Hate to say it, but one reason you have such low quality deer processors is because customers aren't willing to pay enough to have a deer butchered properly and in a expert manner. For example, id hypothetically be glad to butcher and process your deer for you and I'd knock it out of the park. $150 minimum + a tip. Anything less than that would not be worth my time. ~$60 for a professional to butcher a deer is a joke, but that's the expectation many hunters have (as they pull up in their $75,000 truck with their $8,000 atv, and a deer from their $2500 lease). That's not to say that another meat cutter wouldn't do a deer for $100, but people tend to complain about paying $100. Low pay attracts low quality work. Deer processing is already business model based on a very brief period of time and therefore relies on temporary workers. It's not a great business model unless you are processing farm animals as well.
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. I process my own too, but that is ONLY because I don't know of a single processor in the Maryville/Knoxville area worth a crap. So, I'm interested to see where this thread goes.
Years ago I did all my processing, then when I found out that a local full time butcher shop was doing deer for only $55, I gave them a try and was more than pleased. They could do the job properly at that price because they were used to doing cattle and hogs. They could easily do several deer in the time it would take to do just one steer. They had a huge freezer where they aged the meat and you got YOUR deer back. Unfortunately for local deer hunters, another local butcher shop closed a couple of years ago and this place got all that business on top of what they already had and they no longer have the capacity to handle deer. When this happened I wasn't comfortable taking my deer to any of the regular "deer" processors so I got a good grinder and started doing all my own processing again.
