I had a 2 year old mule along this year who weren' t ready to carry full loads yet, so I used the no-gut method of quarterin' so' s to have lighter loads for my lil' mule. A bloody mess! Hunks of meat everwhere, very hard to balance the loads an' keep the meat clean. I' ll stick to the ol' fashioned way. God gave elk 4 nice balanced quarters, all you gotta do is split ' em right. Hell, mules don' t know they' re carryin' bones.