I've been making a lot of pork/beef sausages over the last few months and have a recipe down that I like, but now I'm about to transition to making some game sausages since it's that time of year, and am unsure on what percentages of venison to pork shoulder to use. I've been using 70% pork butt and 30% brisket for my sausage, but wonder if I need to up my pork shoulder significantly to account for the lack of fat in venison, maybe 50/50? Going to post to outdoors too, but wanted to start here. Thanks.

At the processing shop we default to 60/40 (deer/pork). It dries nice and the fresh is juicy. We have also made 50/50 if the person requests it with nearly the same outcome. For dry I wouldn't go over 50% pork, for fresh I wouldn't go under 40% pork. Too much pork in fresh leads to a pork sausage taste/texture instead of venison taste/texture.

We make 10,000+ lbs of sausage per year for people and everyone likes that ratio range.

Thanks! Mind giving out your business name/location? I might want to buy some sausage!

At a minimum, you need about 20% fat in a sausage just for palatability and moisture. That's why a sausage made with pork butts works so well; you can figure they're about 20-25% fat. So when you start adding a lean meat like venison which is almost 0% fat, that fat ratio in the sausage goes down. For our sausage, we go 65/30/5 pork picnic shoulders/venison/pork back fat to keep the fat content high enough, and you can still taste the venison. You could even go 80/20 venison/pork fat, but I think that's way too strong on the venison flavor.
I've posted our sausage recipe here before, so if you search this forum, you should be able to find it.

Found your recipe. Thanks. I need a smokehouse...

Quote:

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For 100# of sausage (approximate):
57.5# boneless pork picnic shoulders, skin off
7.5# pork backfat
35# venison
1# 12 oz kosher salt or pickling salt
4 oz Insta-Cure #1 (aka Prague Powder #1 or pink salt. If you're not going to cold smoke the sausage or dry some, you can leave it out, and just replace with the same amount of kosher or pickling salt)
9 oz black pepper (#16 or #32 mesh is fine)
4 large garlic cloves
3/4 oz cayenne pepper

Slice the pork, venison, and backfat into pieces suitable for your grinder. Take about a cup of the salt, and grind it with the garlic in a food processor until no visible pieces of garlic remain. Combine the garlic salt with the rest of the seasoning. Sprinkle seasoning over meat, and mix thoroughly. Grind the meat through a 3/8" die. Mix to combine the lean and fat so there aren't any large pockets of lean or fat. Regrind the meat through a 3/16" die. Check the bind by taking a piece the size of a golf ball, and make a patty of it in your hand. If you can turn your hand over and the patty sticks without falling, the bind is right. If you want to add cheese, use a high-melt cheese at a rate of 1 pound of cheese to 10 pounds of meat. Stuff into casings of your choice (the ones we get aren't sized, but they are roughly a 32mm-38mm hog casing. If you're using a natural casing, flush them first, even though it's a royal pain to do so). Hang the sausage in the smokehouse, and cold smoke for 2-4 hours. Remove the smoke source, and air out the smokehouse (the smokehouse we use has a bathroom exhaust fan in it, so we get it cooled down quickly). Allow the sausage to hang and bloom overnight between 32-45 degrees. The next day, vacuum pack the sausage, label it, and freeze.

Edit: we use green pecan wood to smoke, and mesquite coals for the fire. You only need enough coals to get the pecan wood smoking. We used to use green hickory, but grandpa neglected to tell us where the hickory tree was on his brother's property before he died, and my dad and I could never find it. So we switched to pecan.

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You are living my dream. Would love to do that!

60/40 venison to pork for breakfast sausage, with as fatty a cut of pork as I can find and any fat trimmings I have laying around added.
60/40 venison to brisket or chuck for link sausage

My German Coarse sausage is a 50/50 mix venison to brisket or chuck, that's the only one that is that high though.

To me when you get more of what should be the secondary meat (pork, brisket, etc.) into the mix than the game, you overpower the game and that is just a waste. Might as well go 100% pork or beef at that point IMO - I make venison sausage because I want the venison flavor, not whatever I'm mixing as a filler flavor.

As customers of Central Texas processing I can honestly say we have been very happy with what we've gotten from them so far. And yes whether we take it in or do it ourselves with venison we do a 60/40 ratio bc it's not greasy but doesn't dry out either.