I have a student that culls (shoots) excess deer here in Virginia each year and he gives me two for a Christmas present. After testing for disease, processing and packaging, and freezing, the cost for the two deer run around $500! It is a fine gift and much appreciated. Mostly, I get packages of burger, loin steaks, stew meat and some breakfast sausages. Sometimes, I will request some of it made into jerky. I spend the next year making pots of venison stew and curry, which I refreeze. Life is good.
Mine cost $300 to be processed.
I shot it at 6:30am.
It was in the low thirties temperature that morning. I hung it from my tractor bucket in the shade when the temperature got up to 40F.
By 3pm it was in the cooler at the processing plant a half hour away.
A week later they called me to come pick up the two boxes of meat.