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Gutting your deer at kill site? I thought that was the norm everywhere?

19K views 186 replies 69 participants last post by  dale lockwood 
#1 ·
I watch like Lone Star law and the Lousiana Game Warden show on TV.
My question is all the deer(seen 100's of deer picture from those shows) shot and even loaded on a vechile are never gutted > That blows me away. Here In Minnesota 100% of the people gut the deer at kill site to cool faster and prevent contamination of meat.

Is what I see on TV the norm for down south or don't they want to show gutted deer. I would think a non gutted deer down south with warmer temps would bloat real fast and spoil your meat. What's going on down there?
 
#5 ·
Dale,

Not to put too fine a point on it, but.....they are TV SHOWS, my friend!
I would use caution before judging an entire region of hunters by what you see on the boob-tube! :ROFLMAO:
All of the guys my father hunts with and I hunt with In SC do this so it’s not just on YouTube.The butcher is right down the street and they do all use UTVs tho. But I have never seen it before hunting down there.
 
#4 ·
Some ... Deer Management Programs require gutting at a central location out of sensitive eyes. It's also easier and cleaner in cases where there's power, light and running water available.
 
#7 ·
The question is what is the lag time from shooting a animal and gutting and throwing a deer on a ATV or dragging is sure to mix the innards with parts of the eatable meat area>. Some people it must be hours with no cooling down and guts sometimes seeping into the meat.
 
#10 ·
In NE Arkansas myself and most I know field dress the deer before transporting.
In cases where there is a main head quarters on site the deer may be transferred where there's clean water and a hook to make it easier.
And as you stated one must be aware of warm temps to not allow meat to spoil.
And yes since I hunt alone many times lighter drag is preferred.
I never take an ATV hunting so some dragging will be done to get game to access by truck.
 
#16 ·
I don't personally know of a single person that deer hunts that does not gut the deer on the spot. I'm sure some don't but they don't run in or around my pack lol.

I'll take a few pics where he lies. Then out comes the knife and i go to work. I get him to the truck as fast as i can wash him out if at all possible. Then off to the butchers where he is hosed out again then skinned and hung in a large cooler.
 
#17 ·
There are a lot of reasons not to gut out in the area you hunt.
Coyotes would be one reason.
I hunted public land in one state where it was illegal to gut the deer on that land. Had signs up stating that in the parking area's.
Also in some nature preserves where hunting is used to manage deer density. Done some of those and same rules.

When I lived in Maine, it was illegal to hunt over a gut pile, so gutting a deer within sight of the stand would mean not being able to legally hunt that stand the next day, or until the gut pile was gone. Wardens up there didnt mess around with excuses, so I could see dragging the deer well out of the area before gutting or face a potential ticketing.
 
#18 ·
There are a lot of reasons not to gut out in the area you hunt.
Coyotes would be one reason.
I hunted public land in one state where it was illegal to gut the deer on that land. Had signs up stating that in the parking area's.
Also in some nature preserves where hunting is used to manage deer density. Done some of those and same rules.

When I lived in Maine, it was illegal to hunt over a gut pile, so gutting a deer within sight of the stand would mean not being able to legally hunt that stand the next day, or until the gut pile was gone. Wardens up there didnt mess around with excuses, so I could see dragging the deer well out of the area before gutting or face a potential ticketing.
Well i guess that's at least one good reason to not use a big cutting BH. :)
 
#22 ·
I live and hunt in SC. I also live about two miles from the cooler where I hang my deer. There's no need for me to "gut" my deer where they lay. I can have them hanging in less than 2 hrs. most times less. ;;
 
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#23 ·
I dont gut deer therefore mine comes out of the woods whole. I carry them home, hang and skin, then remove the meat without gutting. Get both backstraps (inner and outer), front qters, back qters, and neck if there is one big enough. I live in Ga and can remember (thinking WAY back) on a morning bow hunt in Sept. when it was extrememly hot. I arrowed a buck early morning so I hunted an additional 2 hours until 9AM. By the time I found the deer it was already hitting 90 degrees. Took me 15-20 minutes to find the deer and get it drug out of the woods and into the truck. Another 30 minutes to get it home. Meat was fine although the buck was shot thru both lungs. I havent gutted a deer in 20+ years now and never had one to spoil.
 
#28 ·
I have a good friend, excellent deer hunter and outdoorsman, who skins his deer and removes the meat from the outside: no gutting. It works. I did a few deer that way but went back to conventional gutting. The woods behind my house is a little over 100 acres. I can have me deer back at my house w/i 10-20 minutes with my Kubota tractor, hooks on the front end loader, lift it up and gut it in the lights of the tractor and wash it out with my hose.

Bear are a different story. We eat the tenderloins and donate most of the rest. A small amount of the hamburger meat from ground steaks mixed with ground venison is excellent. IMO, bear meat is excellent but NOT healthful. In Arkansas, it is illegal to not save all the meat, the hunter or donate through the state’s donation program done through certain processing places.
Bear are like hogs, they heat up from the insides very quickly. I walk a mile in to my blind, and 15 miles away from any town (Mt View, AR). I have a large ice cooler full of ice at my truck and utv. Start gutting immediately, whoever it fell, ice inside immediately. Average September temp when killed is 85-90+F. Miserable hunting conditions.
 
#26 ·
I take it up to camp to gut it (with a tractor and bucket or forks usually). If it is mid rut we will walk it out with a cart.

In the past we have gutted in the spot where he was shot... especially if it is going to be a bit of a hand drag!

The only ones not gutted within a few hours are the ones we have to leave over night.
 
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#27 ·
I always gut them right where they drop or drag them a short ways to set the body on an incline to make things easier. I've never taken them back to the cabin before gutting.

My son has hunted with me since he was about 5 years old. First just sitting with me and after he turned 10 I sat with him while he hunted. During that time we hunted together we probably shot and cleaned a dozen deer. His first year hunting solo he took a nice doe early in the season. Apparently he didn't quite remember how to gut a deer on his own so he had to find an example on-line. My dad was in a tree stand about 150 yards from my son and saw him walking randomly through the woods with his phone held high above his head looking for just enough signal to download some gutting instructions. Unfortunately he found a set of instructions that had him saw through the rib cage instead of simply reaching in and cutting the esophagus. He ended up following those instructions and cutting through the doe's rib cage with just a small 6" gerber knife.

I was sitting across the river from my son and thought I was pretty sure I had heard him shoot. I had some action around me so I didn't go check on him for about an hour. When I got to his stand I saw him down on two knees, one knee on each side of the doe, completely straddling the doe's open belly while he cut through the last rib with that small knife. He was covered in blood from head to toe and he very quickly earned his hunting nickname "The Butcher of Gilman" (a town near our hunting property). It was the messiest gutting I'd ever seen, it honestly looked like a low budget horror movie scene, but he was extremely proud of himself for shooting and gutting his first solo deer!

That nickname has stuck and several years later as soon as my son sets foot in hunting camp he is only addressed as "The Butcher of Gilman".
 
#29 ·
Smart deer ... do detect blood spores. Professionally, you just can't clean up a kill site well enough to have additional deer not be alerted. Depending on the area and how well educated the herd is it's a variable. Personally, if allowed I gut deer where they fall, IF they fall pretty far from my stand. With brain shots or kills close to my site, I always drag them off some distance to gut them. Usually in the same spot. I figure if there's going to be coyote, fox and even bear stink all around the eaten gut pile it's not helping me if it's under my stand...lol

In some DMPs where you have to gut elsewhere, I'll often gut them out of sight to lighten the load for dragging and loading into the truck. I'll stow the entrails in a HD black bag and take it with me to the butcher.

The old days with the gutting barrel. ;)
200968
 
#35 ·
Smart deer ... do detect blood spores. Professionally, you just can't clean up a kill site well enough to have additional deer not be alerted. Depending on the area and how well educated the herd is it's a variable...
I used to be worried about gut piles keeping deer away but I don't anymore. During gun season between myself, my son, my brother-in-law and my nephews we typically have 5 or 6 guys hunting our 80 acre property. We've shot does and bucks within a few yards of fresh gut piles. One year my brother-in-law took a deer from my favorite stand in the morning and I shot a mature doe 5 yards off of that gut pile in the afternoon. I watched that doe come into my stand. She wasn't pressured at all, she was just walking casually, grazing occasionally on the way. She did notice the gut pile but didn't react badly. She didn't even change the direction she was walking.

I had an interesting situation a few years ago. I was hunting the last afternoon of bow season before gun season started. I hadn't filled my last doe tag and ended up having a decent doe come right under my stand at the end of the day. It was getting dark and she wasn't moving so I ended up taking a shot when she was only about 10 yards away. It was a shot I probably shouldn't have taken as the angle was too high. I ended up killing that deer but she ran into a small swamp about 80 yards from the stand and I didn't find her that night. The area she laid down in is a very good bedding area for us. We have no stands in that area and only push it during gun season. We ended up doing a drive through that area a few days after I shot the doe. It had snowed a bit the night before so it was easy to see over 20 beds on the edge of the swamp that were no more than 20 yards off the spot where we had found that doe which had been completely eaten by a bunch of coyotes. If 20 deer aren't concerned about that I'm not too concerned about leaving gut piles around my stands.

As you mentioned this may be area specific. We have a lot of hunting pressure on all sides of our property and there are always coyotes and bobcats moving and hunting through the property. Maybe our deer are a bit desensitized to the smells of a fresh kill.
 
#30 ·
I've always gutted at the kill spot. Decades ago there was not all of these other factors to consider -- you killed it, gutted it, and took it to processor same day or night.

Horns
 
#31 ·
Tag it, remove the tongue if necessary, take the hero shots on site, and drag it....at least a reasonable distance away to remove the innards to avoid any further disturbance at the kill site. Then usually off to the processor no matter the temps.
It’s just standard operating procedure for me except for the rare times I have a hunting partner nearby and don’t want to ruin his hunt.
 
#32 ·
Just curious ... how many of those deer have you guys buried that you shot and "had to back out" because it wasn't a normal kill shot? I think in all the years I've been involved in groups of guys killing deer, I only remember two times the butcher rejected a carcass for processing. One was of a deer that died in a stream and was found the next day. The other was a normal kill found the next day.

When I used to hunt all day long, early season when I'm stacking up deer, I'd come out at maybe 11:00am, gut my deer, go to the local 7-11 or Quick Check and buy bags of ice to stuff in the chest cavity of the morning's kills. Always worked.
 
#34 ·
All very interesting information. As for myself, it totally depends on where I am hunting and my ability to quickly access the deer. Most of the time I have to dress the deer right on the spot. However, when I hunt at the family farm there are many ATV's with winches and I can load a deer up quickly and hang it over the "gutting barrel", as shown in one of the pics above- much easier that way.
 
#40 ·
Even though I do gut mine on site most of the time I will in some cases drag the deer to a location where I would prefer the guts to be instead of where the deer might be laying. And the coyotes find it quickly. Last year while I was waiting for my buddy to pick me up with his ranger after I dressed a buck I was waiting at the edge of the creek and the coyotes were already on the gut pile that was about 40 yards away. They could see me and I could see them. That being said, I have even had a situation where I went to get the tractor with the bucket to take the deer back to the shed and dress it there. In the 15 minutes it had taken me to go get the tractor a coyote was already at my deer- that has happened twice to me. This is why I take as many coyotes as I can, and I really wish trapping for coyotes would be open year round in IL and IA (states I hunt). I can hunt them all year, but can't trap all year.
 
#38 ·
If I'm going to skin/quarter myself and can get the deer out of the woods fairly quickly (and the drag isn't too much), I do the gutless method - the guts just stay with the carcass.

If/when I choose to gut it before taking it home, I'll gut it about as far away from my tree stands as possible.

I totally agree that most deer won't spook over a gut pile.

However, I'm really after older bucks - different animals, the kind that spook first & maybe figure out why & maybe not.

Will they spook at a gut pile? If it isn't near my stand, it won't matter. I just figure a gut pile near where you want to hunt is more likely to be a bad thing than a good thing, why chance it?

The last deer of the year? Gutted where it dropped.
 
#39 ·
If they run I gut them where they drop. If they drop where I shoot them I will drag them 50 to 100 yards away and gut them. No way in hell am I going to drag an ungutted deer up the ridges where I hunt. They are hard enough to get out using a game cart even after being gutted. My club allows no ATVs on the property and the roads are all on top of the ridges so you will always have an uphill drag. It is steep....
 
#41 ·
If they run I gut them where they drop. If they drop where I shoot them I will drag them 50 to 100 yards away and gut them. No way in hell am I going to drag an ungutted deer up the ridges where I hunt. They are hard enough to get out using a game cart even after being gutted. My club allows no ATVs on the property and the roads are all on top of the ridges so you will always have an uphill drag. It is steep....
I hear you. One of the areas I hunt they will always die down in a ravine- took my dad and I 4 hours one year to drag a buck out of there- snow was falling heavily, slick, cold, wet- but one of the best memories I have. Bottom line, no way were we adding an extra 40-50lbs of guts to that drag. Since that incident I made a nice trail leading down to the ravine, but it still isn't big enough to get a tractor or atv down- use about 300 feet of rope attached to truck/tractor if I have someone around to help me.
 
#42 ·
The last ten years I have hunted 500 feet from my house. When it's warm enough that a gut pile might start to stink if the coyotes don't find it that day I throw Bambi in the wagon and drive it to my garden for gutting and burying the guts. When it is colder, like after November first, I often will gut where they fall. The coyotes normally clean up anything inside of 24 hours, but sometimes it takes a few days.

I believe that Bambi will at times avoid a place where I have killed a deer and it bled out for as much as a week. But... I have also killed plenty enough deer that were within a few yards of a gut pile or it's remains that I know a lot (maybe 80%) of the time it doesn't bother them one iota. I have my suspicions that it just might be that there are other deer in the vicinity that are aware when another deer is killed and maybe that's the reason they avoid the area for a while. I am pretty sure that one deer avoiding an area is entirely possible to influence one or more others to do the same.
 
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