Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Why don't guys field dress their deer?

Some of the posts on another thread got me to wondering how guys can post the live weight of their deer? In the north we always refer to a deer's dressed weight. I've read that removing the heart, lungs, liver and entrails represents between 21 and 23% of a deer's live weight. I for one sure don't want to drag out any more deer dead weight than I need to to say nothing about being able to cool the meat down faster. The varmints need to eat too and I sure don't want that entrails mess back at camp. What is the rational for doing it later?

Certain areas I prefer not to leave a gut pile as in spot I killed deer yesterday...I also wanted a true accurate weight of this deer because he was so big.230 lbs guts in 190 after dressing at home. 2 hours after deer was dead he was weighted and gutted at my house guts in trash bag and garbage man arrived in afternoon to take trash easy peasy . It was 38 degrees yesterday morning so not an isssue

I gutted them before I brought them back to camp, but that was before I learned you could clean a deer without gutting one.

drag a deer? Whats that? LOL

When in that situation I don't want to drag either, I quarter and debone and carry not any more than I really have to.... out in my backpack.

Just another reason to shoot the dink!

Now that we have e-check in both states I hunt, the next one I kill far from the car might get the gutless treatment. Have to buy some bags, I guess.

Guts come out where deer fell.

It's a shame to waste the liver and heart, however.

Where I usually hunt deer a long tough drag is involved most times, so they all get gutted where they drop or close to it.

Yep, I gut 'em where they fell.

One place I hunt records the live weight of deer....so there they don't get gutted in the field.

I'm one of those guys who talk in live weight over dressed weight. There are two reasons for this.

Reason 1: Our hunting property is such that unless the deer runs down into one of the ravines, we are able to drive the truck right up to the carcass. We bring them straight out to the meat pole, gut them at the pole and drive straight out to the processor. Often times, a deer is on the way to the processor within an hour after being shot. We have a scale for purpose. It's fairly easy to hang them off the scale and get the weight before unzipping them.

Reason 2: For the deer that do run down into the ravine and we have to gut in place, we have a measuring tape that fairly accurately estimates weight based on chest circumference. Since the vast majority of our deer get an actual weight recorded, we record the liveweight for these deer as well. The live weight, dressed weight, and yield weight are marked on the tape.

I field-dress all the deer I kill so I don't have to drag the extra weight. I've never hunted in those fancy places where you can drive up and to a fallen deer. Where I hunt is usually public land, too swampy, too steep or to thick to get any type of vehicle near a downed animal. With that being said Using a deer buggy to help retrieve your animal is a back saver!

About that gutless dressing: I've done 4 or 5 elk and 2 moose that way. Every one of them was extra tough meat. The muscle fibers will contract as they cool. Contracted muscles are very tough. Leaving it on the bone until it's cool will keep the fibers stretched and much more tender. Leaving it overnight before boning is the best but not always practical. I try to gut and skin them for faster cooling but of course the skinning isn't something you want to do if you need to drag it.

I don't see the point of field dressing it. If it's a long way from the truck, then it gets quartered and packed out. Otherwise, I'll drag the whole thing out, even in my pirogue and bring it out. I don't want to leave anything to attract coyotes when I don't have to.

We have a place on the property called The Garden of Stone. I have a blind and a stand that overlook it. It is a tennis court-sized chunk of pasture that has some mystery forb growing in it. In the late season, the deer congregate there to feed. I usually fill my last tag hunting that patch. I play eenie-meenie-minie-mo looking for a doe that will fit in the space that remains in the freezer. I've sort of made a science of it.

From Bang! to pickup can be as little as 10 minutes if someone is already in camp. Last minute of shooting is before 1800. The processor closes at 2000, and it's a 30 minute ride. If there are any hitches, we have to wait until 1000 the next morning. Last year both Angus and SuperCore got deer within a half hour of each other. I was tagged out, so I was running the deer wagon. We made the processor with 30 minutes to spare.

This.

shaman,

Is that deer-weight tape the one from Pennsylvania, designed by the game biology department at Penn State? I tested one of those, thanks to a reader from Pennsylvania who sent one along. That fall Eileen and I took five whitetails here in Montana, three does and two bucks, and compared the "tape weight" to the actual field-dressed weight according to our freight scale--which had been tested for accuracy with check-weights.

All I can say is the Pennsylvania deer-tape is designed to make hunters feel good, since on every deer it grossly over-estimated the weight. A good example was the whitetail buck my wife took, a pretty heavy one by Montana standards. The tape said it should field-dress 198 pounds, but on the scale it went 154.

Part of the problem, as we discovered, is that tape's estimate is totally based on chest circumference. Two of the does had exactly the same chest circumference, but the body of one was several inches long from chest to butt. It field-dressed quite a bit heavier than the other doe, but neither weighed anywhere what the tape estimated.

I never weigh my deer but I don't field dress.unless I have to drag a big one a long way. We shoot them load them up skin them and cut the legs, neck meat, and loins off. Then I open up the stomach and take out the tenderloins and heart. It all goes in a cooler gets iced and salted. I cut my own meat up and I get the best cleanest results doing it this way.

Thanks guys and I'm glad to read that post from dvdegeorge that confirms that 21 to 23% gut weight that I posted. 230-190=40# so 40 divided by 190 is 21.05%. Heck of a deer too. We can't use any motorized vehicle here on state land off road, so I deer cart, sled or back pack mine out too. Just a few years back we were allowed to cut our deer into up to five pieces, so now I carry two small pulleys and rope to get them up in a tree to cool and away from the varmints.

Because it’s much easier to do at camp than in the woods. Plus you get much less blood on you when you load it in the truck.