Wisconsin hunters harvested just over 182,000 white-tailed deer during last year’s gun deer season.
Those deer needed to be processed into meat and businesses like Meatski’s Quality Meats help provide that service.
Chad Soletske and his wife, Tashina, own and operate the meat processor, butcher shop, convenience store and gas station at W11124 State Highway 64, on the Oconto and Marinette county line between Mountain and Pound.
The Soletskes and their staff are gearing up for what is expected to be a busy nine-day season, which this year will be held Nov. 21-29.
Chad Soletske said there are things hunters can do to make processing their deer into venison easier.
“The first thing they should do is remove all the innards — the internal organs — as soon as possible after harvesting the animal,” he said. “It’s called field dressing. You remove all the genitalia. People forget to do that a lot of times and they bring it to me. I make them do it anyway. The way I explain it is you don’t want that tainting your meat, and what that’s doing is tainting your meat.
“After the animal is field-dressed, you bring it to me as soon as you can. Come into the store, and somebody here will help you fill out your cutting sheet for how you want your animal processed. We take it in back and hang it up in our cooler. I skin twice a week and try to cut every deer I get each week.”
Meatski’s customers have plenty of options for turning their deer into venison, according to Soletske.
“It’s all over the board, anything from fresh sausage like breakfast links to summer sausage,” he said. “Then, there’s the fresh steaks, roasts, stew meat.”
Business at Meatski’s started to pick up in mid-September with the opening of the state’s bowhunting deer season, Soletske said.
“Opening weekend is usually pretty busy,” he said. “After that, it dies off until the end of October, when the deer really start moving, the weather gets cool and people like to go out into the woods and sit.”
Things really pick up once the gun season opens.
“It gets pretty hectic,” Soletske said. “Generally, we skin them, quarter them and cut them up as fast as we can. On a really good day, we can do 60 deer. I generally have five guys on a table with four guys cutting. If it’s straight cut with no sausage, it’s generally a week until gun season. Once gun season rolls around, it’s longer. We try to accommodate everybody, but we can only take so many deer at a time.”
Soletske said venison has advantages over other meat, including beef and pork.
“Venison’s very lean, and there are no additives to it,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about all the steroids in beef and pork. It’s all natural, about as natural as you’re going to find. You get to take what you want to take home.”
