Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Leaving deer over night......

The tv shows just get me at times. I think they are only after the racks and could care less for the meat...

Seems like just about every show you see they shoot a buck and leave them until the next day. Then they show the mid-day recovery while they are all standing around in short sleeve T-shirts. Don't know about you fellas, but I've seen deer spoil in a matter of hours let alone over night. I can understand leaving one when it's really cold out, but here in the South, they spoil quickly.

The last I can remember was a doe a friend shot before dark with archery tackle. We couldn't find much blood and despite hours of searching we came up empty handed. I found the large doe the next morning and she was bloated, covered in flies, and pretty rank. Had it been cold, she would have probably been fine.

How do ya'll recover your animals?

Here, if you shoot one late, it's time to go back to camp and round up a few buddies and some good lights. I never leave game w/o trying for hours to recover them. Been doing it that way as long as I can remember and it hasn't let us down yet. Sure, you may need to wait a 1/2 hour on poor or questionable hits, but over night is alittle extreme IMO.

Reloader7RM

Shot placement................

Would never leave one over night unless I had to.

I have done it two times, and it worked out once. One was a buck we lost the trail and it was pitch dark, we had lights but lost blood. We found it quickly the next morning, and it was fine. It was well below freezing that night.

The other was a doe last year. I jumped it while tracking in the dark. I came back at light the next morning and found the coyotes beat me to it. One hind quater was nearly gone up to the back of the rib cage.

I'd strongly advise against it. My brother in law left one overnight last year. We had a warm season, & it spoiled. I would imagine that would be even more common in LA. Leaving one overnight in sub freezing temperatures would likely prevent meat spoilage, but if it gets too cold & freezes, skinning is going to be no fun at all.

At least a couple of times back in the 70's i shot a deer very late and after gutting it dragged it over to a tree and strung him up as i always carry at least a ten foot cut of rope with me.
But these were also nights that got into the 40's or a bit lower.
Also this was in the hill country of Texas where at that time coyotes had pretty much been eradicated by the sheep and goat ranchers for years.
Doubt i could get away with that in south Texas due to the coyotes and abundant hogs.
But to leave a deer lying around all night long with it's guts intact...No way!!!

I've never really had a problem with overnight spoilage. The few I've had to recover the next day, with the exception of one very sick doe, were just fine. Stiff but otherwise edible.

They are not hard to find if you put the right bullet in the right spot. Leave one overnight around here and the coyotes and hogs would have it eaten before midnight.

Where I hunt if you leave an animal in the woods over night the Coyotes will have it ate right down to nothing left but bones

I've never left an animal overnight even elk! It has resulted in getting back to camp and skinning it in the wee hours of the morning. The deer we usually have back at camp, hung up and skinned out within an hour or two. The last cow elk I shot was what was going to be a quick evening hunt resulting in us getting back to camp with it around midnight.

The only thing I left overnight in the woods was an elk in CO. I got him right at dark and found him a 100yds later dead on a VERY steep rock slide. It was snowing too. I got down to him, gutted him and then went back to camp. It was just too slippery and dangerous IMO to attempt to get the elk quarters up to the top of the slide in the dark. In the morning a couple of us went back for it. The coyotes had gotten to the gut pile but that was it. BTW, that bull was the most tender game meat I've ever had.

RH

I've done it once and by buddies have done it a few times. Typcially happens when we shoot a buck late in the day and are hunting alone.

we've been lucky not to have anything really bother the meat except a bird or small rodent one time. Unfortunately I didn't have a tree near to try to hang it in, so I wrapped the half that I left behind for the night in a mesh game back, pissed around it in a couple spots and left my sweaty shirt next to it. Figured it might help keep the critters away.

It was below freezing that night, so the deer was pretty stiff the next morning and the meat was fine

I first thought this was about leaving a gutted and skinned one laying on its hide over night.

That I have done with elk as much or more than deer. Five different elk and somewhere around that many deer. I can usually get out with half a deer by making a pack out of it. I find a head , heart and liver on an elk is enough for me to carry after I skin one.

In all but one case we had snow and in that case it was 17 degrees so it didn't hurt anything. The gutpile got bothered in a couple of cases but not the meat.

I did shoot one cow pretty close to dark. She angled off into a pole thicket and I didn't find her that night [she actually only went 65 yards. I walked right by her and thought the blood trail had dried up. She was laying on a pool of blood when I found her.]. It was mmy first elk and I was a ways from the road so I kind of wussed out on looking for her after about 1/2 hour.

I found her in the morning and she was still warm inside. She was lung shot but soured near the hip sockets to the tune of about 5lbs of meat a side and maybe 5lbs of shoulder soured. I wasn't too proud of myself for that. The rest of her tasted okay but nothing special.

I have had a couple of deer bothered by birds [magpies] in a big way during the day when we have shot them early, gutted them and went back for the cart. We've been putting a cheap space blanket over them lately and that seems to help.

I have never seen a deer shot the night before and not found that hadn't soured by the next morning. It is usually just too warm.

Don't have to worry about the coyotes anymore - the hogs ran 'em off!

One afternoon a couple years ago in an effort to lure a hog into a shooting lane I deposited a gut pile(head, cape, guts, the whole mess) from a morning doe kill about 75 yards down the lane from my box stand. By dark there were 27 vultures perched about and more circling. An eerie feeling. In the morning all that was left was one lower leg bone, all else consumed or dragged off.

I couple years ago we killed two deer that fell within 50 yards of each other. We boned them out and left the carcasses about 6pm. We went back in the morning before dark to sit on the gut piles and everything was gone, just a few tufts of hair. Of course we saw more black bears than bucks so they might have had something to do with it.

Yes, the TV boys give up way to easy. Maybe they're scared of the dark.

I have never and hope to never leave an unrecovered animal out overnight. The rumen is still cooking and generating heat, and one can experience substantial spoilage.

Those shot with approaching darkness have always at least been gutted and propped on timbers or rock off the ground before departing. I always leave a t-shirt to get a good slug of man-scent around the kill site and have never had any real issues with scavengers either.

I once lost some elk tenderloins to a bobcat, when a 3 day progression of continuous snowfall kept us from retrieving game until the 4th day.

Exactly.

I saw a mule deer shot and gutted at noon. By 6pm we were back to pull it out and found the entire rear end of the mulie right up to the ribcage had be eaten by yotes. Nothing left on the rear half but the bones.

I didn't even think of hogs. Not any around here.

Same thing goes around here.....I speak from experience.

Many years ago,some hunting partners jumped a spike bull that had been gut shot by another party.They followed it until about 11PM,but lost it. The next morning we all got on it and found it about 1/2 mile further.

We started to skin and quarter it,and found the entire front shoulder and back ham that was on the ground spoiled. I heaved my guts out at the smell. One only has to experience tha tonce in thier life to insure it does not happen again.

If one wants to hunt in the late afternoon,they should make sure they have the required equipment and mental atttitude to find animala in the dark.
My bnext question is what happens if you find the animal and it is not dead, shooting it is illegal after legal shooting hours.