I don’t gut them any more. Just skin them, take the back straps, debone the hindquarters and the shoulders.
Being a hobbiest woodworker, I’m a whiz at sharpening, so I do some rough work with my pocket Griptilian and then the detail work with a thin blade Browning folder.
Somewhere years ago I read where somebody no longer gutted the deer. So I couldn’t help but wonder why I was getting them, other than the fact that I had been gutting them for 40 years without ever asking myself why. So I quit doing it.
