I used to hunt areas that opened on September 10, now they open on Sept. 20 or 26, but regardless it is 40-60 degrees during the day and from 20 to 40 degrees at night. All of the horse gear is mine, including the canvas panniers, and people may skin or not skin their elk quarters, as they wish. Once they've been quartered they both make a mess of my panniers.
In 38 years only one individual who based everything he knew on his experience with beef has skinned his animal, and that might be because he shot it everywhere but the soles of its feet. Whether it was a moose or elk the only one that didn't get chilled out at night and keep fine was one shot through the front shoulders twice. It never froze at night and the meat around the wound began to sour, so we trimmed it, threw the rib cage away, and kept the loins in a cooler and the shoulders in game bags. End of problem, even though we were in camp for 10 days. There is no running water where I hunt to wash off quarters.
I confess we skinned and quartered a half dozen antelope killed during a hunt that Wyoming used to run in August because it was too hot, and we put them in coolers.
I don't like the dirt, hair, pine needles, leaves, fluids, and solids that get all over skinned quarters when people lapse into their slasher mode while gutting and skinning, nor the 1/4 inch dry rind that once was good meat that forms on the skinned quarters.
Nobody has ever convinced me that skinned game is better than game that wasn't skinned, only that I lose less meat when animals aren't skinned in the field. There is also less blood and gore on me after loading and unloading quarters with hides still on them from horses, putting them up on meat poles and taking them off, and loading and unloading them from the truck.
But a lot of this is just like "Which caliber is best for....", and I doubt minds will change.
