Deer season means venison sausage is on Texas barbecue menus
For some Texans, the return of cooler weather means one thing: deer hunting season.
Bow season — hunting with bow and arrow — began Oct. 1. General hunting season begins Nov. 5.
From now until the end of the year, if you travel through South and Central Texas especially, you will see trucks and trailers filled with hunting equipment roaming the back roads in search of their preferred grounds.
This is also busy season for the deer processing facilities that dot the landscape around Texas and Houston. After the deer is harvested, it must be processed expeditiously for human consumption. The resulting venison steaks and sausage can be frozen and consumed year-round.
Bellville Meat Market, Prasek’s in Sealy and El Campo, Vincek’s in East Bernard and Dozier’s in Fulshear are some of the deer processing facilities in our area.
The typical process goes like this: After the deer is killed, it is field-dressed (disemboweled) by the hunter on-site. This is an important step, as it cools the carcass to prevent bacteria from growing, as well as removing organs, like the stomach and intestines, that host bacteria.
The deer carcass is then transported to a processing facility where it is placed in cold storage. The carcass is butchered into two forequarters
(front legs), two hindquarters (back legs) and two backstraps (the “tenderloin” muscle that runs along the spine).
Generally, the forequarters are used to make sausage, the hindquarters are turned in to steaks or jerky and the backstrap into steaks or cutlets. The meat is tagged with the hunter’s license number to assure they are getting the meat they harvested.
One important aspect of deer processing in Texas is that it is done at a completely separate facility from the meat market and barbecue restaurant at places like Dozier’s. If you buy venison sausage from the retail display case there, it was not made from wild deer in Texas.
There are a couple of reasons for this. In terms of food safety, retail meat sold in the U.S. must come from a Department of Agriculture-licensed facility, though the inspection of wild game is something of a gray area. In any case, this is beyond the scope of most small-game processing facilities, which are regulated by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. The facility can only provide the meat to the licensed hunter who harvested it for a processing fee.
From a sustainability standpoint, there are just not enough wild deer in Texas to support widespread retail sales of its meat. Indeed, there are strict limits on the number of deer that can be harvested or “bagged” in Texas. Retail venison products usually come from farm-raised deer imported from countries such as New Zealand.
After the deer is processed, the time-honored Texas tradition of turning it into venison sausage begins. At Dozier’s,
“Big Sam” Palomarez has been making the sausage there since he started in 1965 at age 16. His son Sammy has been his assistant for 23 years, and his daughter Maryann has worked in the deer processing facility for 13 years.
Based on the customer’s recipe request, the ground venison is mixed with pork (venison is very lean and pork adds fat), spices and other ingredients, and the meat is then stuffed into a casing. The sausage is smoked/cooked for four-six hours, cooled, packaged and frozen.
According to Dozier’s pitmaster Jim Buchanan, a typical 115-pound field-dressed deer will yield 65-70 pounds of consumable venison steaks and sausage for the hunter. That’s plenty of meat to carry them through the year until the next hunting season begins.