LEM BigBite #12 Review: The Grinder a 3-5 Deer Season Stops Fighting

The LEM BigBite #12 is the machine this site ends up recommending more than any other, and it is worth being precise about why. It is not the cheapest #12, it is not the most powerful grinder we cover, and it does not have the longest warranty in its own price bracket. What it has is the highest output figure its maker is willing to publish for a #12 — 11 pounds a minute — on all-metal gears running on roller bearings, which is the combination that stops a grinder bogging down halfway through the second deer.

What is in the box

More than most. LEM ships the #12 with three stainless plates — fine at 4.5 mm, coarse at 10 mm and a stuffing plate, a stainless knife, head and auger, a meat stomper, a bushing removal tool, and three plastic stuffing tubes at 5/8, 1 and 1-3/8 inch outer diameter.

That matters for the real cost of ownership. A cheap grinder that arrives with one plate is not cheap once you have bought the second plate and a spare knife, and the stuffing tubes mean you can make sausage on day one without a dedicated stuffer — slowly, and with the caveats on our stuffer versus grinder attachment page, but you can. There is also a storage drawer under the head, which sounds like a trifle until the third time you cannot find the coarse plate.

The plates are the part worth understanding before you grind anything. Fine at 4.5 mm and coarse at 10 mm covers burger and a first pass on sausage, but it does not cover everything — grinder plate sizes explains which jobs want a size LEM does not include, and the plate set further down this page fills those gaps for not much money.

The specs, and where they come from

Source for all of it: LEM's own #12 BigBite product page (SKU 1780), fetched 2026-10-16, cross-checked against the maker-supplied Amazon listing copy. Where the two disagree we use LEM's page.

What 11 lb a minute really means

Here is the part most reviews skip. Eleven pounds a minute is an impressive number and it is nearly useless as a planning figure, because almost nothing about a processing session is limited by how fast the auger turns.

Do the arithmetic honestly. The Ohio DNR weighed 115 field-dressed whitetails from the 2017 gun season and reported 52.19 lb of meat per deer. If you ground every pound of one deer at LEM's rated output, that is about 4.7 minutes of grinding. Five deer — the top of our moderate tier, 261 lb — is roughly 24 minutes.

And no maker's rating survives contact with cold, sinewy venison neck meat. LEM's figure is from LEM's conditions, not yours. What the #12's number genuinely tells you is where it sits against its peers: LEM publishes 11 lb a minute where MEAT! publishes 7 to 10 for its #12 and Weston publishes 6 to 9 for the Pro Series #12. Those are the same conditions, maker to maker, and the ranking they imply is the useful signal.

Gears and bearings: the real reason it costs this

If you only take one spec from this page, take this one. LEM publishes all metal gears with roller bearings on the #12. A large part of the budget-grinder market ships at least one nylon or plastic gear, deliberately: it is a sacrificial part designed to strip before the motor burns out when the auger jams.

That design is defensible on a machine you use twice a year. It is miserable on a machine running a four-deer weekend, because a stripped gear ends the session and the replacement arrives next week with half a deer in the fridge. Metal gears on roller bearings move the failure point: the machine either grinds the jam or trips its overload, and you clear the head and carry on.

This is also why we tell people to stop shopping on peak watts. A high wattage figure through a plastic gear train is a marketing number. Torque to the auger through metal gearing is the thing that chews frozen-edged trim, and it is the argument our best meat grinders for deer roundup is built around.

Is #12 the right size for you?

The number is the head and plate size, not a quality grade, and a bigger number is not automatically better — it is more machine, more money and more bench. Here is where the BigBite line sits by LEM's own figures:

Note what happens between #8 and #12 against what happens between #12 and #22: the step up from #8 buys you over half again the rated output, while the step up to #22 buys about 18% more output for 50% more weight and considerably more money. That is why the #12 is the sweet spot for most people stepping up, and both those decisions have their own page — #8 vs #12 and #12 vs #22. If you are not sure what the size numbers mean at all, start with meat grinder sizes explained.

Five years, against a lifetime rival

LEM gives the #12 five years plus lifetime customer support. That is a strong warranty and comfortably better than most of the field.

It is also the one place where the BigBite #12 is clearly beaten. The MEAT! Your Maker #12 carries a lifetime warranty to the original owner (excluding commercial use), at a listed price that has repeatedly sat within a few dollars of the LEM. MEAT! rates its #12 at 7 to 10 lb a minute rather than 11, and builds it heavier in all stainless.

So the trade is explicit: LEM's higher rated output against MEAT!'s longer warranty. We pick the LEM because throughput is the thing that fails you mid-season and because five years already outlasts most appliance ownership, but it is genuinely close and we would not argue with someone who went the other way. The full head-to-head is LEM BigBite vs MEAT! Your Maker.

What it does not have

• No reverse function listed. Many grinders have a reverse that backs the auger out of a jam. LEM's spec page does not list one for the #12, so when sinew wraps the knife you shut it down and strip the head. Our clogging guide is mostly about avoiding that situation in the first place, and it matters more on a machine without a reverse.
• A 6-foot cord and no extension cord. LEM says not to run it on an extension cord. On a garage bench or a tailgate setup that is a real planning constraint — sort the outlet before the meat comes out of the cooler.
• Plastic stuffing tubes. Serviceable, included, and the first thing most people upgrade.
• Only two grinding plate sizes. Fine 4.5 mm and coarse 10 mm covers burger and a first pass. Snack sticks and some sausage styles want sizes that are not in the box.
• Price. It is the dearest #12 we list, and LEM's rated output is the reason to pay it. If that reason does not apply to your season, do not pay it.

Where to buy it, and the stock catch

Worth knowing before you shop: when we checked on 2026-10-16, LEM's own store listed the #12 at out of stock while the Amazon listing was live and in stock. That flips periodically in both directions. The practical advice is to check both, and not to assume the maker's site is the one that has it.

We only show prices our price layer has verified, and only from Amazon — our live figures were last refreshed November 4, 2026. We are not going to quote you a number from memory, and if a price on this site looks stale, it is because the layer withheld it rather than guessing.

Who should buy it

Buy the BigBite #12 if your season is three to five deer, or a half beef, or you grind enough bulk chuck that an afternoon of it is a routine. That is the volume where metal gearing and a published 11 lb a minute stop being specifications and start being the difference between finishing and not. It is the grinder stage in our 3-5 deer setup for exactly that reason.

Do not buy it for one deer a year — you will not notice what you paid for — and do not buy it expecting to beat the supermarket on ground beef, which is a different question with a less comfortable answer on our is grinding your own meat cheaper page. And if you are looking at a #12 mostly because the sausage comes next, read best sausage stuffers before you spend on stuffing tubes: the grinder is not the right tool for that job past the first few batches.

Whatever you buy, the grinder is one stage in a chain. The downstream half — bagging what you ground and keeping it — is covered in our Weston Pro-2300 review and the sealer roundups it links to.