Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game gut shot meat protocol

Deer killed today in camp with a quartering away shot that pulverized lungs but nicked stomach, so it had some gut spillage. It was in the high 20s/low 30s all AM, and gutted, skinned, rinsed, freezer hung, etc., all within 1.5-2 hours. In my book, given these circumstances, it's a total non-issue for meat and if it was mine I'd happily eat it.. But it sparked an interesting conversation about it in camp (most seemed to agree, re: no biggie), so I'm curious what yall's takes are.

Non issue for me.

NO problem.

After thoroughly rinsing.. I like to let them hang a few days.

Jerry

It's not a crisis. I've had a couple where the bullet angle opened the gut. As long as you wash it out fairly soon there's no bad taste.
Consider how many guys take a straight on shot. Any of the larger calibers will easily make it through the lungs to the gut and mess things up. It happens all the time with no meat spoilage.

No issues here. A thorough rinse n dry and it's good to go. An exception might be a gut shot animal that wasn't found till the next day with warmer temps.

sounds like no problem. my son, who's camp nickname is "Gutshot" has made a mess a couple of times. i'm talking straight through the stomach with a 308 kind of mess. boy had a problem with his aim when he was younger. thankfully he has improved, but the name still sticks. i have actually cut entire sections of the deer out and thrown it away because it was so inundated with gut paste, including tenderloins and hinds. i would skin the mess quickly and hose it out thoroughly and trim and it was always fine.

people wash pig guts and eat and use them for all differant things (Sausage etc) I just had hog maws for supper yestarday.

Buddy thought it was a good idea to catch a 140 grain BT from his 7mm mag. He opted to shoot a whitetail straight on an indeed caught the bullet. We field dressed animal and saw the mess. He found the bullet and cleaned animal. No issue. I rinse out animal or use dry grass/rag to wipe out excess blood and other fluids ect. Cut out meat if tainted or bad.

Non issue for sure.

OP nailed the procedure for minimizing any issue.

Guts and vital hits where the animal dies quickly are a non issue. Straight gut shot where the animal dies hours later have never been good in my experience.

100%

Have eaten Hog Maw myself.

Most sausage is stuffed in but.
I'd guess most people don't know that.

Common knowledge among country people here.
Not so much pseudo country people.

Non-issue.

No issues. Sometimes hard to avoid punching guts depending on angles.

I've done it, a quick field dressing and a good washout of the cavity. Never tasted any difference. Prefer not to, but stuff happens.

Thanks gents. It doesn't get talked about a lot because it taints the story a little, but especially with all the quartering shots folks say they take on elk, my hunch is this happens all the time. Glad to hear y'all agree.

It’s very common and no matter how good a shot a person is, things go wrong through our own faults or not.

My worst shot on an animal was a WT doe. I was out in a cut block in tall grass and had a small herd of deer walk right at me, sun rising right behind me. I was nearly busted several times by a yearling and while I was trying to keep an eye out on the yearling, the doe I picked out walked slowly past me about 50yds out. I slowly turned while the yearling was standing about 20yds away looking at me and when I looked back at the doe her head was down in the grass feeding. I quickly aimed behind the shoulder and shot. The deer scattered and the doe ran over the ridge in front of me. I found her about 600yds later and while focused on the yearling I hadn’t seen the doe turn 180... In my haste to make a shot before I was busted, I assumed the doe was still walking past and made the quick shot. I put the bullet perfectly in the crease... right in front of her hind quarter and gut shot her. No meat loss with a relatively quick death but terrible shot placement and I felt ill for a while after that.

that smell can turn a stomach though. last one i remember doing myself was probably almost 30 years ago. straight on shot on a doe with the 270 at about 30 yards. i saw the stuff blow out the sides through the scope. it was all over the trees and snow and basically the bullet gutted the deer. what a friggen stinky mess.

Clearly a city boy.

I had a quartering to shot that got in the guts pretty good. Small deer. Had a gut funk on the carcass after it was gutted skinned and cleaned.

I gave it a sponge bath with some vinegar and cut/wrapped it after a few days.

Meat was delicious.

If you look at a deer, you can see that the gut actually has very little direct contact with meat. That's why skinning a large animal will get it cool much faster than just gutting. The skin has almost full contact with the meat.

The worst sound you can hear while gutting a deer..............hissssssssss🤢

GTG. BTDT.

Hahaha... Navlav8r... absolutely right.

To the op... stomach and intestine contents contaminate meat if it is too bad or you leave the animal a long time before gralloching it, high temeratures accelerate and worsen the process.

Best thing is to clean it the best you can, maybe trim some, and if water is available rinse it some.

Rubbing in some acidic solution like lemmon juice or vinegar or even some dry schnaps stops the prolferation of the bacteia that produce the stink and the gamey taste.

This is my thoughts exactly.

Wonder how many would buy meat like that in a grocery store. I bet quite a few would pass. I'm fussy about what meat goes into my freezer and even more fussy about what shots I take so as not to encounter it.Washing off does not get the blood locked into meat. If I come across a hunk of meat that is like jello with so much blood in it,It gets tossed to the critters that sneak around at night.

Just think of it as being pre-digested meat 🤢

Kidding. Cleaned and rinsed quickly; no problem.

No issues with using the meat if we can get it washed out pretty quick.

Skinning one on the gambrel, on the other hand, can get pretty dicey on the constitution if the smell hits just right.

The only time I’ve had a gut shot deer affect the meat has been as a result of adrenaline affecting the situation, not the gut spillage itself. If the deer ran a good ways, the gut shot protocol wasn’t followed (back out eight or so hours later, let em bed down, etc) then adrenaline becomes a factor, and you are dealing with some potentially tough meat.

Some of the toughest meat I’ve ever encountered has been from dog drives and the deer are running for their lives. Like dealing with gut spillage in the meat, I clean everything out, ensure the carcass goes through rigor mortis, age for as long as I can and then process. 95% of the time you can’t tell any difference from cleanly taken deer.

I prefer real guts to stuff my sausage insteadof those plastic ones. In the sausage world gut is the real deal.

Yep, no issue for me.

The only thing I do differently (every deer cavity); is after gutting, rinsing & getting hung up, I use a light vinegar / water solution, & a cotton rag as a final cleaner.

I always hang for more than 7 days.

Moisture breeds bacteria, the vinegar solution kills bacteria.

YMMV

^^^ this fella, smart ^^^^^^

bingo

Wish we could let em hang in my shop for 7 or so days. We generally have the A/C on when unwrapping Christmas presents. Ugh…

My issue is stopping them freezing !!

Same here. Rise as soon as possible. Hang and trim as necessary.

IF a creek is around, wash it out as soon as possible.
This will Help clean out a lot of the Gut Juices !

One of the hunters on a Javelina hunt got a little enthusiastic but his animal and ended up blowing 5 rounds through that animal. The each shoulder, hip and the skull had a bullet in it. I'm pretty sure he busted the guts. We field dressed it; got it back to camp where we skinned what was left of it; clean it with clean water and packed it in ice. It was good to go.

Now if he had shot the scent sack...different story.

I know I know, 5 shots overly excessive. I corrected him and hew has never done that again.

I just skin them. Cut the legs, loin and neck meat off. The only reason I go in the body is for the tenderloins and heart. They can be rinsed off most of the time.

your situation, no biggie.

if it was HOT then a good rinsing with water and quick cool down is in order.

I've had some really really bad gutshot stomach, guts everywhere, quick taking care of it and rinsing with water and no big deal.

Former sister in law was the gutshot queen. Don't think she ever shot a deer that was not gut shot. Always gutted asap and rinsed meat was fine. Don't think I would of ate the inside tenderloins if they were offered though.

She made a real mess of several deer. Used a Ruger 44 carbine. Brother told her to shoot until it went down or ran away. Well they never ran away and it took awhile for them to go down. Don't think she ever hit a deer in the ribs or forward either the guts or the hindquarters usually both. Last one she shot we found after dark. Smelled it before we saw it. Apparently a mountain lion did as well. Nice to hear a mountain lion scream so close you can't tell which direction it came from. In the dark with no gun. Thank god she is former sister inlaw.

That takes me back to Jr. high school. My dad and I were hunting with my dad's friend and his son, about my age. We were driving in a Jeep with us boys riding on the fenders. We found a doe by the road at all of 20 yds and stopped. It was on my side and I lung shot it with a 30-30. It ran a short distance but it was dead on it's feet. Meanwhile, the other kid was using an M1 carbine with a 16 shot mag. He emptied the mag on it. He literally hit it with all 16 (we counted the holes) which wasn't hard as close as we were. He gut shot, neck shot, shoulder shot, and hip shot it. It was a stinking mess. My dad gutted it while he winked at me to keep my mouth shut and congratulated the kid on his 'fine' deer.

Clean it up as quickly as possible and move on.

My one gut shot in recent memory was a crossbow kill that made for a good lesson. I'd set up my tent blind on the edge of a field where deer had been coming out late in the day. As it was getting darker I'd missed seeing a deer coming to the edge of the field about 30 yards away. When I did see it, I shot it behind the near front shoulder thinking that it was a shorter coupled yearling. When I found my arrow it was oh,oh. It had that heavy gut smell and resulted in one of the longest, hardest, nearly non-existent blood trails that I'd ever had to sort out. Instead of being a short coupled yearling, it was a long loin mature doe that had stood more quartering on than I'd thought. I might have caught the back edge of one lung, but for sure liver and gut.