Field Dressing Big Game

[CoElkHunter]

For many years, we field dressed big game the old fashioned way. Slit the skin on the belly from the neck to the groin and down to the paunch and then "roll" out the stomach and cut around the penis/vulva and hope you didn't get a hole in the stomach and/or feces/urine on the meat. Leave the skin on and haul it out. Then, a number of years ago, someone showed my father in law a different way and he passed it down to us. It works MUCH better. You skin one side from the neck to the anus and around the legs and back and lay the skin down flat. You take off the front and hind quarter on that side. You cut off the backstrap, and any neck/outside rib meat. You reach in between the stomach and spine and pull (sometimes cut a little) the tenderloin out. You turn the animal over onto the flat skin and do the same thing to the other side. Slick! No need to "gut" the animal. The only downside is you can't keep the ribs, but there's not much meat on them anyway. You put the neck/rib/backstraps/tenderloins meat in game bags, and put them and the quarters on a log overnight to cool and come back for everything the next morning with the horses and/or game cart. Or, haul some of it out the same day, depending on the time. Regardless of what you do, you MUST get that skin off the animal ASAP to avoid "tainted" meat later regardless of the temperature. I'm sure many of you do this same field dressing already, but for those that haven't tried this technique, it will be well worth your "taste" later on. LOL

 

[Tra3]

I concur!

The gutless quarter method! I employ that when significant walking is involved. I still end up opening the chest cavity at the end to get the liver, kidneys and heart (if they are not blown apart). You can still remove rib meat, it just takes more time.

A good set of game bags is required for this. And a pocket knife sharpener like the Victorinox pocket knife sharpener.

 

[CoElkHunter]

I concur!

The gutless quarter method! I employ that when significant walking is involved. I still end up opening the chest cavity at the end to get the liver, kidneys and heart (if they are not blown apart). You can still remove rib meat, it just takes more time.

A good set of game bags is required for this. And a pocket knife sharpener like the Victorinox pocket knife sharpener.

Well here, with CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) possible in the area we hunt (not so much for elk though), I/we pass on keeping any internal organs. It would probably be OK, but why risk it?

 

[CoElkHunter]

In 2008, I went with my former next door neighbor to Ohio to hunt whitetails on his cousin's property. We went to one of his high school friend's farm one morning. They had three bucks hanging up outside by their horns and they were mostly frozen. A kid (late teens) was staring at HIS deer hanging and told me he had never field dressed a deer before. He told me his dad, who was in the barn cutting up meat, told him to "figure it out". Really! So, we cut down his deer and with my Cutco skinning knife, I showed him how to field dress his deer using the gutless method. We were done before some other yahoo was still hacking away at his deer hanging up. I'm rambling, but it's MY Saturday night off from work, so.

 

[Kevin Peacocke]

We field dress our buff and carry out quarters, after skinning like you do one side, then the other and work on the full flat skin for the butchering. We spread sausage tree boughs around and place the meat on that. The guts is always spilled because the skinners and trackers like the tripe, me too.

 

[CBH Australia]

We hear of the gutless method but I have never done it. Then I was never shown and my intro was more dressing sheep whole.
I've heard of the Overlander method that I think may be similar

 

[BourbonTrail]

I use the gutting method for whitetail, and the gutless method for elk. Gut all small game, except for birds which are like a strange version of gutless.

The only difference is that everyone I know starts at the rump and moves to the neck for gutting deer.

When I was in South Africa we had the benefits of not needing to field dress, so everything was done in the skinning shed.

 

[TSIBINDI]

For many years, we field dressed big game the old fashioned way. Slit the skin on the belly from the neck to the groin and down to the paunch and then "roll" out the stomach and cut around the penis/vulva and hope you didn't get a hole in the stomach and/or feces/urine on the meat. Leave the skin on and haul it out. Then, a number of years ago, someone showed my father in law a different way and he passed it down to us. It works MUCH better. You skin one side from the neck to the anus and around the legs and back and lay the skin down flat. You take off the front and hind quarter on that side. You cut off the backstrap, and any neck/outside rib meat. You reach in between the stomach and spine and pull (sometimes cut a little) the tenderloin out. You turn the animal over onto the flat skin and do the same thing to the other side. Slick! No need to "gut" the animal. The only downside is you can't keep the ribs, but there's not much meat on them anyway. You put the neck/rib/backstraps/tenderloins meat in game bags, and put them and the quarters on a log overnight to cool and come back for everything the next morning with the horses and/or game cart. Or, haul some of it out the same day, depending on the time. Regardless of what you do, you MUST get that skin off the animal ASAP to avoid "tainted" meat later regardless of the temperature. I'm sure many of you do this same field dressing already, but for those that haven't tried this technique, it will be well worth your "taste" later on. LOL

...Fred Eichler, Field dressing an elk the gutless way on youtube

 

[Red Leg]

The red deer we hunted in Argentina were done this way. Quick and efficient. And I don't do organs under any circumstances.

 

[WAB]

For many years, we field dressed big game the old fashioned way. Slit the skin on the belly from the neck to the groin and down to the paunch and then "roll" out the stomach and cut around the penis/vulva and hope you didn't get a hole in the stomach and/or feces/urine on the meat. Leave the skin on and haul it out. Then, a number of years ago, someone showed my father in law a different way and he passed it down to us. It works MUCH better. You skin one side from the neck to the anus and around the legs and back and lay the skin down flat. You take off the front and hind quarter on that side. You cut off the backstrap, and any neck/outside rib meat. You reach in between the stomach and spine and pull (sometimes cut a little) the tenderloin out. You turn the animal over onto the flat skin and do the same thing to the other side. Slick! No need to "gut" the animal. The only downside is you can't keep the ribs, but there's not much meat on them anyway. You put the neck/rib/backstraps/tenderloins meat in game bags, and put them and the quarters on a log overnight to cool and come back for everything the next morning with the horses and/or game cart. Or, haul some of it out the same day, depending on the time. Regardless of what you do, you MUST get that skin off the animal ASAP to avoid "tainted" meat later regardless of the temperature. I'm sure many of you do this same field dressing already, but for those that haven't tried this technique, it will be well worth your "taste" later on. LOL

I use this method exclusively. Many of my hunts are remote and I am packing out. I actually bone the quarters leaving an intact skeleton when I am done. We take the tenderloins by making a small slit in the back below the ribs. This allows you to reach in and get the tenderloins without taking out the guts.

I also use this method on our farm. I pull the intact deer into the back of our side by side. I then back up to the basement garage and use the bed of the unit as a work table. We bone the deer, putting the meat onto the racks of a fridge dedicated to this purpose. Within 45 minutes of a deer hitting the ground the meat is on racks in a fridge. 3 days later we butcher it.

 

[buck wild]

We do the same basically except we have the luxury of getting our deer back to camp fairly easily and quickly so we hang them there to do it. On a recent mule deer hunt, the guides were quartering the animals in the field without gutting and without SKIINNING. They cut around the skin to remove the legs but left the skin on for hauling out. They said the meat got less dirty that way and then the quarters were skinned out later back at the lodge. I've never seen that way before but it was QUICK !

 

[Scott CWO]

We use the gutless method exclusively. We take the front quarter, consisting of the flank meat on the outside of the ribcage, the shoulder and the neck meat all as one big piece and put it in a game bag. Then take of the rear quarter at the crease down to the socket and closely trim around the pelvis keeping the knife on the bone. We put this in a second game bag and then before closing the game bag, we add the blackstrap. Then roll the carcass over and repeat. Then reach in like @WAB or open the abdominal cavity just enough and get the interior loins. We leave the shoulder bone with the meat and the rear leg femur with the meat when horse packing. With this method, we end up with evenly weighted game bags for horse packing. The key to horse packing anything is evenly weighting each side of the horse.

I rarely gut anything anymore unless it’s late at night and it’s a big animal like a moose and I am alone. In that case, I will sometimes gut the animal and partially skin it and then come back in daylight with a friend to quarter it.

 

[JimP]

We have always gutted the animal no matter what their size is. Then we proceed to cut it up into 8 chunks. Hind legs (2), ribs (2), back (1), front legs (2), and the neck (1). Then we start packing or if there are enough of us we will pack as we cut the animal up. Deer come out whole with the hide on after gutting them. This protects the meat from dirt a lot better than even the best of game bags. I have only cut up a half dozen deer to get them out of the woods. Then if we are in a area where CWD is prevalent we will debone the meat in camp. Also as was mentioned above don't forget the liver, heart, and sweetbreads.

However one thing that I have been noticing in the last dozen or so years since the gutless method has become popular is the amount of meat that is left out on the hill I get curious when I see a flock of ravens or other birds sitting in a large tree or circling around and I'll go looking. Quite often I have found where someone has shot a animal and only taken the backstraps and hind quarters off of a deer or elk and left the rest for the scavengers. We turned in a hunting camp one year when we rode by them and saw a half dozen bags hanging from a meat pole and then just below their camp came across the rest of the deer that they had left on the ground.

 

[Scott CWO]

If you think about it, it’s a waste of time to gut the animal unless you eat the internal organs, which I do not in a CWD area. You can get at all the meat without gutting and that saves a lot of time. You can remove every edible part without cutting through any bone. I can take apart any animal with just a Victorinox serrated kitchen pairing knife that weighs a few ounces.

Check this out: Swiss Classic Paring Knife

Victorinox Swiss Classic Paring Knife - 6.7431 ++ Explore the world of perfect Swiss quality online ++ Home of the Original Swiss Army knife ++ Find a store close to you ++

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Incredibly sharp (be careful) and can touch it up with a steel. I can do several animals with one before throwing it away. Cheap and lightweight. They also sell a sheath.

 

[steve white]

I use this method exclusively. Many of my hunts are remote and I am packing out. I actually bone the quarters leaving an intact skeleton when I am done. We take the tenderloins by making a small slit in the back below the ribs. This allows you to reach in and get the tenderloins without taking out the guts.

I also use this method on our farm. I pull the intact deer into the back of our side by side. I then back up to the basement garage and use the bed of the unit as a work table. We bone the deer, putting the meat onto the racks of a fridge dedicated to this purpose. Within 45 minutes of a deer hitting the ground the meat is on racks in a fridge. 3 days later we butcher it.

Deer, absolutely...elk--if you don't pop open the hip sockets, you can get "bone sour" before it can get cooled. I would always open the sockets or remove the quarters to get the heat out of them.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Warm weather and pack outs, it's the only way to go.

When its cold and you can hang it I use the standard method.
( I don't have a humidity controlled chiller) I keep the fur on to protect the meat.

 

[crs]

When I began hunting on Texas exotic ranches, I stopped participating on the cleaning of game.
There was one sight that I remember well; after the water buff was shot and dropped dead, a call made to Ranch HQ brought a tractor with a rear mounted rig with motorized lift. A cut the length of the abdomen was made and the tractor lifted the body vertical and gave a couple of jerks and out fell all the innards! The tractor operator had the buff hanging from the cleaning shed before we walked back to the lodge.
Naturally, on Safari, I was not expected to do anything but kill the animals, which I was glad to do.

 

[WAB]

Deer, absolutely...elk--if you don't pop open the hip sockets, you can get "bone sour" before it can get cooled. I would always open the sockets or remove the quarters to get the heat out of them.

Agreed, which is why I bone everything. Plus, I don’t care to carry bones out.

One note, if using this method in Alaska, you must take the rib meat out with you or risk a wanton waste charge. You also must pack out all the meat before the antlers/horns come out.

 

[JimP]

Agreed, which is why I bone everything. Plus, I don’t care to carry bones out.

One note, if using this method in Alaska, you must take the rib meat out with you or risk a wanton waste charge. You also must pack out all the meat before the antlers/horns come out.

I wished that all the states would adopt Alaska's laws on packing meat out or what you need to bring out.

 

[CoElkHunter]

We field dress our buff and carry out quarters, after skinning like you do one side, then the other and work on the full flat skin for the butchering. We spread sausage tree boughs around and place the meat on that. The guts is always spilled because the skinners and trackers like the tripe, me too.
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Kevin,
Wow! What’s the average weight of one of those buffalo hind quarters? I’ve only ever humped out elk quarters from the mountains. Those look MUCH heavier!
Thanks!
CEH