Venison-to-Pork Ratio for Sausage

Quick answer, up top:

Venison is one of the leanest meats there is — often 95–99% lean, with almost no fat of its own. Great on a plate, terrible in a sausage alone. You blend it with pork to bring the fat, moisture, bind, and flavor that lean game just can't. Get the blend right and it's the best sausage you'll ever eat. Get it wrong and you'll know on the first bite.

The ratios, by product

These are the ratios built into the DeepWoodz app — lean wild game to pork:

Product	Lean Wild Game : Pork
Bratwurst	50 : 50
Snack sticks	60 : 40
Summer sausage	60 : 40
Fresh / ground sausage	60 : 40
Ring bologna & bologna	60 : 40
Fermented sausage	60 : 40
Venison bacon	60 : 40

The rule of thumb: most recipes run 60/40 — 60% lean wild game to 40% pork. Bratwurst is the exception at 50/50, which gives it that rich, juicy brat bite people expect.

What "pork" means here (butt/shoulder vs pure fat)

The pork side isn't always pure fat — it depends on the product:

• Pork butt / shoulder — the standard for most recipes. It's about 70–75% lean itself, so it brings both fat and some lean, plus great flavor. Grinds clean and it's easy to find.
• Pure pork fat (back fat) — used where a recipe wants more fat without adding lean. DeepWoodz uses pure pork fat for hot dogs, bologna, and fermented sausage.

Either way — use pork, skip beef fat. Beef fat has a high melt point and a waxy mouthfeel that coats your palate and firms up as it cools. Pork melts clean and tastes right. This is the #1 place makers go wrong.

Why the blend matters

• Too lean (not enough pork): dry, crumbly, chalky — the bind fails and it falls apart.
• Too much fat: greasy — it renders out while cooking and the sausage shrinks.
• The DeepWoodz blends (60/40, or 50/50 for brats): juicy, tender, holds together, tastes like what you were after.

Pork also carries flavor — a lot of your spices only "read" on the tongue because fat delivers them. Lean venison alone tastes flat. That's not a seasoning problem; it's a fat problem.

Getting the math right

Here's where people slip: you can't just eyeball "half pork." Scaling a 60/40 or 50/50 blend to your exact deer weight — and hitting it precisely — is real math, and it's easy to botch at 2 a.m. after a long processing day.

That's exactly what DeepWoodz Smokehouse does — every recipe is built on these ratios and scales to your batch automatically, and the Meat Ratio Calculator dials in your lean-to-pork blend to the gram. No math, right ratio every batch.

Tips from the grind

• Keep everything cold — meat and pork near freezing (32–34°F) grind clean; warm fat smears and wrecks the texture.
• Grind the pork with the game, not separately, so it distributes evenly.
• Weigh, don't guess — your ratio is only as good as your scale.

Bottom line

60/40 lean wild game to pork for most sausage, 50/50 for bratwurst, 60/40 for venison bacon. Use pork, keep it cold, and let the app scale it to your batch. Curing it too? See How Much Cure #1 Per Pound.