Except for Maine’s December blackpowder season, our fall deer hunt is about over.

After two deerless seasons, I bagged an 8-point buck that dressed out at 180-pounds. I could say that I worked hard at getting a deer this year. I did spend many long hours in cold tree stands, and a few too many fruitless vigils on frosty stumps. Truth is, though, my buck simply walked up on me 20 minutes into the hunt, and when I least expected his arrival.

I got lucky.

Isn’t that so often the case in deer hunting?

You bust your hump all season and wind up never seeing a hair. Then the guy next door bags a trophy buck while cutting firewood on his back forty!

If you got lucky, too, and have your deer tagged and hanging in the garage here are some post-hunt tips that you might find worthy of consideration, especially if this is your first deer. Or perhaps you are a veteran hunter who has always wanted to process your own deer, but never quite dared to tackle the job.

My wife Diane and I have always taken care of our deer from start to finish, and over the years, have enjoyed it all as much as the hunt.

After field dressing, we hang the deer head down. If daytime temperatures remain at 40 degrees or below, we try to age the deer with the hide on for at least a week. I then remove the hide by skinning from the hind legs down. Although I used to divide the critter in two parts by sawing down the backbone, I now remove the two backstraps while the deer is hanging. These are readily visible and obvious if you carefully remove the layers of fat that accumulate around the top of the back near the hind quarters. Then I remove the two forward quarters. These come off easily if you simply cut from the inside and work your way around the top of the shoulder blades.

Before we go farther, you need to know the Reynolds keep-it-simple formula for venison cuts: steaks, hamburg and stew meat. This approach vastly simplifies the processing challenge. So, all of the meat forward of the hind quarters goes into the hamburg pile. We sometimes save the neck for mince meat, but everything else gets put through our meat grinder.

Now to the steaks. We cook our venison rare, so we like fairly thick cuts. This is a matter of personal taste, but be advised that over cooking lean wild meat can make it tough. As you cut your steaks to desired thickness, there is only one cardinal rule: always cut crossways to the grain of the meat. Study the hind quarter before you start making cuts. As the surface sheath or membrane is removed the “muscle groups” become obvious. What I do is cut out the three major muscle groups from each hindquarter. Anything left is trimmed from the bone and placed in the hamburg pile.

Once the “muscle groups” are removed from the hind quarter sections, it’s simply a process of cutting steaks by running the knife crossways to the grain of the meat. (Knives dull up fast. Keep a good sharpener handy and hone often.)

It’s a good idea to trim all fat from all pieces of meat. Unlike beef suet, venison fat does nothing to enhance meat.

After all the cutting, the final challenge is proper storage of your supply of venison. Although zip lock bags or paper wrapped packages will freeze okay, Diane and I have found that there is a way to insure proper longtime freezer storage of wild meats. We package our wild meats in Foodsaver bags and vacuum seal them. Of course, any process that gets air out of the freezer bags and away from the meat will do the trick. We have found that the Foodsaver gadget is a most utilitarian kitchen device and worth its weight in gold. We also make sure that each bag is given a good, legible label to avoid freezer confusion later on.

Let’s back up a second.

After years of trial and error, I know that aging improves venison.

But unless you have a home walk-in cooler, proceed with caution. If you plan to hang your deer, keep an eye on day-to-day temperatures.

One test we have conducted is to put a small amount of backstrap in an airtight Mason jar in the refrigerator. And it always seems a tad tastier by the second week. Once, while ice-fishing, I found the remnants of a coyote-killed deer on the ice. A piece of a hind quarter frozen in the snow (only thing left) was liberated and seared in a hot skillet on an open fire. Although this practice is frowned on by game wardens, it was the only dinner I ever shared with a coyote. That venison was aged, teeth marks and all, and was the best I had ever eaten!

But this is all non-scientific, anecdotal stuff. After all these years of wondering about the true value of aging venison, I stumbled across something scientific, “empirical evidence” as the scientists say. Here it is from a great new book “Best Venison Ever” by John O. Cartier:

Q: Is there any scientific evidence to prove that aging increases the tenderness of venison?

A: A study conducted by the food-technology department at Texas A & M University found that aging retards rigor mortis and extends it over a longer period of time. This process significantly increases the tenderness of venison taken from six study groups involving 30 whitetails. The research also found that aging increases the water-holding capacity of venison and causes the breakdown of muscle fibers. Both factors help increase tenderness. They prove without doubt that aging definitely improves the quality of meat taken from any given animal.

There it is.

You can take it to the bank.. Cartier goes on to point out that the best aging temperatures are from just above freezing to 38 degrees. Minimum aging time is five days, a week is best. Carter ages his critter by quartering it and placing it in an old refrigerator for a week.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].