Every decision about your deer is made in four minutes at a counter, on one sheet of paper. Here is the sheet.
Boneless processing since 1986. You mark this form at drop off, we cut to it, and it comes back vacuum sealed with your name and tag number on every package. Two of those lines cannot be undone afterward, so it is worth reading them in the truck rather than at the counter.
- Whole deer, boned out$110
- Back in your handsAbout a week
- In season, seven days7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The drop off sheet
Seven lines, and the price of each one printed beside it.
The boxes ticked below are what most people mark. Nothing here is a recommendation you have to take, and you can change any of it at the counter. What you cannot do is change it after you drive off, because by then it is cut.
01 Hide
- Skin it for me $25
- Already skinned
The only charge that lands before the $110. If you skinned it in the field, say so and the line comes off. Hides can be left here either way.
02 Cape for a shoulder mount
- Yes, cape it
- No mount
This is the line that cannot be fixed. A cape is cut well behind the shoulder and never up the throat, and it has to be done before anything else starts. Tell us at the counter, not on the phone the next day.
03 Steak thickness
- Three quarter inch
- One inch
- Inch and a quarter
An inch is what most sheets come back marked and it is the thickness that survives a hot pan. Thinner than three quarters and venison is grey before you have turned it.
04 Backstraps
- Left whole
- Cut into steaks
Whole freezes better, and you can still cut a whole strap at home on a Tuesday. Nobody has ever put one back together. This is the one line on the sheet you can still reverse in your own kitchen.
05 Roasts
- Two roasts, rest ground
- No roasts, all ground
- Stew meat instead
Roasts come off the hindquarters and every roast you keep is about four pounds that does not become burger or sausage. Households that own a slow cooker keep them. Households that do not, tell us so.
06 Grind
- Deer only, nothing added
- Beef fat, fifteen percent
- Pork fat, fifteen percent
Straight deer burger costs nothing extra and it cooks dry, and we would rather say that here than after you have thawed a pound of it. Beef fat keeps it tasting like beef. Pork fat is what the sausage side prefers.
07 Pounds into the smokehouse
- Summer sausage lb $3.75
- Snack sticks lb $4.50
- Jerky lb $6.25
- Brats and breakfast lb $2.50
This is the line the money is on. Everything above it is included in the $110. Pounds you write here are on top of it, and they are decided at the counter because the smokehouse is loaded that night. Jerky takes three pounds of trimmed meat to make one finished pound, which is the whole reason its number reads high next to the sausage.
The sheet above, priced out
- Whole deer, boneless, cut to the sheet110.00
- Skinning25.00
- Summer sausage, 20 lb75.00
- Snack sticks, 5 lb22.50
Total, paid at pickup$232.50
The $110 covers the whole animal boned out and cut however big it is, and there is no per pound charge on the standard job. Cash or card when you collect, never at drop off. Turnaround is about a week for a plain cut and closer to two if a lot of it is going through the smokehouse, because the smoker runs on its own schedule and not on ours.
Line 07, at length
The smokehouse is in this building, and it is ours.
Nothing is shipped out to a plant and returned with your name stapled to it. Three things come out of it, and they are the three numbers you write on the last line of the sheet.
Summer sausage
Regular, jalapeno and cheese, and a hot one that is genuinely hot rather than warm. It comes back in chubs of about a pound and a half, ready to slice. It is the first thing every household runs out of, so the pound figure people write is nearly always lower than the one they wish they had written.
$3.75 a pound
Jerky and snack sticks
Jerky is whole muscle sliced with the grain, marinated and dried. It is not ground and formed. Sticks are the thing that empties out of a truck console between the shop and home, bagged by the pound in regular, hot and cheese.
$6.25 and $4.50 a pound
Brats, breakfast sausage and the burger
Fresh links in natural casing, breakfast sausage in one pound rolls, and burger blended to whatever line 06 says. The grinder is the last stop for everything that is not a steak or a roast, which on an average deer is most of the animal.
$2.50 a pound
Why the door stays open until ten
Our whole year is six weeks long, and it happens after dark.
From the first weekend of November to the middle of December, somebody is standing in a field at half past four with an animal down and a phone in his hand. What he needs is three facts: whether we are taking deer today, what time the door shuts, and what it costs. All three are at the top of this page because that is the only part of it anybody needs at that hour.
A deer down at dusk belongs in a cooler that night, not in a truck bed until morning. That is the entire argument for the ten o'clock close, and it is the reason this shop is worth the drive past two closer ones.
Wendell Pruett, cutting in this county since 1986
Getting here, and what happens when you do.
- 123 Main St, Plattsburg, MO 64477. Gravel lot with room to swing a trailer around.
- Back up to the roll up door on the north side, the one with the light over it. That is the drop off bay. Not the front door.
- After hours in season, ring the bell on the door frame. If the light is on, somebody is inside. Ringing beats phoning at that hour.
- Fill out the sheet on the counter. Pens are there. It takes about four minutes and you have already read it.
- In season, seven days7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Off season, Monday to Friday8 to 4
- Off season, weekendsClosed
Call before you drive out on the two big weekends. The cooler does fill, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than have you make the trip and turn around in the lot.
Towns we take from: Plattsburg, Lathrop, Gower, Turney, Trimble, Cameron, Stewartsville, Osborn, Maysville, Kearney, Smithville, Holt, Excelsior Springs, Polo, and the farms on the county roads through Clinton, DeKalb, Caldwell and northern Clay.
