Meat Cleaver - Wild Game & Beef Processor — Local services in Berkley

Originally dropped off 2 elk on 11/23(mine and my buddies). Had never used these guys in the past, but after years of hearing nothing but positive feedback from others, decided to give them a shot. Had a pretty unpleasant experience at drop off with a mouthy, younger gentleman who unloaded the animals. Not the end of the world and looked past.

Dealt with Jeff, the apparent new owner, on giving the cuts we wanted to have and what sausage we wanted done. Once finished, Jeff said to expect an email within 3-4 weeks from drop off date of 11/23. Simple enough.

As of 12/23, my buddy nor I, had received any communication or emails. I emailed them to see when we might be expecting to pickup our processed meat. Received a response back 12/26 “CLOSED TILL JAN 2ND. WILL BE IN TOUCH SOON….MC”. Ok, no problem, I expect and appreciate them being closed for the holidays.

Received an email 12/30 stating my order is ready for pickup. Arrive on 1/2 to pickup my order. Upon picking up, I asked Jeff when my buddy can expect an email or be notified that his animal is ready. Gave Jeff my buddy’s name, he looks it up in the computer, and tells me “well, we don’t go in order of the tag numbers or the order of when they were dropped off”. Ok, whatever.

Get home, start unloading my meat from coolers and start placing into the freezer, only to notice a strong 25% of the vacuum sealed packages, the vacuum seal had failed and the meat had frost or freezer burn inside the packaging. Not only that, but I only received 3 packages of Elk tenderloins with 1-2 tenderloins, about the size of a 1/2” thick hockey puck…. There was absolutely no damage done to the tenderloins or backstraps on my animal, and no reason there should have been any trimmed out of what was dropped off.

Decided to take a look at the drop off and cut sheet to see if maybe I am missing something and confirm what the drop off weight was. Guess what?!? No drop off weight given! I specifically quizzed Jeff when we dropped off our animals how much meat we could expect to receive back from a full size cow elk. His reply, 175 pounds. What did I receive back, per their invoice? 233 total pounds.

To make matters worse, I don’t know what kind of pork fat they mixed in with the burger(I requested 10% pork fat be mixed in), but when trying to make patties, this is the stickiest, greasiest meat I have ever touched. AND, the smell is horrendous.

I would highly recommend steering clear of this business, if you have the expectation of receiving back the animal you dropped off, in edible condition, and feeling satisfied with the outcome or your hard...

I have used them for the past 6 years, but I will never use them again. I dropped off my meat there and they weighed all 4 quarters, and a bag of tenderloins and backstraps (loin). They had the weights for the quarters and backstraps listed separately on my cut sheet. They called me roughly a week later to pick up my order. When I was going through the meat I realized there were no backstraps and tenderloins. I contacted them and they said I did not bring any backstraps or tenderloins in and even produced a fake cut sheet with a note that someone had added that said"No backstraps or tenderloins". I then forwarded them the original cut sheet which they had emailed to me at the time I dropped off my meat. The original cut sheet had no such note. Additionally I pointed out that the weight of the backstraps and tenderloins was still listed on their falsified cut sheet. Once I pointed this out they said they would look for my order and told me they would reach out to me by the end of the week which they did not. I followed up with them the following week and they said they needed a few more days to complete my order (your guess is as good as mine about what that means since my meat had already been processed). I showed up a few days later to collect the rest of my order. They dumped a bunch of random meat in my cooler shut the lid and put it in my car before I had a chance to look at it and walked away. The guy was generally acting suspicious. So I opened up the cooler to take a look. There were only 3 packs of loin meat the rest was predominantly ground. These packs were for the most part poorly sealed with ice forming on the insides of the packs. These did not include labels or packaging like the rest of the meat I had already picked up, and as I rummaged in the cooler looking for more loin meat. I found a note labeled "DONATION". I suspected that this wasn't even my elk. I went back inside and said there was only 3 packs of loin meat and let them know that I wanted the rest of my meat. At this point they seemed visibly upset that I wanted the rest of my meat. They went back to the freezer and came back with what I would estimate to be 1/3 of the loin meat that they actually owed me (I have processed the backstraps and tenderloins of my elk in years past so I have a good idea about yield amount), but at this point I was so pissed and fed up that I just took the meat and left. Photos Of The Documents For...

Dropped off 1 bull elk mid-Nov to get processed. I ordered all steaks, ground, and 20 lbs of Cased sausage (10 Breakfast / 10 German) - like I have ordered in past years.

After I picked up my order, the steak and ground was fine but I received no cased sausage like I had ordered (and Jeff the owner took my initial order in person in the office and we talked about cased sausage flavors on the grill for 10 min.). Upon asking why I didn’t get cased sausage, the response was they made a business decision this year that they are no longer doing cased sausage as a company (never mentioning this to customers or on the order sheet - and others have said this on their reviews as well).

The owner offered to cure my order by having me bring all my uncased sausage back to be cased. After a month of hearing nothing, I finally received ‘your order is ready’ and I went to pickup my cased order. I learned they had mixed, in one batch, both my breakfast sausage with German sausage and cased them together. 100% of the cased sausage was not edible (after trying at home) and not even good enough to donate. It smelled awful and wouldn’t even feed to my dog. I brought back all the sausage and lost ~20 lbs from my Elk.

The owner did fully refund my order but I lost a quarter of my entire elk order that can’t be replaced now.

After harvesting an elk and packing it on your back 5+ miles for this to happen is unacceptable.

From start to finish I felt like I was deceived by the owner / office manager / staff. I spent 6 trips driving back and forth to their shop to give them the opportunity to fix the mistakes.

I highly recommend you take your animal and get it processed somewhere else even if it’s a further...