I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Jon and Austin for sending me a custom Team Blue Walton’s hat with my handle right on the side!!!
The relocation to FL and job change has really put a dent in my hobby time but I hope I’ve helped some folks along their journey. Certainly unexpected but much appreciated!!! Love this group!

Just banged out 60# of Black Run venison sticks (20# plain, and 40# with habanero powder and pepper jack cheese), 25# each of habanero brats, holly breakfast, mild italian, and blue ribbon with cheddar. Smoked sticks and breakfast and finished in turkey fryer water bath. Made up some label from a wine bottle label template for the finish.

Well my old NY crew was hard at it this past weekend as you can see by the picture. Got 9 deer off a single push. Puts the body count at 22 for the season. Our deer management area has a huge county park and conservative landowners that don’t allow hunting turns this spot into brown gold!
And they still have tags to fill and I’m excited to see the next generation joining the fun!

If any of you follow my posts I CONSTANTLY complaining about manual meat mixing, meat mixers that break…blah blah blah…so this weekend I think I found the answer. My brother in law came through in a big way!!! Got this beauty as a belated Christmas present, Hobart A200 mixer and it even came with the Hobart cart!!! I can’t wait to cram 25# of meat in this and watch it extract some serious protein!!! So pumped!!!

Jonathon Austin :man_raising_hand_medium-light_skin_tone: How can we have so many awesome people on this wonderful community and have the worst emoji’s ever!?! There isn’t even a sausage…how can I get my message clearly across to my meatgistics brethren without proper selection of emojis…just sayin’ haha apparently emoji isn’t spelled with an “i” …:face_with_tears_of_joy: :face_with_tears_of_joy:

We made a run Thursday night, 80# of venison/pork Black Run Original Sticks and 25# of Walton’s breakfast. Used 21mm casings and 26mm collagen for the breakfast. Had some trouble keeping them twisted but in the smoker on Friday.

Jonathon
I’m going to take the 20# and 44# mixers out back and put them down!

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after ya!!!

This weekend was the dawn of a new day, pretty sure the earth stopped rotating for a split second here in ROC yesterday. I used the Hobart A200 mixer for the first time on a test batch. GAME CHANGER!!! I started hand mixing like everyone else and up through every mixer known to man with limited success becuase I like making sticks with cure in them and it turns to cement quickly. So I was able to score this mixer for free and knowing what I know now, I would have dropped $1,000 on one a while ago, even before upgrading the grinder. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up stuffing the big batches with this thing running behind me! I know they aren’t cheap but if you do any volume at all this truly is a game changer! #hindsightis20/20

Jonathon Joe Hell Wait till I get the Hobart mixer officially into the rotation and you’ll get to see a sweet video of a Weston 44 mixer packed with Tannerite!!!

My smartass 21 year old son is always going to the gym and he says he “stays ready so he doesn’t have to get ready”…whatever… But when he asked what I was doing at the clubhouse organizing, doing inventory, and placing my order I gave him a taste of his own medicine! We got three deer in the freezer already. We were light last year but this year looks like a good year in NY, so game on!!!

You guys will laugh but I’m not a big hunter, too cold…I don’t have a problem running the trigger but I HATE gutting anything! But… once that’s done I’m all in.
Harvesting game and processing pigs has always been a social event, the more the merrier and that’s what we do now. My crew has some passionate hunters, perfect for me! We also have “jobs” when we process. I’m responsible for planning and organizing and polling the crew for what we want to make and ordering supplies- thus the Waltons warehouse of supplies. Billy skins and takes off the football roasts and primal quarters. I cut the back straps off and clean then while other free hands debone. Best advice is follow the muscle groups. I don’t saw bones either. Then you can decide to chunk for stew/chili slice for jerky or cut for grind. We will free the big muscles while, once u cut them u can’t put them back together!
My rule is if we get out the grinder we are doing some grinding so we’ll get pork and grind and freeze. Make it easy on yourself we do everything in 5# increments so when we are ready I can pull exact amount to make certain batches.
Just some rainy Wednesday thoughts from the ROC…

Joe Hell There is something about fire that meat just likes…

Hey guys, been a minute!!! Dropping in to order some steak spice and thought I’d see what’s going on in Meatgistis Land…
I’ve owned and destroyed ever size mixer know to man. Even had a welder reinforce some of the parts to no avail.
If you’re putting cure in the mix for ANYTHING you’re making just save your pennies, troll facebook marketplace and the auction site, find a closing grocery store or pizza joint and get a Hobart A120 mixer. They are designed for the stress of the restaurant business are are durable enough to last with knuckleheads like me running the snot out of them. Game changer for our entire operation.
Hope everyone is well, FL is great but not processing just feels wrong…
Joe Hell
PapaSop
twilliams
Jonathon Tremblay
Tex_77

Mschmidt Trust us, everyone on here agrees the 11 is a great piece and really you’ll have to reload a maximum of 2 times for a 25 pound batch. Its not a big deal and you made the right choice! You’ll love how the brats and bags fill off the big horn. We try to share not only the how but also the why. I’ve been at this for decades, and between the collection of knowledge and experience on this board I’d say we’ve been there and made that mistake! This is by far the best, most open and honest group. We aren’t afraid to say we’ve made mistakes that cost time and money from equipment to spices, to processing procedures, we’re just trying to flatten the learning curve so you don’t have make every mistake we’ve made! I see first timers posting pics of very successful processing. If I didn’t have my family experience I wouldn’t have half the knowledge I do now. I’ve learned a LOT from the folks on this forum. Good people for sure!! Can’t wait to see it in action!!

Look who’s turning 1 !!! Can’t believe it’s been a year, oh how the time flies by…Yep if people can have birthday parties for there pet turtle, why not the smoker! Going to be a big day, ribs and chicken will keep the crowd smiling for sure. Got to the point we were doing so much volume, over 600# of sticks a year, not to mention every version of sausage-hot/mild italian, smoked breakfast sticks and anything else we could think of so we had to up the smoker game. The War Wagon is 4’x4’x2’, made from scratch, wood with propane assist. Lucky to have retired iron worker/welder as part of our crew. Had to do an upgrade to the running gear, used a farm cart running gear from Tractor Supply , the old girl has got some pounds to her… she weighs in at a svelte 595 pounds…
More importantly we use 19mm Walton’s smoked casing and 32mm Waltons for “bologna” just bigger version of snack sticks but we use home recipe. Never have issues with the collagen casings, buy them by the box and save a couple bucks. They can handle the hydraulic stuffer so we bang out a 100# batch in no time. Quality products for sure!!

Tex_77 Jonathon That’s because I have them all!

Volume vs Weight
There is a fundamental difference between cups and ounces. I have family recipes that are at least 75 years old and all are by weight. I think we need to keep in mind that Walton’s is a commercial supplier that has entered the retail market. My digital scale is a mandatory piece of equipment in my operation. I also feel Walton’s is vetting the spice mixes so doing a test run of prepackaged mixes is a waste of time. If you want small batches a little math will get you there. Rock on fellas best customer service around!!!

I know this thread started something about working opening day…so my trigger guys have been busy here in Western NY. This is #8 to hit the cooler, it’s been cold here so we haven’t used the new walkin cooler much but did come in handy for early archery. So far we have a 10 point dressed out at 156# in the lead this year. Clubhouse record was last year a 12 point dressed out at 192#, that thing was a beast! Goal is to process 25 this year. Now that gun season is open they’ll be dropping like flies soon enough. May seem like a lot but we never tag out. Our deer management region is in the high rent district so not much hunting pressure so we get a ton of tags. Just trying to thin the herd before winter hits!

deanlorensen I’d take a look at the coolbot. It runs a large window air conditioner lower than it should go. There are at storeitcold.com. I didn’t get all the compressor and so on, I just bought the walkin that was in good shape 10’x7’x9’ and i have no problem running it with 4 deer in it at 38F when it was 65F outside during archery. The key is the door frame and the corners, all the restaurant supply guys say there are the hardest to get. You may be able to pick up the walls on the cheap to match your door. I cut the hole in ours and I’m no electrician but it took about 10 minutes to get it set up. I haven’t set up the wifi but the idea of being able to turn it on while you’re in the field and cool it off before you get the deer back is pretty cool. I use a 12k old school beast of an AC unit. So much easier than dealing with all the parts and paying a tech to come out for a one off service call unless you have a buddy…
I was in the restaurant business and they were always having issues if you don’t run them on a regular basis. If you just planning on using it for deer season i’d go with the AC unit, you can scoop an old on up on CL for $100 ish and the coolbot is like $300 just googled it and found one at keg factory. I’d also look on their facebook page they usually have some special deal going on. If not call the order in and ask for a coupon…never hurts
You can see in the pic I set up rolling metro shelves on one side for storage and we used an old fire escape to make a rack to hang 4 gambrels off of. You can zoom in on it in the back, also watch the coolbot videos on their website or youtube. It really does work well.
Works great and everyone is jealous. Plus you can get your buddies to bring 12 packs to store their deer in your cooler!!