Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game No gut field dressing

I can pack a whole pronghorn and half of a deer or caribou. I gut those just to minimize surface exposure. When it comes to a moose though, I'm pushing to pack a bone in ham.

It would interesting some day to see how a skilled butcher in Africa breaks down an elephant.

We have to take the deer in to be tagged, so we usually do field dress in the traditional manner. I would have to check the regs to see if you could do the gutless version and then remove the head/cape to just take that in for tagging.

I've packed out 2 caribou at once before- of course it was meat and head only, no bone

(my client packed the head/cape off of one of the animals)

Good link, but skin the animal before removing the quarters! You can lay the animal on its own hide, keeping the meat clean (and hair free!).

Randy
And more likely, whose tired hand is doing the cutting by the time you get that far into the job... There is also the possibility of a poked bladder...

Thanks for the comment, seriously, because it made me look it up and learn something.
art

Jordan
We bag and remove quarters as we skin them out. There is no advantage in leaving skinned quarters in the open to get dirty...
art

Art,
Sorry, I guess I should have explained my point a little better. I'm not saying to skin the entire animal before removing any quarters. What I am saying is to skin each quarter before removing it. In that link, the guy was cutting through hide, hair, and meat all at the same time. What a great way to fill your meat with hair.

There is, however, one advantage to skinning the entire animal right away- heat release!

Jordan
Woops, guess I should have watched what you were commenting on...

I agree completely!
art

I bag quarters progressively as they are skinned to keep them clean. I would never skin a whole side and leave unprotected meat...

I guess I'm just not as experienced as the rest of you guys. Seems like everyone I talk to about this claims they can skin and bag an elk in less than an hour. For me its been no were near that quick, especially alone. The 15 min it takes to gut an animal saves me time in the end. Not to mention its easier to get the entire tenderloins out with out worring about splitting the ever expanding gut bag.

Maybe I'm just no good at the whole gutless thing.

We were fortunate to kill two moose within about half an hour of each other a few weeks ago. We decided the best thing to do was gut one and get it opened up and cooling, and go work on the second one. The second one we decided to go with the 'gutless' method, bagged and deboned at the same time. Start to finish was 4 hours with meat bagged and in the shade. The first moose we gutted was bagged and in the shade in 3 hours, add in the gutting time and we were still time ahead... That was also after packing a load of meat down to camp, and hiking a mile back up to the second bull. In other words we were 1/2 worn out before we even started.

No guts made moving it around 10x easier, and all in all the meat ended up cleaner. maybe we should have split the hide on the belly instead of the back on the gutless bull, but reguardless I'll never do another gutless.

I did two whitetail does without gutting last year. I quartered each where they fell, and packed out the meat. I will do it again.

Some pointers.

If you get hair all over your quarters, singe it off with a torch before you cut it up.

If your animal falls on a sandy riverbank, try to drag it off of the sand. If there in no sand free area, good luck. I got a little sand on one, and you just can't rinse all of the sand off. All meat from that deer, and the two that shared a cooler ride home, was crunchy. Not the good crunchy.

Here are some pics I took of one last year. Skinning and quartering on the ground killed my back, but dragging it, then hanging it, and butchering at home would have been worse.

Yep, skin and quarter as you go.

Yup, Lay it in the dirt after skinning and bitch about grit... Amazing!

Get game bags around the meat AS you skin quarters!

I leave the tenderloins until last. When everything else is off, I slit open the gut to take the pressure off, then cut along the sides of them to get my hand in and get them. The time it takes to gut one is just that much less time spent and it leaves a big mess to work in.

I can't do an elk myself in an hour, for sure. It takes me about 3 hrs, but I'm 61 so maybe a young'un can do it faster.

That's very much like my Inuit friends taught me to process caribou. We end up gutting after taking off the quarters and backstrap though.

Why?

Bambistew:

While I'm typically not out to set speed records, I know I'd be hard pressed to get an elk bagged in an hour using either method. It took me almost half an hour to get my last elk out from beneath the tree limbs he skidded under last time. I'd get him out, and he would slide down under another. The two things that help my efficiency are 1) practice, and 2) some help.

On the practice side... few of us are professional butchers. It is amazing to watch those guys work with a boning knife, and a little help can actually slow them down. In a season where the family might score 2 or 3 deer, the last one I work up looks like it came out of surgery. I always need to refresh the memory on the lay of the land (skeleton and muscles), and there's little waste of time or meat after I've done a few.

A small bit of help can almost halve the time needed for carcass work up. Just having someone around to hold up a leg, stretch out some hide, or tie a knot in the line is a real bonus. Even a small child can be an asset.

As to cleanliness, there is nothing better than working up a deer or elk in about 18 inches of snow. I've been lucky too a couple of times, and been close enough to camp to haul up a Come A Long and get an elk completely off the ground. Bagged those up without a single pine needle on the carcass.