We "all of a sudden" had a good year here. My wife shot a big mule doe, my nephew killed a good buck 5 days later, my oldest son killed a stud whitetail buck three days after that , and my youngest shot a yearling whitetail doe two days after that; I had four deer in coolers wet-aging and draining at one time. Did not want to spend that kind of money at the processor for basically nothing more than having him grind me some burger. I have plenty of sausage from past kills that he made, and all I wanted was burger, steaks, and roasts.
I bought the .75hp LEM grinder from Bomgaars for just under $600. It comes with 10mm grind plate and 4mm grind plate. Never done it before, but I added 5% black peppered bacon to half and ~7% to half. I ground once with the 10mm and then ran it back thru the 4mm plate for a double grind. The grinding, to my surprise, was the quickest and easiest part of processing all those deer. Took me 1.5 days of dedicated processing to get all those deer cut into roasts and steaks and the other meat trimmed to my liking and ground. I packaged it all in wax lined freezer paper, as it is easy, cheap, and in my experience..the best way to not have freezer burn for long periods of storage.
I could not let myself throw any pieces into the grind pile with any silver skin on it...the most tedious part of the processing was getting my grind pile trimmed well. I think I could have saved about half the time if I wasn't so anal about that without it noticeably affecting the end product in a negative way, but better safe than sorry. My picky-with-meat kids said the 5% hamburgers I grilled were the best burgers they've ever had outside of one saloon here that is a "special treat" place to eat. They also had the 7% in chili, and they scarfed it down. It's seriously better than any beef burger we buy here with no bouncy pieces of fat to mess with your head like you inevitably get with beef.
Grinder has a 5 year warranty I think...maybe more. Easy to clean, and I it absolutely chewed thru the meat fast and easy. 0.5 hp would likely work just as well, but I can only vouch for the 0.75...it is a badass machine.
BTW, get a processing station set up somewhere that is ergonomic and won't kill your back. Oh...and never, ever let yourself get into a situation where you need to process 4 deer in a two day window. Never again!
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Originally Posted by walt4dun
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