How to Make Landjäger (Landjaeger) in a Smoker

Short answer:

That is the smoker method, and it is the one most hunters can pull off with what is already in the garage. The old-country way is different: fermented, cold smoked and air dried for weeks, never cooked. Both are real landjäger. They just need different gear, and they handle wild game differently. Here is how each one works, and the numbers that matter.

What is landjäger?

Landjäger, often spelled landjaeger, is a small, flat, hard sausage, also called hunter's sausage. It is a German style, made from beef and pork with seasoning, stuffed into a medium casing, then pressed so it comes out flat and squared off instead of round.

The pressing is the one thing that makes it landjäger. It is made in pairs, two links joined by a short section of empty casing, then smoked and dried until firm. Both of our versions lean on caraway, with coriander, black pepper and garlic behind it. Tree Stand adds dry red wine.

For venison landjaeger, both of our recipes run half lean game and half pork butt or shoulder. That gives the fat a hard, dried stick needs so it does not eat like a pencil. (Why the ratio is not the fat number: venison fat calculator.)

Smoker-cooked vs fermented: which one should you make?

The DeepWoodz app has one of each. Tree Stand Landjäger is the smoker version. Hunter's Carry is the traditional fermented, cold smoked and air dried version.

	Smoker-cooked	Fermented and dried
Cure	Cure #1, 0.25%	Cure #2, 0.25%, plus a starter culture
Press	Overnight, in the fridge	Overnight, in the fridge
Heat	130 → 150 → 170°F smoker	Ferment 68-72°F at 90-95% humidity, 72 hours
Smoke	3 hours at 150°F	Cold smoke 65-70°F, 8-12 hours over 2 days
Done when	155°F internal (165°F for bear, boar, feral hog)	About 30% weight loss
Drying	Fridge, to ~30% loss, 4-7 days	55°F at 75% humidity, about 3 weeks
Bear, boar, feral hog, cougar	Bear, boar, feral hog: yes, to 165°F	Never
Gear	Smoker, probe, scale, fridge	Fermenting and drying chamber with humidity control, cold smoke setup, scale

If you have a smoker and a fridge, make the smoker version. It is cooked to a safe temperature, so the drying afterward is only about texture, and the fridge takes the guesswork out of it.

The fermented version is a different project. It never sees cooking heat. Its safety comes from Cure #2, the starter culture's acid and drying, all of which depend on holding temperature and humidity for days and weeks. Without a chamber that can do that, stick with the smoker.

Both versions run on locked cure. Cure #1 or Cure #2 goes in at 0.25% of the meat weight, 156 ppm, and never changes. (More on that: Cure #1 vs Cure #2.)

How do you press landjäger, and for how long?

The press is what turns a snack stick into landjäger. Do it like this:

1. Stuff loosely. A tight link has nowhere to go when you put weight on it. It splits or stays round. Leave the casing a little slack so the meat can spread flat.
2. Twist into pairs. Tree Stand uses 32-35 mm natural hog casings, twisted into 7" links in pairs. Prick any air pockets.
3. Weigh them now. Write down the stuffed weight before anything else happens. That number is the starting line for drying later.
4. Lay them side by side between two parchment-lined boards or sheet pans.
5. Put about 15 lb on top and refrigerate overnight.

Why overnight in the fridge? In the traditional fermented process, landjäger sit in wooden molds for 1 to 2 days at about 68-75°F (20-24°C). That warm press time is doing two jobs at once, setting the shape and letting the culture work. A cooked landjäger has no culture working, so there is no reason to let it sit warm. Pressing it cold sets the shape while keeping the meat below 34°F, where it belongs until it goes in the smoker.

Real weight matters more than time. Two pans with nothing on top will not flatten anything. A few gallon jugs of water or a stack of cast iron does the job.

What is the smoke schedule for landjäger?

This is the Tree Stand Landjäger schedule. It works the same on a pellet grill, an electric smoker or a wood smoker. The temperatures are what matter, not the fuel.

Stage	Smoker temp	Time	Goal
Dry the casings	Room temp	1-2 hours	Casings dry to the touch
Warm up	130°F (54°C)	1 hour, damper open	Finish drying the surface
Smoke	150°F (66°C)	3 hours	Color and flavor
Finish	170°F (77°C)	Until done	155°F internal (68°C)
Finish: bear, wild boar, feral hog	170°F (77°C)	Until done	165°F internal (74°C)

• Do not let the smoker go above 170°F. Past that, the fat renders out and the texture turns dry and grainy.
• Go by the probe, not the clock or the color. The finish stage takes as long as it takes.
• Watch the real chamber temp. The number on the dial is not always what the sausage is sitting in, and pellet smokers can swing. Run a second probe at grate level and trust it over the setting.
• Wood: the recipe calls for beech, oak or maple.

When they hit temperature, cool them down promptly. An ice bath is optional. Plenty of people let them cool at room temp, or outside in cold weather. What matters is not leaving them sitting warm.

How do you dry landjäger to the right weight loss?

Fresh off the smoker, a cooked landjäger is soft, more like a fat snack stick. The firm, wrinkled chew comes from drying.

For the smoker version, dry them uncovered on a rack in the fridge until they are firm and wrinkled and have lost about 30% of their stuffed weight. That is usually 4 to 7 days. Because they are already cooked, this step is for texture. Doing it in the fridge rather than at room temperature keeps it that way.

How to measure it: take the stuffed weight you wrote down and multiply by 0.70. That is your target. The smoker takes some weight off too, and that counts toward the 30%. Weigh the same batch every day or two on a kitchen scale, and stop when you hit the number.

Stuffed weight	Target at 30% loss
1,000 g	700 g
2 lb	1.4 lb
5 lb	3.5 lb
10 lb	7 lb

The scale decides, not the calendar. A thin, well-pressed batch gets there faster. A thicker one, or a packed fridge, takes longer.

The fermented version gets to a similar number the slow way. Hunter's Carry ferments for 72 hours at 68-72°F and 90-95% humidity, takes a cold smoke, then dries at 55°F and 75% humidity for about 3 weeks, until it is very firm and dark and has lost about 30% of its weight. Same scale method: weigh it at the start and let the number tell you when it is done.

Can you make landjäger with bear, wild boar or feral hog?

Yes, but only the smoker version, and only to 165°F internal.

Bear, wild boar and feral hog can carry trichinella, a parasitic roundworm. Three facts from the CDC decide how you handle them:

• Curing, drying and smoking alone do not consistently kill it. That rules these meats out of a fermented, never-cooked landjäger. Hunter's Carry says it plainly: never use bear, wild boar, feral hog or cougar in it.
• Freezing is not a fix for bear. The trichinella species found in bear, Trichinella nativa, is freeze resistant and can stay alive after months or even years in the freezer. In a 2022 outbreak, live larvae were found in black bear meat that had been frozen for 110 days. The old pork freezing rule does not carry over to wild game.
• Cooking is the kill step, checked with a thermometer. The CDC also warns that color is not a good sign of doneness, which matters with dark meat like bear.

So Tree Stand Landjäger takes bear, wild boar or feral hog to 165°F internal instead of 155°F. Cook your test patty all the way through too. Do not taste a raw or pink patty from these meats.

Deer, elk and other lean game follow the normal 155°F pull in the smoker version.

How do you store landjäger?

• Fridge for the ones you will eat soon.
• Vacuum seal and freeze the rest.
• In the field: the smoker version will keep a few days unrefrigerated in a pack in cold weather. It is a cooked, dried sausage, not a shelf-stable one, so do not leave it in a warm truck for a week.

Common landjäger mistakes

1. Stuffing tight. Tight links will not press flat. They burst or stay round.
2. Not enough weight on the press. About 15 lb, overnight. A board alone does nothing.
3. Letting the meat warm up. Keep it below 34°F through grinding, mixing, stuffing and pressing. Warm fat smears and renders out later.
4. Smoking with wet casings. Smoke does not stick to a wet casing. Let them dry first.
5. Running the smoker hot to save time. Over 170°F and the fat cooks out. You get a greasy pan and a dry, grainy stick.
6. Pulling by time or color. 155°F on a probe is done. 165°F for bear, boar or feral hog.
7. Forgetting the stuffed weight. Without it you cannot tell when you hit 30%. Weigh before pressing.
8. Drying a cooked landjäger at room temperature. Dry it in the fridge.
9. Counting on the freezer for bear. It does not work for bear. Cook it to 165°F.
10. Skipping or cutting the cure. These links sit for hours at low smoker temperatures. Cure #1 at 0.25% is required.

DeepWoodz Smokehouse has both versions, Tree Stand Landjäger for the smoker and Hunter's Carry for the fermenting crowd. Punch in the weight of meat you actually have and every ingredient scales to it, with the cure locked at a safe rate. The press, the smoke schedule, the pull temp and the drying target are all laid out step by step.

Bottom line

Stuff loose, press overnight under real weight, smoke at 130, 150 and 170°F to 155°F internal, and dry in the fridge to 30% weight loss. Bear, wild boar and feral hog go to 165°F and stay out of the fermented version. Let the probe and the scale tell you when each step is done.

Common questions