My father and I slaughtered a Simmental steer a few years back. It wasn't the most pleasant thing I've done.

We tied it with short rope to a stake behind the barn. We shot it between the eyes from a distance of about 2 feet with a 30-30. It went down immediately and after checking for reflexes (knife point against the eye) we cut the artery in its neck.

We eviscerated it - carefully. Because my father is Italian, he was very interested in the organ meat (stomach, liver, kidneys, heart, intestines).

Next we poked the knife through the flap of skin between the back leg and the achilles tendon, inserted two large hooks and attached it to the loader of a tractor. We then lifted the whole carcass up off the ground. We started skinning it from the back legs, working our way down/around. We just let the skin fall around the head and once we had skinned as much as we wanted, we sawed off the head/skin "package."

We quartered it, wrapped each piece in cheese cloth and took it to a butcher - the main reason to have it properly aged.

The whole ordeal took about an hour.