Hi All,
After 3 trips with my hunting buddies, we finally got a 2 point buck! We're all complete newbs who'd never hunted before, even though we're all older (35+).
My buddy made a clean shot, buck went down and stayed down. We managed to gut it pretty cleanly. We carried it to the road, threw it in the back of the truck, took it up a hill till we found a big tree off the roads and used a come a long to hang the deer. Skinned it pretty easily and then cut it up into sections - head, neck, chest, 2 front legs and the rear two legs we left attached together. This way we could fit the parts in bags and toss in our coolers on ice, as we had 2 more tags, had seen more bucks and permission from our wives to stay out for a few more days. From being shot to going in the coolers, I'd guess 3 hours max.
We drained the coolers that evening as cooling the meat down melted some ice. We also topped up the ice. Meat was near frozen.
Where we were, a guy had a deer hanging for 3 days before he took it to a place with a walk in cooler. We didn't think hanging the deer outside was good as the daytime temps got into double digits.
Got home within 3 days and started to butcher up the meat. Noticed that some parts of the meat was water logged or perhaps spoiled as it was a light brown colour instead of the deep red of the rest of the meat. Did not smell off and the rest of the meat is good (I cooked some up last night, pretty awesome). The light brown meat was mostly on the front legs and was only about 10% of those. But we don't want to have any waste as we started hunting for only two reasons - to spend more time outdoors with our friends and to eat the meat.
So, two questions:
1) I'm thinking that perhaps we made a mistake somewhere in storing the meat that caused the small amount of waste. Perhaps putting the meat in plastic bags perhaps? Maybe next time rig up a rack above the ice in the coolers and put the meat on those? Could someone point out the mistake or give some guidance?
2) Also, I think next time we will do more of the butchering while the thing is hanging and leave the majority of the carcass in the bush. Because now we are stuck with a chest cavity, pelvis and such to dispose of and it won't fit in my garbage bins! I could easily remove the head, the front legs and neck meat, the filets (psoas on the inside), the loins, the hams and such of the rear legs in just a few more minutes than it took to cut the deer into sections. Is this a good idea - as long as we leave the carcass out in the bush and retain evidence of sex (I think I could leave it attached to one of the hams) and the head for species and antlers, we should be good? Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
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