MINOT – With the dexterity of a surgeon, Steve Harris cut and sliced.

It’s what he dreamed of doing since he was 10, watching his uncle, Amos Harris, at this same hardwood table in this Minot shop.

“He never broke a sweat,” said the younger Harris. “It was as though, with every cut, his knife was meant to be there.”

Amos Harris sharpened his skill for 45 years, butchering the deer, moose and bears killed by local hunters.

In a way, he sculpted meat. And he was proud.

“He used to tell me, You’re no cutter,'” Steve Harris said. There was a hierarchy of butchers, and the elder Harris would tease him.”You’re just a slicer,” he’d say.

The memory elicits a smile.

As a boy, Steve would lend a hand, skinning the hides or carrying waste buckets.

He wanted to study at the same Toledo, Ohio, butcher school where his uncle had learned. However, it closed when he was 15.

So, after high school, Steve enrolled as an apprentice cutter with Shaw’s Supermarkets.

That was 18 years ago. He still works for the grocery chain, managing a Portland store’s meat department.

And four years ago, after Amos Harris died, Steve took over the Minot game butchering business, “Harris Custom Cutting.”

He made few changes. In the garage beside the Route 119 shop, as many as a dozen deer hang by their rear hooves, tagged, skinned and waiting to be cut.

From there, they go down a few steps and around a corner to the workshop. A band saw is used to cut the carcasses into manageable pieces. Harris does the rest by hand, using a German-made, Forschner knife.

“This is the same room, the same table and the same saw,” Harris said.

Retrieving a deer’s hindquarters from a hook, he cuts it fast, slicing off the darkened bits of exposed meat and fat within moments.

“They taught us to make each cut count,” he said. In about three minutes, meat is chopped into chunks for a stew. He can butcher a whole deer in 30 minutes.

Most years, he processes about 200 deer. This season, he’s already done about 120.

The work is priced according to the meat that results, 45 cents per pound for boneless and 35 cents with the bones. For a deer that weighs 120 pounds, about 50 or 55 pounds of meat – steaks, roasts, minute steaks, jerky and stew meat – will result.

The remaining parts are sold or composted. Local crafters have used the hooves for rattles and lamps. The hides have become gloves and coats. The tails have been sold to people who tie fishing flies.

The work creates long days for Harris, who takes two weeks of vacation from his Shaw’s job during the height of the deer season. His days can last from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

But as the business has crossed generations, so do his customers.

“I’m working for the sons and grandsons of my uncle’s customers,” Harris said. “It’s a trade that’s never going away.”