Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Gutting a deer through its side

Deer have to be intact until registered here, aside from gutting.

I keep 50' of rope and 2 double wheeled pullies to pull a deer up into a tree . I have not done it yet but if I get a deer way back in the brush I will never drag one out again unless it is close, like 1/4 mile. I will skin it ,debone and put it in my boundary waters back pack.

You mean a snatch block?
Deboning them on the ground isn't too terribly difficult but I guess if you could get them up into a tree then you could keep it all cleaner, I guess.

It's difficult if you have a bad back

Bring them out whole sans guts in Maine. We stash a couple orange kids sleds in the woods and twitch them out that way. At least they slide easy.

I think a cheap poncho would make the deer backpack a lot cleaner for the trip out

WI. was one of those states where we had to bring them out whole with only gutting. We have some big deer here and the hunting population is getting older and what's a coronary event worth to a person? Now we can section them into five pieces. We tried the pole thing on a 200 pounder and decided it worked well for a photo op, but not for retrieving a deer. My deer cart hasn't left the basement in a while since I've been using a sled and a Rokon to pull it. Much lower center of gravity than the cart or packing it.

Sounds like a good way to get shot .

Well, it is Illinois

Solid point.

My back starts aching more and more every year and doubly so when crouched over at unnatural angles working on critters.

Same here.

We do have telecheck now so you can call it in, answer a few basic questions about the kill and they give you a telecheck ID number.

Get the ID number and if you want to pack a critter out in a pack you can, no dragging of a whole deer.

Automated and works pretty good.

I still miss the physical check stations, especially when there were kids there checking deer or turkeys.

They went to phone and online check-ins with confirmation numbers to write on your tags here several years ago, too. The only physical checks are with cwd permits, and a few other special cases.

I know a guy that was packing a gutted buck out over his shoulders. Even though he had an orange hat and vest on some other hunter saw the buck floating through the brush and shot it with a 150 gr. .270. The bullet penetrated the field dressed buck, shattered the packers shoulder and lung and exited high out the front of his chest. They were close to town and got the shot up deer packer into ER pretty quickly. After some touch and go the packer survived. He had several surgeries to repair his shoulder and the event left him crippled up on that side. I don't remember if the shooter got charged with any crime or not.

I hope they charged his dumb ass with something.

Packer wasn't too smart either.

Concur. My brother and I tried that one night to get the front half of 234 buck out of the woods to a point where we could have reached ti with a 4wd truck. I had already carried out the two hindquarters on my back so I was a bit tired already. We had to go through two dry oxbows near the river and a fifty yard briar patch and other patchy brush.

Within about fifty yards of trying to maintain our balance and fighting that buck, we were ready to kill each other. It would start to swing and down on our butts we’d go. we finally got it out but we were whipped before it was all said and done.

We both thought,”it worked so well when the porters did it on Tarzan!” 😊

Agreed... on both counts.

My dad and I packed a buck out like that - once. Missouri got telecheck in 2006 and I have been doing the gutless debone and quarter pack out method since. Dragging is a thing of the past for me.

not far enough north, to just use a plastic sled from Holiday for like $5 per... back in the 80s and up to the mid 90s at least...

I left MN back in 1995...

hunting up north between Chisholm/Hibbing area, half way to International Falls...west off of Rt 73... south of Rt 1 intersection.

Some of my in laws did it that way.... gutting them from the side, and carrying them back...

we younger guys liked using the sled instead....

I guess yoiu could call it a snatch block. I just call them pullies. I have 2 double pullies and that is supposed to pull up a 200 lb deer with only 50 lbs. I never used it though, but keep it in case I have a long drag out and dont want the coyotes to get it before morning. If I hang it high enough the coyotes wont get it.