I grew up being taught that you were to gut the deer immediately and I did for over 30 yrs. But...we hunted as a family and if I killed a deer early in the morning, the others might not get through hunting for several more hours so the gut job was warranted. My circumstances have changed. I usually hunt by myself and if I kill a deer at daylight, I'm done. If I have done my job and there is no track job I either drive up to where the deer lays (not this year, been too wet...lol) or go get the 4 wheeler and drag the deer to the vehicle. I'm getting older and have a bad back and bad discs in my neck to pulling and tugging and lifting the deer any longer is over with. So with the 4 wheeler I just drag the deer upon the trailer. Our lease is only 6 or 7 miles from the processor who dresses the deer and cuts and wraps it. So there is no need in my estimation to gut the deer in the field. I shot a young buck yesterday morning at 7 AM and it was at the processor shortly after 7:30 and he immediately started dressing the deer.
I can honestly say that since I have been handling deer this way for the last 8 or 9 years, that there is no difference in the quality of meat that I get from when I gutted the deer immediately. As far as the gamey taste, I believe as mentioned above that the deer's forage has far more to do with that than gutting the deer immediately. The onion deer story above was hilarious to me. I like to use onion seasoning my venison so was wondering if one would still need to season a deer which had been eating onions...lol.
