Sausage Question

Hi All. Quick question for you guys...

Ended up shooting my first deer this year and would love to try my hand at making some sausage with all the tasty trimmings I have in my freezer. I have access to a meat grinder and all the accessories, I just need some clarification on pork filler...

Depending on who I talk to, I seem to get conflicting answers on what the best pork cut is for a mix with venison sausage. While I have access to butt and belly, pork shoulder seems to be the most cost effective option. Can anybody help me out on this? Would a pork shoulder blade roast suffice? Or should I spend the extra money on butt or belly?

Pork shoulder would be fine. I usually just get pork trimmings from a butcher . A friend uses belly....

I'd think pork shoulder would be best - you don't want to be adding just pork fat.

I have made venison / pork sausage, 50/50 with pork shoulder or "Boston Butt", if you want to just use pork fat I would drop it to 25% fat instead of 50% pork and you should be fine, you can always make a small batch to test things first.

Remember though, if you are going to smoke them at all you need to use a cure to be safe.

Even the ham is good. Catali has it for 98 cents a pound right now. One thing to remember a cooked product not so much of a concern however for a dry cure product prep is much more involved. There is good fat and bad fat but that's for another day.

30-40% pork shoulder

try the hi mountain sausage kits,they are great

40% pork shoulder for best results. Wait for it to go on sale.

We use pork shoulder trimmings with very good results. If you watch fortinos fliers they have had shoulder on sale for $1.30/lb a few times lately. We then do pulled pork with the rest of the shoulder.
I'd suggest you spend some time on honest-food.net. We haven't had a bad recipe from that website yet. We really like the hunters and andouelli sausage. The polish was good but those two were really good. Hank is very technical. I learn a lot reading his posts.
HD

There's lots of great info on this site, I started making my own sausage after following Roe's posting and got inspired to give it a shot. Once you have the basic equipment the rest is straight forward. I've tried various ratios of venison to pork, my best smoked kielbasa has been 40% venison and 60% pork, however a ration of 50-50 or even 60-40 will produce some very tasty sausage. Personally I find the shoulder the best and most cost effective cut, just trim away some of the soft mushy fat and glands found between the muscle groups and keep as much of the hard outside fat to mix into your venison/pork mix. Personally I've never tried the spice kits available at most sporting goods stores, over the years through trial and error and much research I've developed my own recipes and spice mixtures which have produced quality sausage with consistent results. Good luck!

Wow! Thanks for all the input guys...I think I am going to go the pork shoulder route.

The only question I have yet is am I only to use the fattier pieces of the shoulder for the pork filler or do I use the entire shoulder?