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Interesting thread. I always gut asap but I can see in some of your situations that may not be the best way to go. May also depend on what you do with your deer. I treat mine like beef (gut and skin asap, hang for 10 days-2 weeks in a meat locker before butchering) and make most of it into steaks. When I serve it most people would not guess it is venison.


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Originally Posted by hanco
I hang and quarter my deer within 30 minutes of shooting, but I never gut mine unless I fuuck up and gut shoot it. I always gutted mine before a guy showed me it was a waste of time.



Same here. I have been doing it that way for the last forty-five years or so. Only gut them if I'm required to on a draw hunt here in Texas.

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Originally Posted by 603Country
I quit gutting deer a few years ago. I hang em, skin em, take the backstrap and debone the hindquarters and some of the shoulder meat. Then we put the meat on ice for a few days, draining off the water occasionally. If it’s a gamey buck, we’ll salt the ice (a tip I got from a lady hog hunter).

The gamey taste isn’t spoilage. It’s in the blood.


Yep. We strip them quick, and get the meat in a cooler with ice and salt. Drain it once a day until the water is clear. Sometimes I have left them in coolers for ten days. Never had that gamey taste.

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I'm in the no gut club also. You can get all the good stuff without getting elbow deep in guts. I can see the benefit of gutting if you have to drag them a good ways

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I grew up being taught that you were to gut the deer immediately and I did for over 30 yrs. But...we hunted as a family and if I killed a deer early in the morning, the others might not get through hunting for several more hours so the gut job was warranted. My circumstances have changed. I usually hunt by myself and if I kill a deer at daylight, I'm done. If I have done my job and there is no track job I either drive up to where the deer lays (not this year, been too wet...lol) or go get the 4 wheeler and drag the deer to the vehicle. I'm getting older and have a bad back and bad discs in my neck to pulling and tugging and lifting the deer any longer is over with. So with the 4 wheeler I just drag the deer upon the trailer. Our lease is only 6 or 7 miles from the processor who dresses the deer and cuts and wraps it. So there is no need in my estimation to gut the deer in the field. I shot a young buck yesterday morning at 7 AM and it was at the processor shortly after 7:30 and he immediately started dressing the deer.

I can honestly say that since I have been handling deer this way for the last 8 or 9 years, that there is no difference in the quality of meat that I get from when I gutted the deer immediately. As far as the gamey taste, I believe as mentioned above that the deer's forage has far more to do with that than gutting the deer immediately. The onion deer story above was hilarious to me. I like to use onion seasoning my venison so was wondering if one would still need to season a deer which had been eating onions...lol.

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When we hunt the family farms, we gut when we get the deer back to the barn. That means from 20mins to about an hour, depending on which farm. We do not field gut, but keep the meat clean of any ground clutter or foreign matter. Why drag an open wound through the woods? I've never seen any issue with the taste of the meat due to the slight delay. We gut in the barn, and drop it all into a wheelbarrow, and deliver it to the gut pile. It serves double duty, if we set leg hold traps around it.
We've done no gut version, but in general, we prefer to gut it, wash it and hang it a couple days if the temps allow. The only time I ever use a processor, is if I do not have time to do it myself, such as a Sunday evening hunt.


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Try not gutting on a moose..... smile

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Originally Posted by 603Country
I quit gutting deer a few years ago. I hang em, skin em, take the backstrap and debone the hindquarters and some of the shoulder meat. Then we put the meat on ice for a few days, draining off the water occasionally. If it’s a gamey buck, we’ll salt the ice (a tip I got from a lady hog hunter).

The gamey taste isn’t spoilage. It’s in the blood. That’s what a few days on the salt and ice do, is to remove the blood.

Many years ago I spent some time trying to get within range of a big buck who loved eating wild onions. He often fed in a big patch of them. Finally got him. His blood had a strong onion odor. My hands smelled like onions after I cleaned and deboned him and so did the meat when we cooked it. I think 3 or 4 days of the meat in salted ice might have made that meat edible.

The grandson killed a big stinking hog last season. I’d have thrown it away, but he was a starving college kid and wanted the meat. That’s when I first tried the salted ice soak. After a couple of days, the wife cooked a bit of backstrap just to see how it tasted. It was great. Not at all gamey/stinky.

Try it.

well,to this I say ,bullshit!! blood always leave a animal faster when its warmer. I never soak or ice down a deer. all you do then is bleach the blood out and ask for bacteria to grow.

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I like to quarter, get meat on ice as soon as possible. It’s always warm in Texas

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I don't gut them where they fall becausd I might want to hunt that stand again. We skin them first usually and cut most of the meat off before we gut them. I only gut them to get to the heart. The tenderloins can be cut out without gutting. I am in the camp that puts my meat in a cooler with salted ice and drained off daily. It does pull most of the blood out of the meat and makes it more tender. I ate deer loin for supper last night and that deer had been on ice for 5 days. It was off a buck that stunk when I walked up to him that was in rut. Full of hormones and he wasn't the least bit gamey.

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All my life my credo was that when the deer hit the ground, the guts were out of it before the second bounce! Now that I am 70, I don't move as fast as I used to. I even let the processor gut a deer last year because of my back. It took me about an hour to get him there.

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Heart, liver, kidneys. Best parts. Just say’n.

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Originally Posted by srwshooter
Originally Posted by 603Country
I quit gutting deer a few years ago. I hang em, skin em, take the backstrap and debone the hindquarters and some of the shoulder meat. Then we put the meat on ice for a few days, draining off the water occasionally. If it’s a gamey buck, we’ll salt the ice (a tip I got from a lady hog hunter).

The gamey taste isn’t spoilage. It’s in the blood. That’s what a few days on the salt and ice do, is to remove the blood.

Many years ago I spent some time trying to get within range of a big buck who loved eating wild onions. He often fed in a big patch of them. Finally got him. His blood had a strong onion odor. My hands smelled like onions after I cleaned and deboned him and so did the meat when we cooked it. I think 3 or 4 days of the meat in salted ice might have made that meat edible.

The grandson killed a big stinking hog last season. I’d have thrown it away, but he was a starving college kid and wanted the meat. That’s when I first tried the salted ice soak. After a couple of days, the wife cooked a bit of backstrap just to see how it tasted. It was great. Not at all gamey/stinky.

Try it.

well,to this I say ,bullshit!! blood always leave a animal faster when its warmer. I never soak or ice down a deer. all you do then is bleach the blood out and ask for bacteria to grow.


Bacteria growth happens at temps above 40 degrees. The only way to "ask for bacteria to grow" is to let all the ice melt and the temp inside the cooler reach 40 or above. Meat naturally has a lot of water in its composition. If it was a problem on its own, hanging a deer would not work.


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I notice that most of you guys in the "No Gut Club" get it done in a timely manner in spite of not doing it in the woods.

The only gamey deer I've had was one I shot in the morning and didn't recover until the afternoon (about 6 hours until I got it gutted).


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Originally Posted by 603Country


The gamey taste isn’t spoilage. It’s in the blood.



^

I gut them to cool it off and because the drag out of the woods is often very rugged terrain and not particularly close. dumping some weight is a appreciated. Time to hanging and butcher is usually not within a couple hours either, so gutting is warranted.


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Quit giving in inch by inch then looking back to lament the mile behind ya and wonder how to preserve those few feet left in front of ya. They'll never stop until they're stopped. That's a fact.
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Originally Posted by RJY66
Originally Posted by srwshooter

well,to this I say ,bullshit!! blood always leave a animal faster when its warmer. I never soak or ice down a deer. all you do then is bleach the blood out and ask for bacteria to grow.


Bacteria growth happens at temps above 40 degrees. The only way to "ask for bacteria to grow" is to let all the ice melt and the temp inside the cooler reach 40 or above. Meat naturally has a lot of water in its composition. If it was a problem on its own, hanging a deer would not work.


603country IS correct as well as RJY.

All meat hung in a COOLER is NOT frozen. It’s aged above freezing.
I stumbled onto this in the 80s. My family & friends have been aging venison in ice & water or
coolers ever since and none have gotten sick.

I also was able to demonstrate this to 2 diff deer leases and they changed from freezing to
aging.

srw - 603country said “try it”. I ask have you ever tried it?

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Originally Posted by Tyrone
The key to quality venison is timely heat removal.
The sooner you can get the carcass cooled, the better and less gamey the meat is going to be. Gutting is the easiest way to remove the most heat from the carcass. The next most important step is to remove the skin.

That gamey taste? Really not much to do with "game". It's really the taste of spoilage.

This. I can't imagine not gutting a deer.


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Originally Posted by RJY66



As to your original question, I've answered it probably 3 times before. I don't gut deer in the woods for a couple of reasons:

One, I have access to a lease 30 minutes from my house which is the best hunting situation I have ever been in and probably ever will be. One of the stipulations in the contract is that we are not allowed to leave guts on the property.

Two, during the best part of hunting season here, temps vary from hot to very hot. I killed one early in October at around 7 am and the temp was probably 80 headed for 90. Had I opened it up, every blowfly in the county would have swarmed me and the deer. I don't like that. Since we have to get the deer on ice ASAP, those of us who process our own deer usually do everything at once by taking the deer someplace we can hang it for skinning and butchering......hopefully out of the flies.

Interesting. When I gut a deer it is usually about 20 to 30 degrees. The gut pile is usually gone by the next morning. Different locations call for different answers to the same problems.


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Originally Posted by fishdog52
Fail to understand why some make a big deal out of gutting a deer. It takes less than 5 minutes, with a good knife, and rids the carcass of the stuff that can cause the most problems.
As others have noted, its the single best step to initiate cooling, critically important to making great venison.
The coyotes and crows gotta eat to.
I understand that those who hunt in hot weather might have an entirely different situation than we enjoy here north of the Mason Dixon line. I regard 70+ degree weather as time to go fishing, not hunting.

This.


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I'm one of those fellow who doesn't gut right away most of the time. I'll attempt to explain.

First off, let me give you some background. We've got 200 acres in the Trans-Bluegrass of Kentucky. I'm about 10 mi south of the Ohio River. Rifle season starts the second weekend in November and runs to about Thanksgiving. Average temps on The Opener are a low of 35 and a high in the low 50's.

The main goal in our case is How fast can we get the deer to the processor? The problems are:

1) The nearest processor is a 1/2 hour away.
2) Historically the processor filled up before Noon and refused carcasses after a certain point.
3) The availability of alternative processors-- I've ridden around the county for hours trying to get a deer taken in.
4) The idea of a 300lb live weight buck is not out of the question, nor a 170 lb+ doe.

The timing is not such a problem anymore in the mornings. However, we have a fairly stiff 8PM cutoff for dropping off deer in the evenings.

The key here is speed. If we can get a deer back to camp in an hour after the shot, we hold off gutting until they're out of the field. That is normally the case. Rather than gut in place, we'll call for somebody to come out with the truck. We have a dedicated deer wagon, an old S-10. It has a winch on it so we can even drag a carcass out of the ravine, and block and tackle and ramps to get deer into the back. I have it set up so that one guy can get any sized deer into the back without assistance. Once they're in the back of the deer wagon, we can run them back to the meat pole, run them up and clean them out in a few minutes.

Spoilage? Given our normal operating temps, and the speed in which we retrieve the carcass, spoilage is just a non-issue. A deer taken before 10 AM is at the processor well before Noon. A deer taken before 6PM is there around 7-7:15 PM.

We also are not tied to the process. If a deer runs down into a nearby ravine, and it's going to be a chore getting them out, the first thing we'll do is gut. That happens about once every 3 years or so. Ditto for delayed retrievals. Once in a while it takes us a while to find a deer-- maybe an extra hour or so. In that case, the guts are coming out right away, no matter what the temp.

We hang head-up. We tie have a short length of chain that slips around the neck that attaches to the block and tackle. For gutting, it's ideal. Gravity pulls most of everthing out with very little assistance.

BTW: I learned all this from a hunter from Alabama who was living in Kentucky and on whose farm I bagged my first deer. He was used to much warmer temps and would hoist a deer, head-up, on the nearest tree and gut him.


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