Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Field dressing / deboning

I usually go to work pretty quick unless it's cold out, but it takes me awhile to get to the backstraps. I'm old and slow, so I pace myself.

As soon as pictures are taken. Never had an issue.

Makes me wonder if our definitions of "tender" vary...my experiences mirror Rock Chuck's. I take the straps out last when taking a critter apart in the field to maximize the time they're next to bone. I also don't debone quarters if I don't absolutely have to.

Not directed towards anyone in particular...just a thought.

This might have a lot to do with it. I've never eaten any meat in my life that was too tough to eat. We all have different views on what's too tough to chew.

Lots of toothless folks eat at taco bell, because the food is easy to chew

That and they're willing to eat crap!

Don't they just leave them out for the polar bears?

If I field dress and haul a deer back to the house to hang it up, by the time I am rested enough to get back to skinning and deboning it has hung plenty long enough IMHO. with work etc. it might take a day or two to get a deer freezer wrapped. Took me 3 days to freezer wrap my moose solo. I was working as fast as I could because afternoon temps were pushing 50F. Lucky for me the nights were below freezing though. That was probably the best game I ever ate.

Sure you can - also with a machete. I've done it often- just cut a club and use that to drive the stakes. Ain't no trick to make stakes out of inch thick stuff with either, if there's some around.


Might be a problem with 20 inch diameter trees tho....

And the saw is lighter- important if one is back-packing. Also handy for cutting snow blocks out of left-over slides from the winter before for cooling meat.

I'm on the bandwagon.. Wait 'til Rigor Mortis has passed.

I've killed caribou at 20 below, gutted them, left the hide on, skinned them a week or more later. Some of the best most tender I've eaten, so maybe that thing about "not cooling too fast" is accurate (winter caribou hides are such good insulators that one can sleep on them in the snow with skin side down and not melt the snow). Thinking back on those I've immediately field skinned and quartered at below freezing temps, I'm kinda leaning toward the opinion that maybe they were a bit tougher. But then, they don't get properly "aged" generally either.

Above freezing temps are a whole 'nother matter, and depends on how much above freezing it is.

Therein lies the problem. I hunt the muzzy season, and even though i'm at timberline (11,300 ft) It can be warm, and I hunt alone. My goal is to get the meat out as fast as possible. I don't need to camp, because I live in the unit I hunt, so getting the meat back to my Jeep as fast as possible is important.

I have no option but to bone it fast, and get hiking. Tough or not. I eat it all.

At that altitude, I've had success during the ML season leaving the bone in and hanging it in the shade for a few days. No matter how warm it is during the day, it'll be cold enough at night to cool the meat well and as long as it stays in the shade during the day it's fine. This year I killed my bull Monday morning and packed out the last of the meat Thursday morning, it was fine. Each day when I'd take down some meat to bone out, it was cold enough to make my hands ache and force me to take breaks to warm them.

Not a bad idea. I was always worried about another hunter coming along, and inviting himself to some meat.

Well, I wasn't too worried about that, it didn't take me three days for nothing

Sure sounds better than trying to do it the same day. I'm too old for that anymore.

Doing it AK style.





Button buck like that bones to about #45.

Hung a doe off the ground on Sunday. Should have taken pics of that. Oh, well.

Doing it CO style:

Just caught this thread. Interesting. The bull I shot this year has both - a quarter with bone in (first trip down the mountain) and a quarter boned after having set for 3-4 hours. All meat has been in my cooler on ice since day 1. I'll mark the packages - bone in/bone out and see if I can tell the difference. I've usually left bone in when transporting with horse but de-bone when it goes on my back. I don't recall a difference. We'll see this year.

BTW: I normally use the smokepole method on elk. Shoot, quarter, hang, go get the horse.

Nah, that's not the "smokepole" method, my method is much more streamlined, I eliminate a step. You don't have to go get the horse, because he's standing right there.

Quarters are 'posed to look like this, in CO.



Natives, whack the lower legs off.....



Since there is nothing edible on them, they get left in the field as an ol' injun spirit-appeasement, good-luck kinda offering.