can't figure this one out. I gut every animal that i'm planning to eat as soon as I get to it. I can't figure why anyone would not do this. I want the blood out of my deer or bear as soon as possible. when I was young the first time I was around hog butchering they shot one,and stuck him right away to drain the blood. if it wasn't for scalding them they would have just gutted them right away.
I have had to look for a few deer that I have shot and finding one 6hrs later then gutting the meat holds a lot more blood.
Once you kill an animal and the heart stops beating, you are not going to be getting any more blood out of the animal's muscle tissue. In the hog butchering situation, the old timers (like my Grandpa) would shoot them in the head with a 22 and then stick or cut the throat ASAP like you are describing....attempting to bleed them while the heart was still beating its last few times and they would get blood out that way. When you shoot an animal with a rifle it usually lives for a short time........they either run, or lay on the ground kicking for a few seconds. During that time, they are bleeding out what they are going to bleed. When you gut the deer, you see the result of that but are not enhancing it.
I've seen guys who will go up to a deer they just shot and cut the throat to bleed it. It does not hurt anything but its basically a waste of time.....because the pump is no longer working.
As to your original question, I've answered it probably 3 times before. I don't gut deer in the woods for a couple of reasons:
One, I have access to a lease 30 minutes from my house which is the best hunting situation I have ever been in and probably ever will be. One of the stipulations in the contract is that we are not allowed to leave guts on the property.
Two, during the best part of hunting season here, temps vary from hot to very hot. I killed one early in October at around 7 am and the temp was probably 80 headed for 90. Had I opened it up, every blowfly in the county would have swarmed me and the deer. I don't like that. Since we have to get the deer on ice ASAP, those of us who process our own deer usually do everything at once by taking the deer someplace we can hang it for skinning and butchering......hopefully out of the flies.
