I hunt near where we live - and not far from a dirt road -so I often will bring the deer back to the house to gut it out and clean it out with a hose. Less messy that way. Anywhoo, I'll scoop the gut pile up with a heavy snow shovel bury it aways from the yard a bit but have found the coyotes an/or neighbor dogs will dig it up that night. So next year I won't even bother burying it.

Sidenote: Always refreshing to see the neighbor dogs trotting out of our woods with gut pile smeared all over their snouts. Kind of my "passive agressive" way of getting back at them for letting their dogs run all over the countryside. Can't tell you how many times I've heard something trotting down a deer trail to find it's a springer spaniel with a collar and gold tags a jingling entering the clearing.

Jingle - jingle - jingle - POW!

The woods fall silent for some serious deer hunting.

LOL...yep, that's how I deal with loose dogs as well...NY, You've GOT to be kidding with the stew? Wouldn't completely shock me...when my first child was born, there were people who had signed up to get the placenta's so they could make soup! <SPEEW!>

Gut them where they fall and it will feed all the critters in the woods. I never had any gut pile bother deer. They just seem to ignore it.

Yeah i sure hope ny is kidding about the stew and the plecenta soup has to be the nastiest thing i ever heard of im in agreement with most here knock the guts out as soon as possible leave them right there and there will be many happy critters to come yotes,eagles and countless other birds, martins lots of things i have a hard time beleiving a deer would be licking a gut pile after it was shot those would be some hella tame deer

I believe they'd lick a gut pile, and don't think that means they're tame. They just don't know what it is. I shot a nice 8 point last year, and he dropped about 20 yds from the stand. Arrow hit both lungs and the heart. I hunted every night the rest of the season out of the same tree stand, and I saw deer pass right by the gut pile every night...well, for the week they lasted. Not many yotes there at the time. 15 years ago I shot a HUGE doe that was RIGHT under my tree stand with a shotgun. She ran about 30 yds away, stood there a few minutes, then dropped and twitched for about 5 minutes. I stayed in my stand and watched...the 6 point, and 4 point bucks that were with her, just stood there looking at her and looking around. I waited until about 20 minutes after dark to retrieve her, and I heard them run off as I approached. Deer do funny things, sometimes STUPID things...that's probably the only thing they have in common with humans. Oh, back to the topic at hand, I spill the guts where they drop.

Severalyears ago, my father shot a doe. He got the doe early in the morning. He gutted it and hung it in a tree to air out. He still had a buck tag, so he went back to his stand to wait on a buck. about an hour later he saw another doe. It walked up to the dead deer, hanging in the tree, and smelled it. It then walked away. Deer do weird things.

By the way, I just gut them where they fall. The gut pile will feed many types of wildlife.

Gut 'em where they fall. I never cared about dragging guts out of the woods. I have seen deer, buck and doe, headed for a fresh kill. Bear and deer kills.

i always leave them where they drop. alwasy field dress in the field and youll drag a lot less weight with you. The varmints will have them cleaned up over night and no longer than a couple days

I clean them were they drop. Also thats why its called Field dressing