sjsfire

Man Up!! If you can't use the knife don't pull the trigger....

hunting junkie

No problem at all, i would rather be gutting than walking home empty handed.

fishinty

I agree !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bigbulls

Quit being a pansy and gut the deer. It's just guts.

It isn't like they are going to jump up and attach themselves to your head.

timbercruiser

I've gutted gut shot deer while drinking a beer and eating a potted meat and sardine sandwich, don't bother me.

spaniel

driftrider

You certainly can quarter a deer without gutting it. I did it with both my muley and bull elk last year, I'd never done it before but it is quite common out west where it's impractical to take the carcass out so you just bone out the meat (why hump out heavy bones you can't eat??). You slice around the quarters and take them off at the joints, the body cavity is intact. Then you strategically slice through the back behind the ribcage to get the tenderloins out. You also skin off the back to get the backstraps.

With little skinning and no gutting, you've just salvaged 80-90% of the usable meat on the animal. That's pretty good when you can't get the whole carcass out to process in the comfort of your garage.

The only deer I could not stand gutting and forced me to take dry heave breaks was my first buck, Rambo Buck, who had taken 3 slugs, an arrow, and at least two rounds of buckshot and still gotten away; I put him down as he stood up from where he had been bedded for at least a week. He was full of gangrene, I was 15 at the time and if I'd known now what I'd known then I'd have sawed off the antlers and left him for the coyotes. But I had a moral issue with letting meat go unused and was making every effort to salvage what I could (which ended up being nothing).

If you can't at least field dress your deer to get it to the processors, I don't think you should be shooting any more until you master it. It's part of taking a deer.

Semisane

I love the smell of deer guts in the morning - - - smells like.......VICTORY!

Beezer

Toss it in the back of the pick-up and drive it to the processor. Or, if I choose to, I can load it on the Honda Rancher and run it through the woods to the other processor. One is 6 miles down the main road and the other is 1 mile as the crow flies through the woods. Since I hunt the area around my house, I'm never more than a short drag to the road and one call from having a ride meet me there.

Either way, it isn't a matter of can't..it's a matter of don't have to. I just don't bother because I don't have to. If the deer is gutshot then I will to preserve the meat, that's a given. But the processor doesn't charge and it takes as long to dress and bury the gutpile as it does to get to the processor.

fastetti

I've never had a problem with gutting a deer, its part of deer hunting. Opening day of gun season, if were gutting then we've had a good day. Its almost a tradition now, you shoot a deer, when everyone gets out of there stands we take it to one location and we sit around and watch. If its at night, we crack some beers open and get to work. Some good laughs have come while gutting our deer. In fact, now that my father is getting old and so is our buddy we hunt with, I actually gut most if not all the deer. I think I gutted road kills here in the Chicago suburbs before I ever got to hunt. My dad might have wanted to make sure I could handle it before he got me in the woods!

Gut shot deer do suck, but that's even more of a reason to be super farmiliar with your weapon and how it shoots.

I couldn't imagine not gutting a deer, you want to cool it down as fast as you can. I don't want those warm intestines keeping the meat warm. Nothing like the site of steam rising out of a freshly shot deer!! You Northern Boys know what Im talking about! I like to call it Nature's handwarmers!!

wis_rifle_hunter

i love gutting out deer. my uncle starts dry heaving and he has to take a walk otherwise he'll start puking and all that good stuff.