cold i may let a deer hang in the shade a week to age before skinning and then bone,package and freeze.

Had a big one once i skinned from shoulders back and took back straps. Took it to butcher to get rest done and cape for mount. When i went to pick it up my box of meat had backstraps. I said no. They swore they never switch deer. BS.

I got mostly ripped by forum members late last year when I started a thread about a processor that somehow turned the hams and shoulders from a 180-200 pound buck into only 39 pounds of ground. I kept almost 16 pounds of backstrap at home from the same deer. For comparison, about a 90-pound doe yielded 29 pounds of ground. She had only about 7 pounds of backstrap that did not go to the processor. I would have expected at least 60 pounds from the buck... but if you use the direct comparison of backstrap to other yield, I should have had closer to 80 pounds from the buck.

Your mileage may vary, so take your own chances but I won't be using Prairie Dell in Salado again. When I asked about the error and how a much larger buck didn't yield much more than a doe, the processor just got a little bit mad and said, "you got your deer, all of it." The game processing record sheet they kept was a mess and basically meaningless. It showed that I should have had 20 pounds more meat than they delivered. The processor explained that as a clerical error.

Yes, I know that I can be certain if I processes it myself, but at the particular time I wasn't able to do so because of my health. You can bet that I will do my best to process future kills myself, or at worst I will be certain that I have pre-processing weights.

Cut the bs , give the rest away

I tried Hirsch's in Plano - I'm sure they gave me all my meat back but I won't use them again. Sausage was dry - good seasoning but minimal fat added. Steaks were cut in a haphazard way. It seemed that they just didn't care how it turned out.

Kuby's is awesome. I last used them in 2013 and will go back to them this year. In 2013 I took an 80 lb doe, a 165 lb buck, and a 200 lb buck to them (all field dressed weights). The backstraps on these three deer were all very, very different in size. What I got back from Kuby's was what I expected. There's no way they mixed my deer with others - hell I could tell from the backstrap diameter which deer I was eating I suspect the sausage and/or ground venison may be community but the backstrap isn't.

For those that do their own, that's great but it doesn't work for everyone. It's easier for me to have someone else do it. I don't mind paying for quality processing.

Process your own. If you can't cut your own deer, you don't need to be shooting deer.

The processor that works out of Los Cazadores in Pearsall is the worst I have ever experienced

Another ignorant response. You're on a roll.

I own more processing equipment than some professional processors, but I still occasionally take stuff to get processed, simply because I don't have the time to do it myself.

I've worked at a processor, and for the money you spend and the quality of work delivered, there's no way it's close to economical, not to mention the poor methods meat is stored and handled.

Processing is part of hunting. Why let somebody else do it for you? It's part of being self-reliant.

Can't understand this reasoning. Why kill a deer and only take the straps? There is a lot of good meat on a deer besides the straps. I use every scrap and 2 does feed me and the wife for a year. I see no reason to give prime meat away simply because I lack the willingness to devote a little effort to using it. Killing a deer, pulling the straps and giving the rest away is nothing short of lazy and I wasn't raised to be lazy.

Because sometimes you work 70 or 80 hours a week and barely have time to hunt much less process the deer. Sometimes you have 2 kids in activities and barely have time to hunt much less process your deer. Sometimes you have surgery on your hands and are limited what you can do so you physically can't process your deer. Maybe one may have a small house and little room to store the equipment for processing. (mines in the storage shed) Maybe the food pantry I choose to donate to requires it to be professionally processed. SOMETIMES one may even choose not to consider your position and just not want to mess with it. I kind of enjoyed not processing 6 or 8 deer and a half dozen pigs this year. Even 3+ months after surgery my hands don't like using a knife/screw driver/computer key board very long before cramping so . . .

BTW, Plantation Meats near Springtown gives you your deer. Ground and all. And will add as much fat as you desire.

I understand being busy. I am a full time college student with a part-time job. However, this season I still processed all three of the deer that I shot by myself. Two of these, I processed in one evening in a friend's backyard with a case Sod-Buster knife and a hand-crank grinder, because I lived in an on-campus apartment and didn't think processing deer inside would be appreciated.

I get taking a deer to a processor if you are physically incapable of doing it yourself. But that's about it.

+1 for Plantation in Springtown.

I "get" doing whatever the hell you want to do, as long as it is your money. But what the hell do I know?