From Field to filet

Doug Wixson hung a sign on the door of his business Sunday: closed to fill our tags. Treasure Trail Meat Processing had been open to process big game every day for six straight weeks but Wixson took his 12-year-old daughter out on the last day of hunting season and she got her first deer, a nice buck.

"It was a lot better than her dad's first buck," Wixson said laughing.

Come Monday, it was back to work, finishing the season's last deer. Wixson estimates they have handled about 600 deer this year, 500 of them during the general rifle season. The extra doe tags available this year helped to make the big numbers. A few hunters have been close to taking the maximum 11 deer allowed.

They have also seen a few elk, probably more than 30. There were five elk the first week of the season, and then it slowed down.

"We have seen a lot of nice whitetail this year," Wixson said. "A few nice mule deer, but not as much."

He noted one big whitetail taken by a local man that might have scored 160 points. It was going to be sent in to see if it would make the record books. One mule deer had a rack almost 30 inches wide.

Wixson has been through four hunting seasons since he bought the shop. He worked in meat  processing from 1991 to 1998, when he went to work as a sheriff's deputy. But he returned to the processing business, long days notwithstanding.

The hunters arrive at all hours. A knock at the back door of the shop on U.S. 2 West brings Wixson or one of his employees. They take the tag off and put it on the head, then write up a cutting order for the meat. This a custom business, where the customer can have thick butterflied chops or preserve the whole backstrap, order minute steaks or have the lesser cuts ground, take hamburger, bulk sausage or spicy dry pepperoni. Most people want their meat vacuum sealed in plastic, but he will use freezer paper if requested.
The animal is skinned and hung in the cooler to chill, but not for very long. Venison is not aged like beef. The longer it hangs, the more they have to trim away, so they try to cut everything within two or three days, depending on how busy it gets.

"Wild game is not the cleanest, most well taken care of stuff," Wixson noted.
The knives they use are razor-sharp stainless steel Forschner brand, expensive but long-lasting. He keeps their edge with the $500 electric sharpener he bought this fall. Before they used an oil stone. As they work, they whisk the knives over a steel periodically. They explain that it dresses the rolled-over edge of the knife but doesn't sharpen it.
The hunter's name is on the carcass, so everyone gets their own meat back.

The only thing that gets batched is sausage, which they make at least one day a week. The deer are trimmed very lean, so extra beef or pork fat is needed for the sausage. They don't use deer fat because it is too greasy and gives the sausage a bad taste.
An average buck dressed out weighs about 130-140 pounds. The biggest one Wixson ever saw weighed about 155 pounds.
"Everybody claims all their deer weighed 200 pounds dressed. I just laugh at them."
A big buck will yield 65 to 70 pounds of meat - depending on how badly they're shot. Does will yield 35 to 40 pounds.

The weather this year has been perfect for hunting season, as far as Wixson is concerned. He hates really cold hunting seasons, when the deer come in frozen. Then it's a longer job to process them. He has to thaw them a little to get the hide off, and he can't cut them up.

By 8 p.m., most of the deer have been dropped off.

"Yeah, after that they call me," says Frank Vandall.

"My phone dies all the time!" Wixson jokes.
Vandall takes a phone call and announces that they have to save some eyeballs. They are for a high school science class. Sometimes the school wants joints, or livers or hearts. Vandall used to save hearts for the axolotl, the Mexican salamander that lived in an aquarium at the Pioneer Museum.

"I never did look at it but I fed that sucker a lot," he said.

Pacific Hide and Fur takes the deerskins. Actually, it's Pacific Steel and Recycling now, but they are still taking the hides. Wixson doesn't know what the price will be this year. He doesn't think it will be a lot, but it's something and it's better than throwing the skins away.

The bones used to go to a mink farm, but now they get tossed in the landfill.
The worst mistake hunters make is to shoot the animal in the good meat, Wixson said. Next is to leave it in the back of the pickup too long or hang it in a tree too long.

"Seeing fawns come shot in their hindquarters doesn't make a lot of sense to me," Wixson said. "There are a lot of big guns out there and they wreck a lot of meat. You roll your eyes sometimes."