Story by Tom Claycomb III

I could write a monthly article on processing and cooking the game we kill until the day I die. There are so many angles. What equipment do you need as far as knives, sharpening gear, grinders, stuffers, saws, Cryovac baggers, spices, cutting boards, smokers, grills, sous vide cooking, how to make sausage, aging our game and the list goes on and on.

I went to Texas A&M and got an AnSc degree and then worked in beef packing plants for 45 years. I took what I learned there and put into my outdoor world. I’ve written numerous articles on these topics and will write more in the years to come but today let’s delve a little deeper into some specifics.

First, let’s clarify one thing that many people get mixed up on by looking at one cut and this theory applies to all cuts. We’ll start with a beef rib. A rib can be turned into at least nine different cuts, according to how far you process it.

Let me give an analogy. If you cut down a pine tree, it is a Christmas tree. If you cut off the limbs, it is a fence post. If you take it to a saw mill, it becomes 2×4’s. If you take the boards planed out of the tree to a cabinet shop, it becomes a cabinet.

It is the same scenario with your beef (deer) cuts. As you remove more bones and fat it is called something different, also the more bones and fat you remove, the more expensive it becomes because it weighs less and is a better product.

For example, what we call a backstrap on our deer is the rib and strip on a cow. From the 5^th rib to the 12^th rib is a rib and from the 13^th rib to the 5^th sacral vertebrae is the strip. That’s the proper break but I want more backstrap so I cut from the 3^rd rib to the 5^th Sacral vertebrae when boning out my big game and I imagine you do as well.

Now let’s get into equipment we need. To do my processing I use two knives. A boning knife and an 8-inch breaking knife. I bone everything from an antelope on up to a moose with a 6-inch boning knife. There are two good boning knives on the market. The Knives of Alaska Professional boning knife and the Smith’s Consumer Products 6-inch boning knife. They’re the two best options out there. They are semi flex so you can remove all the meat off the bones and get clean bones with them.

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