I have never done this before so all suggestions and help is much appreciated!!

Going to break the grinder in tomorrow so I went to Hirsch's Meat Market and bought some pig fat, I set out two packs of deer meat and one pack of hog meat.
My thought was to get some fresh Jalapenos, onions, garlic and crushed red peppers. Cook the peppers, onions and garlic in a pan then grind them up finely and mix into the meat with the pork fat.

So please share any other do's and don'ts that will help.

I am not much help in the sausage making dept. but if you want to know what brand of knives people who make a living with them use, look on the wall between the 2 people. Victorinox (Forschner) is the brand of every knife on that wall. There always seems to be a debate about what knife is best. That picture says it all. Good luck with your sausage project...… The only advice I will give you is to keep the meat as cold as you can keep it / borderline frozen. Sometimes if you are using a lot of fat, it will collect inside the grinder and on the auger and will need to be clean out in between grinds.

You don't need to cook the peppers and onions, just run them through the grinder as you're doing the meat. I'd say add some salt and sage then give it a whirl.

What about other pre-made seasonings that you can purchase, any suggestions?

Go to Pendery's.com. They have sausage blends.

Stub, look back in the history; I did a thread on small batch sausage. Here are some key takeaways:

Prep:
Sterilize the western half of your county. Get it clean and keep it clean. No shortcut or excuse here!
Cut meat and fat into cubes. I like to keep the fat and meat cubes separate. Make them about 1 to 2 inches in size (or so)
Mix your meat (not the fat) and additives while they are still cubes.
I use the smallest plate for the meat/recipe grind, and the next size up for the fat. I grind the meat twice, the fat once.
Mix everything together once all the grinds are done. Mix it COLD. Mix it until the fats start start to render and stick to the sides and bottom of your container. STOP mixing
Aim for about 70/30 meat to fat ratio. A typical pork butt is 80/20.

Grinding:
Grind it COLD. I mean cold enough that the edges of the meat are beginning to freeze. Dont screw this step up or you'll have a bad bind and dry to the mouth product.

Cooking:
You can add some potato starch which helps in keeping in moisture in the cooking process.
I like to cook fresh sausage in a pan with shallow water.
Curing is a different animal, I like to use a sous vide to slowly bring up the temp. You HAVE to use cure to safely do this.

Finally. I recommend you use a store bought seasoning package for your first couple of tries. Academy has some good ones. Follow those direction on the package. I really like that grinder you bought. It's the same one I have and it'll really do the job.

I use A.C. Legg's stuff. Legg's

I like Legg's also. Stuff has been around for years

Search this guy. Rytek Kutas, look up some of his recipes. Most of what he uses is the powdered spices. Decades ago when I helped my grandparents make we always used the powdered/granule spices.

Going to put these in the blender then up cut the meat up and get after it.

Finally gotter done and everything cleaned up. Put some salt, pepper and a light dusting of seasoning I use on my ribs. It looked good, smelled good and made 14 bags.

I told my wife I was going to Tom Thumb to pick up the Cilantro and Jalapenos. Well a pack of steak, cookies, some Cran-Apple for the Vodka and two racks of ribs jumped into my basket along with some other things,
my wife hates it when I go to the store to pick something up

BTW I really like my grinder

Posted the wrong pic of the package of steaks

Stub, how did it taste?

Hoping good In hind sight after I ground it up, this rookie should have cooked a small patty to taste and see what it might need before vacuum packing it all up

Smelled really good, will have some for breakfast Thursday and report back.

My next grind will be to make sausage links like Bratwurst so ears are open to suggestions on that.

Welcome to the addiction Stub. Yes agree always do a small party before packaging. Do you have a stuffer?

Not sure, will check it out when I get home. Appreciate all of your input

Bet it tastes fine, worse case you can use it for chili meat.

Using pan sausage to make spaghetti meat sauce will also kick it up a notch. If you are going to smoke your link sausage, make sure you put the pink curing salt with your seasoning blend

Stub, heres the post I started on making link type smoked (and cured) sausages. Be prepared, it's a lot of work but that's the fun of it, right?

Small batch mak'n sausage

Just saw this. When I did mine I ground 12 lbs of deer meat with the course grind plate, then ground 5 lbs of pork butt on course also, poured in some sage, garlic and curing salt, mixed both meats together by hand and then ran it back through the grinder on the finer grind. I wish it had a little more fat in it though but tastes great.

Yes my wife and it hurts so good mostly

Okay kidding aside it shows that you can stuff sausage with the grinder, would it be easier/better to buy a Stuffer?

Again thanks everyone for the tips, I will be better prepared next time

you can use the grinder as a stuffer if you have the tube/funnel attachment ... that's all we used for years on a table mount #32 and we made frequent batches of 100 lb at a time, occasionally 250 lb batches.

We would make up our sausage and then remove the cutter and cutter plate with the tube installed, feed casing/gut onto the tube and let the feeder screw of the grinder feed the sausage into the casing. It worked a whole lot better to have two people doing this with one feeding the sausage into the grinder and one handling the casing.

You're grinder should work fine for stuffing. I used a #32 hand grinder to stuff for a long time. Picked one of these up a couple years ago, 15# capacity I think, it works a lot better.

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200680783_200680783

@Stub, everyone's right, you can stuff with your grinder. That's why they give you the attachments to do it. But once you use one of these you'll never use the grinder again. Your control in the flow of the product with the hand stuffer is much better. You'll have way fewer blowouts with one of these than a grinder, especially early on when you're learning how much you can stuff in those cases.