Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting How do you hang your deer?

Well I've got a FRYER to process. It was killed by a vehicle in front of my house. Normally 1-3 deer per year are road killed along my property.

This one is 017 fawn, but a Nubbin. We have been C O L D this week and last night was in the 20s. I'm going to open him up and see how much damage was done.

Hopefully MOST of it will be usable. IF so, I'll call AGFC and report the road kill. If not, then it'll feed buzzards & coyotes.

Jerry

Gut in the field

Fetch Game cart, return to camp

Hang from a rope around the antlers

Skin

Split sternum with hatchet, spread ribs with a stick for rapid cooling

Bag the next morning, allow a crust to form overnight

Hang bagged until return home

Continue hanging head up in the barn for a week or so, as long as temps allow

Split pelvis with hatchet

Cut, bag, and freeze

Our party keeps a couple of 24" meat saws and spare blades in camp. They're used on elk and moose solely to split the back bone as we break halves into quarters. I have split backbones with an axe or hatchet, but results are less than surgical. Put the cutting edge against a vertebra and use another implement or club as a hammer. One hit usually splits one vertebra. With deer, pronghorn, and caribou, we can pack back/front halves, and one can get them to that state with just a pocket knife.

Now Pharm, you're doing it ALL wrong man !

Don't you know nuttin.

Man MY way is simpler - quicker - easier - cleaner,

What's not to like?





Whatever works for you and you like is THE answer.

Jerry

This. I use an old single tree to hang them with a pulley system. I've processed hundreds this way. Most who watch me decide its the way they are going to do it. I've done so many for so long that it only takes me a matter of 20-30 minutes.

Edit to add: No saws. Everything is done with a smallish knife. No need to split the sternum, no need to saw bones. De-bone everything. If packing out, Cape it and pack the rest of the meat in cheesecloth bags.

We use sawzall at pelvis, sternum, knees, ribs at spine, base of the neck, base of the skull, and to remove any rack with a piece of skull. It will get drilled and screwed to the wall of the cabin, for use as a hanging rack for coats, hats, bows, kitchen gear, ect.

Gutless isn't legal in AK, even if you take all the trim meat, rib meat and the like? That's the first I have heard of that. I think there's a miscommunication going on here concerning what the gutless method is.

An AK F&G sponsored video I watched before flying out into the bush for a caribou hunt was where I first learned of the gutless method, back in 2004 or so...

Jerry,
I tried a new "my way" this year. It went like this:

Shoot buck

Tell new kid "gut, hang, and skin that deer"

Drink beer and watch to make sure he doesn't [bleep] it up or cut off his fingers


It turned out pretty good. I got the idea from my brother, who told his boy (on his first-ever elk hunt) to drop the guts on the bull I had just shot. Damnedest thing. My brother and his boy showed up at the kill site just as I was done with pictures. Okay, now the work starts. My brother told me to put the knife away, then turned to his boy and said alright, it's your turn.

A guy could get used to that.





P

Pharm, I heard that.

In another thread I mentioned taking a G son along to pack meat out. Similar.


Jerry

Why do you split the sternum? I cut around it, cut tendon in the hip joint, ham falls off.

I’m asking, because I might learn something. I clean mine the way other guys on leases I’ve been on clean theirs. You fellows using saws may be doing it faster and easier. I learned about splitting hide, belly and back here. Makes it way easier to get hide off.

Hanco

Remember I process my deer at home and have the benefits of water, electricity, and lights if needed at night so all that figures in to MY processing

Yes, for me the sawsall (reciprocaticating saw) is just that, faster & easier.

Normally our WX is too warm for deer to hang long SO. I cut it up and put it on ice & water in ice chests. I empty & refill a few Xs to dump bloody water
out and keep the meat cleaner. As long as you keep it in COLD CLEAN ice/water, it’s no diff from hanging in a cooler.. which I’ve never had.

These things work well for me. Maybe someone else is looking for solutions.

I too learned Gut Less from someone on the fire who hunted in Kansas. I don’t remember who he was
but I tried it and LIKE it so much that I use it as often as feasible.

Jerry

I split the sternum to facilitate cooling. Rifle deer season in Oregon lands on the closest weekend to the first of October so sometimes we're hunting at the end of September. It can get pretty warm during the day so proper cooling is essential.




P

If they’re not boned out I generally hang em from a rope

Hanco & Pharm

I only split the sternum WHEN I can let it hang a few days. Opening the sternum makes is much easier to get ALL of the esophagus/lungs etc. cleaned out.

Cutting legs, pelvis, neck OR head, & antlers off is a snap w/sawsall.

A knife blade will stay sharp longer if you’re NOT cutting/grinding against bone.

Someone else mentioned hitting a knife w/hammer or hatchet. NOT around my Dad ! !

Jerry

Hang all mine head down for minimum of a week given good temperatures.

The hind meat is better than the neck.

-Ken

Hang from a gambrel head down for as long as weather allows.

I always split the sternum when gutting, it splits very easy if you don't go up dead center and just go up one side just cutting each rib. Split the neck all the way to the jaw, remove the esophagus I do not want this left in a hanging deer, don't care if it's just 1 day.

Split pelvis w a Gerber hatchet, remove the azzhole here again I don't care if I am going to hang and debone as soon as I get home.

Splitting the pelvis also makes it easier to get legs laid open for cooling and hanging from the gambrel.

If I am at my buds and kill one I rinse it out since I have to right drive by a hose bib when leaving, only time I let water touch my deer. None of that water/ice soaking BS for me.

I was taught to hang head up. Reason was head down blood would run down into the neck and spoil the meat. Don't know if that is true or not.

That was the normal approach back in the 60-70s. My Dad butchered a goat every year to BBQ and he would NOT rinse it with water.
Later in the 80s, I learned from OTHERS and tried it.

Have you ever tried ice/water ?

10 gauge - you are entitled to your own opinions and practices...it doesn't bother me.


Jerry

Not done it myself but a buddy does it and I do not care for the taste of the meat. Maybe I had a bad batch, dunno, tried it once and never saw any reason to sample it again.

Never saw any reason to do it as I have never had what I would consider a bad taste from any of my deer or quite a few I ate growing up that dad or my uncles killed. Unless somebody forgot to cut the glands from meat before grinding it or packaging meat with the glands still in it.

Like you, if others want to do it they can have at it, no judging from me but I see nothing "I" can personally gain from it.

Maybe we are lucky. The place I hunt close to home allows me to have 30-45 minutes max from the time a deer is shot, gutted, loaded in truck, driven to the house and skinned/hung. If weather is right that deer is chilling pretty dang fast.

End result is still the same, as long as we eat what we kill and enjoy it all is well.

My way is the right way to me and your way is the right way to you, or so that's what my wife says. I still think I am right!!

Heat, cleaning up the meat with fresh spring water, and just easier to clean out everything that you are not going to eat. Easier access to the tenderloins, and speed. Without the saw, and each hunter cutting his own takes a fairly long time. But With two cutters, one sawman, one cleaning meat and sorting for each cooler, we can process 5 deer it the time it took us to do one. We work well as a team.