With the help of hunting dogs, Scott Brunk hunts turkey, pheasant and duck.

Wisconsin hunters sit in their tree stands, waiting for the rustle of underbrush and the flash of a movement. Their weekend in the wild unfolds slowly until the pulse quickens in a moment. The shot.

But the hunt is not over with a successful kill. With so many hunters eating their prey, they have to figure out how to turn their gutted prize into a meal. More often than not, their recipes revolve around the grill and the crockpot, including a healthy dose of marinade. But we’ve got to admit, duck wrapped in bacon does sound pretty tempting.

John Haugh of Green Bay, hunts every fall in northern Wisconsin with a group of family and friends at what he calls “deer camp.”

“I probably go more for the camaraderie of the deer camp than the hunting itself,” he says. “It’s not so much that I’m all that interested in going out and killing something, but that’s part of the tradition.”

Paul Graeve of Poynette, Wis., typically hunts deer from a tree stand with a rifle.

“The actual killing part is not really all that much fun, but when you prepare for it for a long time, it’s high adrenaline,” he says.

They’re not out for blood–but at some point, someone’s got to give, and it’s probably going to be a deer. So then what?

“Well the first thing you have to do, is you have to field dress the deer and gut it out,” Haugh says. “And there’s a process for that, obviously.”

Graeve’s father-in-law, Bob Keel of Sun Prairie, Wis. reveals the details of the field dressing process.

“You basically have to take the guts out of it so the deer doesn’t spoil, so you cut open the deer and pull the insides out,” Keel says.

After the field dressing process is complete, Haugh says, the deer needs to be taken back to the “deer camp” or truck.

“If we get a good deer, we take him and we’ll hang him up in a tree in front of the cottage,” Haugh says.

Haugh says he is not a “crazy huge hunter,” and he prefers to have someone else “bone out” the deer, so that he’s left with only boneless meat without having to deal with sawing through bone marrow and fat.

“I’ll take all the other trimmings and I’ll have them made into either summer sausage, bratwurst, venison brats, venison breakfast sausage,” Haugh says.

Dave Van Hemelryk has been making venison sausages for 28 years at Maplewood Meats, where Haugh takes his “trimmings” to be made into sausage.

“Here at Maplewood, we take in the boneless meat and then we use the same recipes that we have for our regular sausages such as summer sausage, bratwurst, bologna, hot dogs, and then we mix beef and pork with the venison to mellow out the flavor of the venison and to give it a desirable taste,” Van Hemelryk says.

Van Hemelryk says the best way to classify Maplewood Meats is as an old-fashioned meat market.

“We sell cuts of beef and pork, and we make our own sausages and hams and bacons, and we also butcher and process animals that farmers raise for themselves and their customers,” he says.

Rather than take his deer to a meat locker, however, Graeve prefers to cut it up, package it and freeze it himself.

“It’s kind of time-consuming, but it’s not that hard to do,” he says. “In order to not spend money on something we can do ourselves, we cut them up ourselves.”

However, Graeve says his father-in-law does most of the work.

“Just like you would with beef, you cut it up into quarters and halves and from there you cut them up into steaks. The rest you grind up for burgers,” Keel says.

After cutting off the legs and neck, Keel uses a gambrel and a pulley to work the hide off of the deer.

“I normally take a saw, cut the deer in half,” he says. “I take the front and I throw it on the block, and then I cut my roasts and my hamburger out of that. And then the hind quarters, I get my steaks, my roasts and hamburger.”