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View Full Version : Don't throw them shanks out!!


Andrew Sacco
11-24-2025, 11:13 AM
Braised venison shanks. 4 hours at 300 degrees. Ingredients include red wine, beef paste, stock, tomato paste, carrots, celery, onions and garlic. Given a deer usually has four legs one deer will heartily feed 4 men as this is very filling and rich.

CraigThompson
11-24-2025, 11:39 AM
That’s intresting to say the least ! I usually trim the shank meat off and it goes in the bags that are to be ground up later .

Andrew Sacco
11-24-2025, 12:08 PM
That’s intresting to say the least ! I usually trim the shank meat off and it goes in the bags that are to be ground up later .

Yeah that's a waste of a great piece of meat meant for braising low and long and slow. The collagen and sinew and even the silverskin all melt to give it a pretty silky texture. Not as tender as veal osso bucco but I've converted more than one deer hunter into shank cookers : )

Chris Travinski
01-20-2026, 11:20 PM
I've always wanted to try do something with the shanks, that looks amazing! I'm a big fan of the neck too, a very underrated piece of meat in my opinion. I started deer hunting 5-6 years ago. As time passes on, less and less parts of the deer go into the grinder pile.

CraigThompson
01-20-2026, 11:39 PM
Yeah that's a waste of a great piece of meat meant for braising low and long and slow. The collagen and sinew and even the silverskin all melt to give it a pretty silky texture. Not as tender as veal osso bucco but I've converted more than one deer hunter into shank cookers : )

I understand typically you guys in the NE can kill one to three a year , where as below the Mason Dixon line the yearly bag limit goes up significantly , the season in my particular county is two per day from 9/2 until 3/30 of which only three can be antlered . Now honestly that’s way more then I wanna deal with , usually 5-10 take care of my and a friend or two’s needs . And to be honest this late antlerless season which is going on now just doesn’t pull me like the season when bucks are legal . Anyway years back when I’d kill a good bit more than I do now there was an old black fellow that had about a dozen kids so I’d try and take him a deer or two each year anyway I pulled up once and had a carcass in the back of the truck along with the legs of three other deer with 3-5 inches of the shank still there , he asked me what I was going to do with them and I replied toss in a brush pile . He then told me to put them with the deer he thought he could do something with those as well . Think I gave that man ten deer over the years , he owned I think 150 acres of scrub timber that a club from Northern VA leased . He asked me once if I was bringing him deer trying to get permission and I told him no and asked why . He then told me about his property and that is was leased then he told me those guys had leased it x amount of years and never offered him a piece of venison . I think he truely appreciated what I brought him .

J. Scott Hanes
01-20-2026, 11:54 PM
Paying forward never hurts!

Chris Travinski
01-21-2026, 11:04 AM
I understand typically you guys in the NE can kill one to three a year , where as below the Mason Dixon line the yearly bag limit goes up significantly , the season in my particular county is two per day from 9/2 until 3/30 of which only three can be antlered . Now honestly that’s way more then I wanna deal with , usually 5-10 take care of my and a friend or two’s needs . And to be honest this late antlerless season which is going on now just doesn’t pull me like the season when bucks are legal . Anyway years back when I’d kill a good bit more than I do now there was an old black fellow that had about a dozen kids so I’d try and take him a deer or two each year anyway I pulled up once and had a carcass in the back of the truck along with the legs of three other deer with 3-5 inches of the shank still there , he asked me what I was going to do with them and I replied toss in a brush pile . He then told me to put them with the deer he thought he could do something with those as well . Think I gave that man ten deer over the years , he owned I think 150 acres of scrub timber that a club from Northern VA leased . He asked me once if I was bringing him deer trying to get permission and I told him no and asked why . He then told me about his property and that is was leased then he told me those guys had leased it x amount of years and never offered him a piece of venison . I think he truely appreciated what I brought him .

Wow, that's a much more liberal bag limit than we have up here. We can get quite a few deer in a season, but there are bag limits within each segment of the season. It can tricky.

There is a nice property adjacent to ours that is a deer hunter's paradise. It took several years of politely asking to get my foot in the door. Since I've been granted permission, I send my boys over to shovel his walkway and clean off his car when it snows. A simple gesture but it means the world to the guy. I little bit of kindness goes a long way!

Can you send me that recipe Andy?