I've always held the belief that if your knife touches their rear legs/hocks and you don't clean the blade immediately then you will have some portion of the meat that will get some stank on it. I've killed a pile of rutting bucks and always been mindful of the hocks/rear legs and never had an issue. During the rut a buck stops and bends his legs together to piss down them. I've often wondered if these complaints I see from time to time are from rutting bucks that pissed themselves while running after a shot or while rolling around on the ground, which could really make skinning and butchering in the field with a clean knife impossible.
