Txnhunter,

I was 40 when I got my first deer. I had been hunting before, but no luck. Now I get deer all the time and I still don't like field dressing the deer. There are places on the web where I have seen step by step inx's. I can even tell you here how to do it.

This is what I do....

If deer is in a spot where you can gut, than get out knives and light, if you are doing this in the dark. If the deer is not in a good spot, than drag the deer to a place where you can gut.

What you need to do is make an incision in the belly, without cutting open the gut sack. I grab the skin and pull away, and make cut. Then turn over the knife so blade is facing you or foward and cut up to the breast bone, and down through the leggs. We sometimes will straddle the deer with the leggs open.
Once you have done that, I usually make a cut around the anus, in a circle. If it's a male, remove genetils. Now comes the fun part. You need to start cutting by the heart and detach anything that
that is attached to the inner cavity. Reach up in the chest cavity and cut the wind pipe. Pull out anything that will come out. Also pull in anus and tie a knot. Once everything is out, we usually keep the heart, if not destroyed and liver, place in a ziploc. Also, we will take the leggs and place the deer on it's open belly to assit in draining out the blood. I have an orange deer drag that I purchsed. It goes around my chest so I can drag the deer. Also, came with it were inx's to field dressing. I also attached a bigger rope, with some knots to assist in pulling.

I find that small knives work best. I have a place by me that I can purchase a small knife for $2, so I buy a few and if I loose them, so what. They are ver sharp and do a great job.

To skin, what we do is hang the deer by it's neck, we use a come a long and crank it up. Once the deer feet are off the ground, we let the deer drain. Next we use a hack saw and cut off leggs, above the joints.
We than make a cut around the whole neck. Than we start rolling down the hide off the body.

Once the hide is removed, we quarter up the deer.

If there is no snow and I got the deer in my back woods, I use my Sears tractor to drag the deer. If there is snow, I have a sled that we use to place the deer on a drag it on the sled.

I hope this helps....

Tom