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nano
09-22-2008, 08:18 PM
I was just wondering how long it takes to field dress a good size deer and what sould I look out for. If anyone knows any tips can you please tell me.

Thank you

TimberPig
09-22-2008, 08:34 PM
That will mostly depend upon your experience level doing it, whether you have help, the experience of your helper, and to a lesser extent the size of the deer.


With experience, 10-15 minutes is no great feat. With no experience and no experienced help, it could take a couple hours.

For your first time, and alone, bet on an hour or more.

Gateholio
09-22-2008, 08:36 PM
If you Google "field dressing a deer" and "gutless cleaning method" you will get some sites with lots of pics etc. I do the gutless method most these days...:razz:

moosinaround
09-22-2008, 08:36 PM
It is cool out now, so take your time!! Have a sharp knife. A little saw works too if you split the chest and pelvis open, but it can be done without splitting the chest and pelvis too. Start to finish I do a deer in 10 minutes. Your first one might take longer, but just dont hit the bladder, or intestines with you knife. Remember to leave evidence of gender on the deer, nuts or part of the teats. Cut out blood shot meat if any right there if you can. Check out the internet for instructions too. Hope your field dressing soon! Moosin

anglo-saxon
09-22-2008, 09:07 PM
just wondering ...what sould I look out for...


A decent knife would be a good start! 8-)

Steeleco
09-22-2008, 09:31 PM
Check here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXLSnN6vwMw&feature=related
There's lots of videos and such both online and in DVD. The best method is to be shown, but that's not always that easy.

daycort
09-22-2008, 10:04 PM
First off go get a knife with atleast a 6" blade. When you have your game down walk and bury your knife up to the hilt right behind rib cage and proceed to cut straight through to the annus. Reach in and rip all the insides out and then take it to the butchers hide and all.:tongue::lol:.

Seriously though the no gut method is nice. There was a thread about a month ago about this very thing.

BiG Boar
09-23-2008, 07:29 AM
if you have gutted a fish you can gut a deer. Same thing mostly, only bigger. Dont be afraid to get your hands dirty, and avoid getting dirt or anything on the meat, including hair. Also I have heard it said to avoid touching the fur and then touching the meat. Use one hand to hold the fur and one hand try not to touch meat with it, if you do either wash it off or wear 2 pair of rubber gloves when you start and remove a pair once you are done touching the hair. Same goes for skinning. Just something I read. Not sure if there is anything valid to it, but I did it with my bear this year. Meat didnt taste gamey. Though I have never had bear before. All I am sugesting is that there are oils and dirt in the hide that have got to have some flavour. So even when you rinse the meat in water, the oils that you rub into/onto the meat might stick around and taste....well un-bear-able.

ElectricDyck
09-23-2008, 07:53 AM
If doing the gutt method, my most useful input is to carry a couple 6" to 12" tie wraps. Great for sealing the bladder and anus. The tail left on the tie wrap gives you a handle to pull on when maneuvering things around when cutting and keeps all the crap and urine off the meat.

mrdoog
09-23-2008, 09:25 AM
I agree if you can gut a fish, you can gut a deer.

As with most things in life you'll worry about doing it right first go around; and as with most things things in life it won't go as smoothly as seen in video clips, or in the books you read.
You'll get covered in urine, feces, hair and blood, only this time around you're not in the back of your Dad's car.

A sharp knife is the key. Don't worry if you cut the stomach and the cavity fills up with chewed up buck brush, it will wash out. Who cares if you squeeze the bladder and urine goes everywhere? It will wash out.
Just get in there and get it done.
You will learn from your mistakes and before you know it you're a pro.

stanway
09-23-2008, 09:32 AM
I would recommend using 2 knives. I use a small knife for doing the 'dirty work' - and a bigger one for reaching up inside and cutting stuff free.

First thing - use a separate knife to cut the scent glands off the inside of the rear legs. It is easy to touch them and then touch the meat and spoil some tasty venison. Just be careful not to cut through that back tendon, which you can use to hang the deer back in camp.

Be careful of the tenderloins - that is an easy one to accidentally cut, but when you know where they are, you watch out for them.

I think I read it here one time...just remember, whatever is on the inside, needs to come out. The sooner the better as it will help cool the deer faster.

Good luck and take your time. The hard part is finding a buck - the rest is just work.

Cheers!

James

Tikka7mm
09-23-2008, 09:44 AM
I'm not an expert and everyone is going to have differing opinions on cleaning an animal but I would try my hardest to avoid letting stomach, intestinal fluid or urine from getting onto the meat...sure it'll wash off but my understanding is that it can spoil the meat rather quickly, atleast this is always what I have been told so I've always avoided it. Take some rags, water and plastic bags with you when you're out hunting so that you can clean your self up; if you do nick the gut sack or the pea bag you can rinse it off immediately with the extra water. Sometimes I leave the pea sack in the deer until I get home and then I'll take it out when I'm skinning it out. Having said this however, I usually take a 2 litre milk container or a pop conatainer full of water with me whenever I go hunting just in case.

Be sure to get the deer up off the ground and keep it's rib cage propped open with a stick if you can. You want it to cool as quickly as possible. If you're in a camp don't forget to take the windpipe out right away also because this is the first thing to rot and it can spoil the meat. Eat the philly's within the first couple of days otherwise they have a tendency to dry out. I like to salvage both the liver and heart if I can also; both are very tasty if they're cooked properly. When my hunting partner and I get a deer we almost always eat the liver the day of the kill...tastes best when it's fresh.
Good luck.

brotherjack
09-23-2008, 09:54 AM
Took me about 30 minutes the first time. Takes me about 3 minutes now. Here's how I do it:

Start on the belly at the edge of the ribcage, and split the belly wide open all the way down till I hit the pelvic bone.

Push stomach's out of the way and cut the diaphragm.

With the knife in one hand, (VERY CAREFULLY) reach up with both hands into the ribcage and with one hand I grab the windpipe as close to the neck as I can, and with the other hand I slice the windpipe just above where I have a grip on it. (if it's a little spike-buck size critter and his chest cavity is too small to move your arms around in, you may need to split the chest open to be able to execute this).

Pull on windpipe like a handle, using the knife to cut any connective tissue that's holding up the innards from coming loose (which is almost entirely up along the backbone). Continue until guts are all in a pile beside animal.

I cut the poop-chute off with enough excess length to tie it off so it doesn't spill turds into the body cavity, and I'm done with field dressing.

At that point, I haul the critter out of the bush and head for home where I can string him up in the woodshed and work on him easier (and with a wider variety of tools).


Side notes about intestinal juice and/or urine on the meat. Yeah, you probably want to wash it off at the earliest convenience - but before I got my system all down pat, I have made every mistake you can make in that regard, and never had any ill effects on my meat because of it.

nano
09-23-2008, 06:28 PM
thanks for all the tips and good luck to all of you.

nano

jrjonesy
09-23-2008, 07:02 PM
brother jack's method is exactly what I do. I never split the chest cavity because on a deer you can generally go in up to your elbows to reach far enough.

2 additional tips. Carry some paper towel sheets in your pack for cleaning yourself up a bit. Buy a "butt-out" tool. They make that end of the job a thousand times easier and quicker. They are light and worth the few bucks ($15) they cost.

mark
09-23-2008, 09:08 PM
I aggree with all thats been said, except I would not buy the butt out tool, I clench my cheeks at the sight of it!!! Pretty easy to skin around the butt hole when ya know how! Like broJ said at first it will take you an hour, Ive gutted well over 100 animals, Ive done a deer in 2-3 minutes when in a real hurry! sure helps to be shown the first few times!!! If you dont have a hunter to show you, try going to a meat cutter that slauters beef!

roerover88
09-23-2008, 09:29 PM
Being new to the hunting scene. How long do you need to hang it and can you take it to a butcher right away with hide on or do you need to skin it before showing up. Thanks

brotherjack
09-23-2008, 09:34 PM
I hang for 36 to 48 hours in a cool dry environment (shed with a window unit air-conditioner). I have found in my experience, that if you skip the aging process, your meat comes out tough, but that once it's hung for 30-something hours, I'll never notice the difference if I let it hang for a full week.

I also highly recommend doing your own butchering. It ain't hard - you cut a big deer shaped piece of meat into little steak shaped pieces of meat, and eat the results. The stuff that's too tough to make steaks out of, you make burger and stew.

quadrakid
09-23-2008, 09:47 PM
your on the right track by doing your homework,lots of good tips by experienced hunters here. friend of mine was hunting in quebec when he came upon a deer a newbie had left after trying to gut it. what my friend said was the guy had somehow created a square opening in the ribcage to take out the innards. when that didn,t work i guess he bailed,strange sight.

Little Hawk
09-24-2008, 06:50 AM
Good advise here.

Never forget the first-deer I gutted. As I prepared myself to do the 'dirty-work' I recalled the little piece of paper from my C.O.R.E course a few years earlier (took me six years to shoot an animal... shut up/don't laugh) with a black-line drawing of a deer laying on its back with a dotted line drawn on it showing where to cut the deer open. So... I flipped the deer over and Lo & Behold - no lines on it?

Took me over an hour to dress out my first one but now that I've done a few, hell, I do it in less than 45-minutes now.

Only thing I would add to a newbie is: THE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT IS AKIN TO A 'DINNER-BELL' FOR BEARS HERE IN BC. IF YOU CAN, MOVE THE CRITTER TO AN OPEN AREA WITH GOOD VISABILITY AROUND YOU. HAVE YOUR RIFLE AT ARMS LENGTH READY TO ROCK, AND PAY GREAT ATTENTION TO YOUR SURROUNDINGS AS YOU WORK. IF YOU HAVE A BUDDY WITH YOU, HAVE THEM RIDE SHOTGUN AS YOU DO THE WORK.

LEST WE FORGET OUR FALLEN BROTHERS - SHANE FUMERTON & BILL CASPELL: OCTOBER 1995!

4pntsorbetter
09-27-2008, 03:11 PM
Being new to the hunting scene. How long do you need to hang it and can you take it to a butcher right away with hide on or do you need to skin it before showing up. Thanks
I usually hang it for the rest of the week at hunt camp while I am helping others with thier respective hunting efforts, and then take it directly to my meat guy on the way home from camp. Be sure to get the hide off as soon as possible as it help with cooling the meat faster, and it is easier to do when the animal is still warm(just start at the top and once you get it down over the ass just pull down and trim as you go)it will peel like a banana. Its all about keeping the meat clean, and getting it cool as fast as possible. good luck

1/2 slam
09-27-2008, 06:06 PM
First off go get a knife with atleast a 6" blade. When you have your game down walk and bury your knife up to the hilt right behind rib cage and proceed to cut straight through to the annus. Reach in and rip all the insides out and then take it to the butchers hide and all.:tongue::lol:.

Seriously though the no gut method is nice. There was a thread about a month ago about this very thing.

Glad to see that your post is toungue in cheek.

Most newbies tend to buy big knives (Did that myself) Now I use 3 inch blades...much more manouverable. I've done over a hundred animals. It now takes me under 5 minutes for a deer.

nano
10-02-2008, 07:07 PM
do i have to skin it if i am going to take it to a game cutter

huntcoop
10-02-2008, 07:14 PM
Nope but most will charge to skin it for you.