Was hoping to find an actual video...

Yes we butcher our own, including beef, sheep, hogs, chickens, deer, and elk. It really isn't very difficult to do, and learning how to do it is pretty straight forward. It's also nice to know just how the animal was cared for, so you're not worrying over possible contamination from something.

No worries about the link, still interesting. I guess I'm probably a geek for even complaining.

My parents have a pretty good sized farm, so basically every meat item that comes into my house comes off their farm.(aside from my deer and elk)

Funny how things change when you get older. As a kid I hated having to take care of the farm and do chores all the time, as well as butchering animals.(the oldman worked me like a rented mule) Now I wish I owned a nice little farm of my own.

007,
Years ago there was a man in the community that went around and cut up the hogs and trimmed the hams and bacons because not just everyone could do it. My Dad was one of those guys that went all over the community around Franklin and trimmed up hams and bacons for sugar curing. It was an art so the hamns and bacons would take the sugar cure.

A couple of years ago, while my son and I were butchering an elk, a bystander asked how two guys from Los Angeles had learned to efficiently accomplish the task. I related growing up on a small cattle ranch were every thing we ate we grew, raised or hunted. We even had a smoke house and hog scalding vat. plus a simple slaughterhouse. After I moved to the big city my son spent summers with his Grandpa. While being interviewed on TV after winning a rodeo championship he was asked if anyone ever teased him about wearing a school uniform while attending a private school. His reply was" no, because now that some of his rodeo friends were getting married, he was the only one at the wedding who knew how to tie a tie." Kindest Regards

Sarge,
You may have heard of it, there is a collection of a dozen or so soft cover books put out by a Foundation called Foxfire. Their purpose is to help preserve rural American traditions, the books have the same name. They cover everything from hog calling to moonshine manufacturing, ghosts to fiddle making. Well worth reading and indeed owning. Kindest Regards

Apologize for the spelling

butcher wild hogs but take all our beef in to get done just done have the time to do our beef ourself

I do buy local beef and pig...thinking of raising one or the other... got the chickens now... not real rural, but inbetween. Thinking of sheep too, as they are easy to handle, and I could do that since its like a deer, and I do, do my own processing on deer. The old ways need to come back to America and not just the butchering... ya know!

I am 17 years old, me and a close friend raise calves and we kept 3 and are going to raise them out to butcher for us and the families. We just butchered 4 hogs and processed them ourselves and you can tell by the taste of the meat that they are homegrown, it is great. I have killed around 20 deer and we butcher them all by our selves. There is no better taste than a home grown animal and I will always butcher my own animals. We also raise and butcher our own chickens. If it wasn't for my father I would never had learned how to kill, skin, and process an animal. He learned it from his father and so on and i plan to pass it on to my children. Butchering is an art, and it is being lost to large food processing plants. Lets keep it going, pass on your skills.