We had a couple of large trees close to the house that he would hang the steers from. The neighbor had an old military 6X6 with a boom and a winch attached. We'd borrow that to hoist the steers up after gutting the animals and then proceed to skin them out and hang them neck down about 8-10 feet off the ground. At that height, they were safe from any critter that wandered in. My uncle would usually sit on the gut piles the first few days and more than once, he bagged a bear coming into the gut pile. I'd hear about it when boning out a front leg or something and left a little meat on the bone!
I was actually surprised when I paid $1.49 for the last suet I bought. The previous year when I bought it, it was .99 cents/lb. Don't know why it surprised me though, with the price of most everything going up. There was only one time I had a butcher cut up an animal for me. That was when I lived in AK and had a local butcher cut a muskox up for me. I'd have done it myself, but I really didn't have a good place to hang it and I didn't want it to freeze. It was a big old bull and before I took it to the butcher, I cut some backstraps off to BBQ up. When I stuck it with a fork to turn it, the fork bounced off! When I picked up the cut up animal, the butcher confirmed it was tougher than boot leather. He said he had to change the grinder plates out 3 times when he ground some of it into burger!
Your Winston Churchill quote Keith reminds me of my grandfather, who was of the same generation as Churchill. He toured through a plant where hotdogs were made, he never ate another hotdog after that.
