Actual Weight of Meat - Can we be honest?

[Pucky Freak]

113 pounds of boned out and fat removed meat. Opening day of archery buck in MN.

Owatonna Cabellas might be interested in buying your full body mount if you saved it. You might have killed the biggest wild deer in MN for 2020. That, or your butcher is up-charging you...

 

[willy]

I was blessed with a big cow elk this year. We boned it out in the field, brought home 180 pounds, when finished trimming ready for packaging there was 161#'s of ready to eat meat. It is either steak, roast, or burger. It was a big cow in my opinion but I shot one bigger my first year elk hunting. It ended up with more ready to eat meat than a 4x4 bull gave up on the same trip.

I have a bonafide butcher shop in my shed with accurate scales so poundage is true.

The cow looks like it has a stretched out neck because I had to tie it to a tree to keep it from going down the mountain. It rolled a hundred yards down mountain side until it hit a tree. Thank goodness for the tree or it would have been in a deep hole of a carved out gully. My buddy was able to take a measurement of the angle of the hillside and it was 43 degrees. I know it don't look like that in pic
but its the truth.

 

[willy]

Owatonna Cabellas might be interested in buying your full body mount if you saved it. You might have killed the biggest wild deer in MN for 2020. That, or your butcher is up-charging you...

We got 101 pounds boned out, ready to package meat off of one of the bucks killed this year on our farm. I don't doubt 113 on a northern deer. I won a big buck contest in MN a few years ago with a field dressed 246# buck that I got 110 pounds of meat off of. The rack didn't match the body but it was still a dandy.

 

[Big Sky Guy]

230 lbs boned out meat off my cow elk AND bull elk COMBINED this year. I usually count on 80-90 for a cow elk and 120-140 for a bull. Shot in November, I think a September bull would be more.

 

[Bowhuntrben]

Owatonna Cabellas might be interested in buying your full body mount if you saved it. You might have killed the biggest wild deer in MN for 2020. That, or your butcher is up-charging you...

We process ourselves. Not sure why people don’t get more than they do out of an animal. Perhaps leave more waste. We don’t weigh all of our deer but have gotten around that much off our bigger bucks before. We don't keep the liver, but we don't leave a scrap of meat on there for the coyotes. Don't have a pic of what this one looked like after processing, but here is a pic of the moose we got last year as it was nearing completion. Pretty typical of how they look at the end of the process. The other picture attached is a much larger body deer that we passed up a few times this year.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

We process ourselves. Not sure why people don’t get more than they do out of an animal. Perhaps leave more waste. We don’t weigh all of our deer but have gotten around that much off our bigger bucks before. We don't keep the liver, but we don't leave a scrap of meat on there for the coyotes. Don't have a pic of what this one looked like after processing, but here is a pic of the moose we got last year as it was nearing completion. Pretty typical of how they look at the end of the process. The other picture attached is a much larger body deer that we passed up a few times this year.

I’m definitely incredulous of that weight.

That does not mean I’m questioning the veracity of your post.

This thread only really works if we just take people at their word and assume their methods are sound.

I processed an average mule deer buck this fall, similar in size to others I’ve taken. 61.7lbs boned out, I shot it in the neck and butchered it in the meat house were we do the cow every year. I’m confident a professional would have been within 1% of the meat weight I achieved.
On the hoof.
Seems insane a whitetail could be 2x of this muley.

Possible? Well I’m 6ft 150lb and I’m sure there are a bunch of 6ft 200 guys on this forum. I’m sure Joe Rogan bones out 3x what I do

Same idea right?

So incredulous in a that’s amazing kinda way.

Thanks for your contributions, cool stuff.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

I just got done processing my son's and my elk and figured I'd weigh what we ended up with. He shot a yearling cow, I shot a calf. We took all four quarters, backstraps and tenderloins. These weights are of meat that is already wrapped and in the freezer.

Yearling cow:
Burger 17 lbs
Steak/roasts 37 lbs
Total 54 lbs

Calf:
Burger 12 lbs
Steak/roasts 23.25 lbs
Total 35.25 lbs

I was kind of surprised at these weights. I would have guessed them to be higher. Maybe that's what happens when you have too many late nights of meat cutting, you get generous with what you trim, haha.

 

[Bowhuntrben]

Here are a couple pics from a different buck that I recall had a similar meat yield. Unfortunately the one is out of focus, but you can still see it was 225 lbs field-dressed.

Here are a couple of references where others have had similar findings for whitetails:

Deer Weight Chart

www.pgc.pa.gov

How Much Meat is On 1 Deer? | Deer & Deer Hunting

Here is a simple formula for estimating the live weight of a deer, and also insights on how much meat you can expect to get back from the butcher.

www.deeranddeerhunting.com

Per the second reference, the "ideal" meat weight would be just over 113 pounds for the deer in the pics. The deer in question had no meat loss due to the arrow wound, and we are very meticulous about getting every piece of meat, so I would expect close to the ideal yield.

No doubt deer in different areas will have different distributions. I can say that there is never a shortage of food for the deer in our area, even in winter, so they have the resources needed to grow large.

 

[TrumpkinTheDwarf]

I had to bone out my bull alone this year, on a steep hillside, so I didn't get as many scraps off him as I would have liked, but my MT raghorn yielded 138 lbs boned out meat before processing. Amazing to hear a whitetail can give nearly as much meat as an elk! I need to move further north I guess.

 

[MThuntr]

I forgot to weigh my bone in quarters until I was nearly done. 1 young bull hindquarter (bone-in) was 64.3lbs as per my bathroom scale. I have no idea the total weight once trimmed though I suspect I'm right around 150lbs and tend to leave a carcass so clean the magpies are mad with me.

 

[BrokenChicken]

1st rifle CO young Bull 3x5
Pack out weights:
Front Q1 - 33lbs
Front Q2 - 30lbs
Rear q1 - 39lbs
Rear q2 - 42lbs
Backstraps- 8.6lbs
Tenderloins - 2.4lbs
Tongue 1 lb
Heart 1.75lbs
Liver 5.2lbs
Trimmings 11lbs
Total Meat packed out (on bone) 174lbs
Head/Antlers another 17lbs
Final weight after processing: 128lbs

4th rifle CO far cow(was bigger than my bull)

Front q1 30.4lbs
Front q2 29.2lbs
Rear q1 42.6lbs
Rear q2 42.2lbs
Backstraps 19.7 lbs!!!
Tenderloins 3.7 lbs
Scraps/trims 4lbs
Heart 2.4lbs
Liver 6.2 lbs
Total Meat packed out (on bone) 180lbs
While i processed it alre i did Not weigh processed meat yet. Its in my “holding “ freezer while i wait for CWD results. When i transfer to my main one ill weigh it.

 

[Pucky Freak]

Deboned cow elk, including heart, liver, diaphragm, tongue, and cheeks = 195.2 lbs + 8 lbs trimmed and discarded from bullet wound channels. 203.2 lbs total. Age of animal = ? (will update when lab results are posted)

 

[kwyeewyk]

Here are a couple pics from a different buck that I recall had a similar meat yield. Unfortunately the one is out of focus, but you can still see it was 225 lbs field-dressed.

Here are a couple of references where others have had similar findings for whitetails:

Deer Weight Chart

www.pgc.pa.gov

How Much Meat is On 1 Deer? | Deer & Deer Hunting

Here is a simple formula for estimating the live weight of a deer, and also insights on how much meat you can expect to get back from the butcher.

www.deeranddeerhunting.com

Per the second reference, the "ideal" meat weight would be just over 113 pounds for the deer in the pics. The deer in question had no meat loss due to the arrow wound, and we are very meticulous about getting every piece of meat, so I would expect close to the ideal yield.

No doubt deer in different areas will have different distributions. I can say that there is never a shortage of food for the deer in our area, even in winter, so they have the resources needed to grow large.

Catching up on this thread reading it backwards, and thought, those whitetails must be from Minnesota, sure enough. Huge bodies out there, saw a couple does hanging and they looked like small steers.

 

[Sask hunter]

This year animals I weighed as I cut. The moose went 520 bone in, deer 180 bone in biggest bodied I have ever got and the elk 324 bone in. He wasn’t very big bodied for his horns. The last two spikes I got went 287 and 295

 

[Khunter]

2022 Bull Moose

463 pounds bone in quarters plus backstraps, tenderloin loin and all neck/side meat etc boned out went to processor.

360 pounds came back (added zero fat to burger and no sausage or other specialty things added, just a straight cut/wrap.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

2022 Bull Moose

463 pounds bone in quarters plus backstraps, tenderloin loin and all neck/side meat etc boned out went to processor.

360 pounds came back (added zero fat to burger and no sausage or other specialty things added, just a straight cut/wrap.

Man given your pics I thought it would be more than your average CO elk... huh... weird

 

[COEngineer]

Man given your pics I thought it would be more than your average CO elk... huh... weird

I'm assuming you meant to be sarcastic, but no emojis so I can't tell.

Also, should there be a space after "..."?

 

[WapitiBob]

Buddies OR Elk, 4 qrts, back straps, tenderloins, and neck meat; 347# hanging at the processor.

 

[geewhiz]

I can look in my notes to find the weights of each component, but the total weight of elk products that was packed out of the woods on my bull this year was right at 240 lbs.

This includes boned out meat, cape (40ish lbs), and skinned out head/horns (no bottom jaw, 30 lbs).

Last year I carried out bone in quarters+loose meat & skinned out head (no bottom jaw), no cape. Total elk products packed out was 288 lbs.

 

[shannerdrake]

I’m glad we are covering this. I hear some of these yield numbers and don’t know what to think.

My 2020 bull was 392 pounds “rail weight” which is as pictured below (I added the pre-skinned pic for reference). I know because I helped the butcher hang it and I wrote down the numbers. Does that pass the sniff test with all of you or do I need to demand he calibrate his scale?