Wild game butchering is an art

Fall is hunting time. Which means a busy season for wildgame butchers.
While some people might think butchering your own meat is part of the hunt, Sausage Pros Inc. in Thunder Bay believes by them butchering wild game, it gives the hunter more time to hunt.
Mike Bihun and Kathy Nuutinen owners of Sausage Pros Inc. are wild game processing specialists and veteran butchers with a combined experience of 50 years. The co-owners of Sausage Pros Inc. opened their own wild game processing plant three years ago. “We are promoting wild game,” Bihun said.
According to Bihun, the advantages of having a butcher prepare your wild game include: commercial cutting and processing equipment to create cleaner, consistent, quality and variety cuts in a controlled and regulated environment and the ability to properly dispose of a carcass and package meat products which saves people time.
“We process everything from moose, deer, bear and cariboo to goose,” Nuuutinen said. “The animal is usually brought in skinned. We cut and package the meat, dispose of the carcass and we make everything from roasts, pepperettes, burgers, smoked sausages to steaks.”
All of their types of wild game meat products are gluten free with no fillers (except breakfast sausages) and contain spices. They try to make their meats as natural as possible by using minimal nitrates and fat content. They are constantly creating new flavours for sausages and other wild game products to offer different choices and to make wild game more appealing to cook and eat.
“We make any kind of sausage. We have two pages of menus to choose from. Since it is your own meat, we will alter the recipes to whatever a person wants,” said Bihun.
Bihun believes wild game food demands are increasing and their products are just as good and in some instances even better than domestic meat products.
“You bring in your animal quartered or whole. We can skin, hide and debone the animals and make whatever cut a person wants,” he said. “We are the only company in town who will bring in the carcass for you. We are friendly and accommodating people.”
The company got into wild game butchering when they started one moose at a time and eventually they were butchering up to 300 moose alone. The wild game butchering business is busy and getting busier.
The butchering couple believe more people are choosing to get their wild game professionally butchered because it’s a lot of work and warmer fall weather means people are no longer able to hang their game in a garage and work quickly enough to get it butchered themselves.
“For us to butcher a deer, it would cost a person between $60 to $80 depending on the size, weight and what they want done with it. The cost includes steaks, burgers and hamburgers, but sausages are more,” said Bihun.
About 20 per cent of the customer base is aboriginal and this number is growing. Several individual customers from Lake Helen, Sioux Lookout and Red Rock bands ship or bring their wild game to Sausage Pros Inc.
“When we are dealing with volume it brings down the cost for the customer. It’s a lot easier to do a big volume order for a community rather than individual orders,” Bihun said.
Wild game tends to be leaner than other meat because wild game animals are more active and carry less fat.