Snack Stick Kits for Venison, and the Tube You Need Before You Buy One

Start with the Hi Mountain Original Snack Stick Kit: seasoning, a matched cure and four strands of 21 mm mahogany collagen casings for up to 20 pounds of ground meat. It is written for venison and other game, and it can be finished in a smoker, an oven or a dehydrator. The Hunter's Blend version is the same kit with a bolder seasoning. Before either one, check one spec on your stuffer — the stuffing tube.

That is the single thing that ruins first snack-stick batches. A 19 to 21 mm casing needs a tube around 1/2 inch outside diameter or smaller; LEM states that recommendation on its own collagen casings. Most stuffers ship with nothing smaller than 5/8 inch.

Why the tube comes first

A 12-inch tube matters as much as a narrow one: it lets you load a whole strand of casing on at once instead of reloading every few sticks. The maker says it takes sheep or collagen casings as small as 16 mm.

If your stuffer simply cannot take a small tube, that is worth knowing before you buy kits. LEM says plainly that its own 15 lb MightyBite stuffer cannot make snack sticks because the job puts too much stress on the gears — a maker ruling out a use case on its own product page is unusual and worth believing. Our snack-stick stuffer roundup ranks the machines that will take the tube.

The kits and casings, side by side

What is actually in a kit

Three things, and the value is in how they are matched rather than in any one of them. The seasoning is blended for the batch size printed on the box. The cure is dosed to that same batch size. And the casings are the right diameter for the product, which saves you working out that a brat casing makes a poor snack stick.

What is not in the box is a finish temperature. Neither Hi Mountain listing publishes one, which is why a thermometer is not optional — see the finishing section below.

The cure is the point, not the seasoning

Snack sticks are a cured product, and nitrite is doing real work. WSU Extension is direct about it: nitrite “produces the characteristic color, flavor, and storage stability of cured meats,” and it “provides protection against food poisoning and also inhibits rancidity in cured meats.” Sausages without nitrite, it notes, are much more perishable.

WSU is equally direct about the dosing problem, and this is the strongest argument for buying a kit rather than assembling one: nitrite “is used in very small quantities in cured meats, and overdoses can be harmful,” and because it is difficult to accurately weigh the small quantities needed, “it is necessary to use a preblended commercial curing mix.” A kit is a pre-measured dose for a stated weight of meat. Weigh your meat; do not eyeball the batch. Our curing salt guide covers the difference between Prague Powder No. 1 and No. 2 and where each belongs.

How many kits a season needs

One kit covers 20 lb of ground meat. At the Ohio Division of Wildlife average of about 52 lb of venison a deer, a two-deer season is roughly 104 lb of venison — so if you turn a quarter of it into sticks, one kit covers it with room to spare. The casings are usually the limit rather than the seasoning: four strands of 21 mm collagen is the stated contents, and a torn strand mid-batch stops you. A spare two-pack of LEM 19 mm collagen, which fills about 16 lb, is cheap insurance.

Drying, smoking and the finish temperature

All three kits here can be finished in a smoker, an oven or a dehydrator, and none publishes a target temperature. Use a thermometer and USDA's numbers instead of a clock: FSIS's safe minimum internal temperature chart is the reference, and our site's standing rule for anything dried from raw ground meat is to reach 160 °F. NDSU's sausage publication gives worked examples at the same scale — holding water at 170 °F until the sausage reaches 155 °F for a cooked product, and summer sausage finished at 155 °F internal.

A leave-in alarm probe is the practical answer because a stick is too thin to spot-check repeatedly without tearing casings. Set the alarm, walk away, and pull the batch when it beeps.

Building it without a kit

You can, and it costs less per pound at volume: a jar of Prague Powder No. 1, your own spice blend, and a pack of 19 or 21 mm collagen casings. The catch is the one WSU names — accurate weighing of a very small nitrite dose — so buy a preblended cure, weigh your meat, and follow the cure's own usage rate rather than a recipe you found. For brats and fresh links rather than sticks, the whole casing picture is in our sausage casings guide, and the mixing and stuffing routine is in how to make venison sausage.