Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters When to gut? when to skin?

Hey
I got into a discussion of when to gut when to skin. I voiced my opinion and he his. I gut as soon as possible. I skin also ASAP. I find it easier. I also process ASAP. What say you?? I know some people let hang for days and swear by it. again what do you do??
Bearbeater

I got too lazy to hunt a few years ago but before I gave it up, I gutted as soon as he hit the ground and skinned just before cutting the critter up. Skinning too early in the game let the meat dry out and would just have to skin it again.

Gut immediately. Skin as soon as I am close enough to some water to rinse the hair off the meat. If I have the chance, I let 'em hang for a couple of days in the cooler. Seems to make the meat a little more tender. I have butchered them immediately and they were OK, just seemed that the 'aging' worked a little better.

I skin moose right away, and then remove the legs, back straps, and neck meat. Gutting follows, and then remove the tenderloins, and finally debone the rib meat.

The idea for me is to cool most of the meat (legs and neck) as fast as possible, and if you look at a moose in the middle of the winter you will notice that heat hardly escapes through their hide. In fact, I often see snow on their backs when they go through my backyard. Another reason why I do that is because I don't want to take the chance to taint the legs and back-straps with stomach contents when gutting the moose. If the moose drops in a place where the tail-end is facing a low side of the terrain or mountain, then I may be inclined to gut first.

Now, I would do the opposite on deer-size animals since they are light enough to hang by the head or antlers before gutting.

I do as Ray described with most all game, and very nearly all game killed in AK, as it is too large and/or too far away from motorized transport to even think of "dragging" it out. Looking back on my first moose hunt, it would have been easier to have built a cabin next to the carcass, and just stayed and ate him where he fell! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I suspect the opinions on this subject will be very regionalized. What works for some, will seem very odd to others.

Jeff

The one and only moose I ever shot looked like a draught horse with headgear when walking up on it. The 4" gutting/skinning knife in my hand felt very puny and inadequate! I asked the guide "Where do we start?" His reply - "Hell, it don't matter, just grab hair and start whittlin'!"

Deer/elk get gutted on the spot. Deer are of size they can be hauled to water for skinning and washing. Elk need to be skinned (down the backbone with skin laid hair down for clean laydown areas) and sectioned. If time allows, deboning at the site saves a lot of weight. I always cram as many old (your wife determines this!) clean sheets and pillow cases as I can get away with into my day pack for meat transport. These days, I usually let a processor take care of hanging and cut/wrap the meat if I'm a long ways from home.

On deer I like to hang them from the nearest tree, skin and than gut. It's easer on my aching back, and gravity helps in the rolling out of the gut sac. Another advantage, there is no hair left to get onto the meat this way.

We skin our deer immediately at camp......but, we don't gut. After skinning we remove backstraps, remove the front shoulders, then open a small belly area so we can reach the tenders, then cut the backbone as usual just below the hindquarters letting the rib cage with contents fall into gut bucket.....these are doe by the way.....then split the hindquarters and remove hooves with lopers and everything goes into ice chest filled with ice. We don't eat the heart or liver......but, I'm thinking about it. Bucks are caped, then we follow the same procedure, except the front shoulders are usually shot up.

Pigs are gutted if large enough to keep the ribs ( 150+), or small enough to split in half (50#'s or so), depending on our needs toward sausage making or cooking on BubbaT. We have a Polaris Ranger which makes getting the animals to camp a snap.

Gutted on the spot. Then hung, skinned, and allowed to cool. Quartered after cooling to outside temp, then covered in ice in large ice chests. S. TX weather does not usually stay cool once the sun comes up, so I generally have mine on ice pretty quick.
Best thing I ever did was put a "boat crank" type pulley with cable system over a live oak tree limb. My six year old hoisted her own deer last year in camp.

pepaw

RE: deer--I don't gut. Where the animal falls, I skin one side, remove the quarters, backstrap and neck meat, fold the skin back onto the carcass, roll the carcass and do the same on the other side. I'll remove the flank last, then the guts roll out and I can get to the tenderloin. Occasionally, I'll take the liver or the heart. Everything goes into a backpack and I pack it out. If it's cool enough, I put the meat in old pillow cases and let it hang in a screened-in porch for up to a week.
I started doing this after the state I hunt implemented a "telephone check-in" so now I can check the animal in the field. Before that, we had to take deer to a checking station and check them in whole which was really dumb because these "stations" were just convenience store clerks who never looked at your animal. It made no sense to me to bring out all the hide, bones and such because they're heavy and present a disposal problem where I live so I previously avoided what are now some good hunting areas.
BTW, instead of washing off the few hairs that stick to the meat, singe them off with a propane torch. Works much better.

If I can I do as described above, debone without gutting. Much cleaner and pretty quick as well.

Just learned about this trick this weekend, worked like a charm on the two pronghorns I had.

I have done it all the ways described here, and probably will in the future. It depends on the size of the animal, the weather, how far I have to pack it, etc. In short, there is no "right" sequence to any of it--but it helps to know how to do it several ways to accomodate the different requirements of that particular animals and set of circumstances.

During Montana's rifle season (late October to late November) I normally gut deer and elk right away, then hang them in the garage for a week or so to age, and skin just before we butcher. This keeps the meat from drying out, plus keeps flies, dirt, etc of the meat as much as possible. Elk are often quartered (with the hide on the quarters, but not the backstraps and tenderloins) during the same period, just to make them easier to get out of the hills. But during bow season have also skinned them on the spot, as well as moose taken in September.

But the weather affects a lot of this. Pronghorn season opens somewhat earlier, when the weather can be warmer. If the weather is cool I gut and leave the hide on, just as with deer, but if its warm, or the speed goat is killed early in the morning, I often skin and bone them on the spot, without gutting, as several guys ahve described here. Pronghorn meat is especially sensitive to heat, so I try to err on the side of caution here.

The same basic reasoning goes into any other animal. It depends on the animal, the weather, and the distance to camp, a horse or a pickup!

John Barsness

There are tons of ways to skin a cat when it comes to this topic.
After many years and many methods we have refined to this sequence and have found it to be the best for us:
1 Gut in the field.
2 If at all possible transport out of field in hide in order to keep meat clean.
3 Hang from under tendon of spread rear legs with cross bar with hooks on the end
4 Skin immediately down to ears and cut off head with cape attached.
5 Open up chest all the way to the throat and allow to bleed out.
6 Cut underneath front quarters so they will open up like we would raise our arms and allow meat to cool
7 A quick pass with a handheld propane torch to burn off any hair on animal after skinning.
8 Butcher and process after meat cooled.
9 Inner straps go on grill for snacks during butchering.
10 Cold beer to follow

We seem to like the process....especially the final two steps.

Question -

Does the burnt hair make the meat taste like burnt hair?

Not at all.
It takes just a split second pass with the torch and the hair will be ashes.....which will more or less just blow right off of the meat.
It's slick....I wish I could say that it was my idea, but it is my Uncle's.

I must also note that in Africa there is no real obsession with gutting right away. Very often dead animals are transported back to camp WHOLE, then gutted, skinned and butchered there. Often the delay in gutting is several hours, and in warm weather, and yet I have yet to eat a "gamy" piece of meat in Africa. This has happened with animals up to 1500+ pounds in weight, such as eland and Cape buffalo.

The PH's I have questioned about this think our obsession with quick gutting is kind of strange--along with, of course, the fact that we do it ourselves, and don't have several low-paid people to do it all for us.

A lot of the insides are eaten by the staff.

John Barsness

For deer, I gut on the spot and then hang in machine shed if at home. Next day I skin. Then in a day or two butcher. If not at home, varies depending if I have a place to hang it or not and what outside temp is. I remember "sneaking" a deer carcass bit by bit in a motel for butchering. Tried not to leave any surprises for maids next day!

I don't gut animals anymore. Maybe if it were close to the truck and I didn't have to pack it out. Check this out:

http://home.att.net/~sajackson/guttless1.html

Depends a lot on the weather and where I am. If I am really close to home or camp I will leave it whole, hang it, tube skin it, and then gut it. Normally it is a gut it in the field, bring it back home (or camp) right away, then skin it out. Tube skinning is nice since it keeps the hair off the meat, but I hate leaving the guts in there for too long. Up here you need to skin it pretty quickly. If you let it hang with the skin on overnight it can freeze and be a real bear to get off.


SS

No burnt taste. FYI, the torch is also the way to get rid of all those little hairs and pin feathers from birds.