re: Field dressing your deer

i don't think I've ever taken a deer to the processor. I've gutted some, b/c I had too far of a drag.

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I've seen people cape bucks and throw the whole damn thing away.

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Should lose their hunting privileges.

When I was a teenager, my brother accidentally shot an "illegal" deer for our club (knothead--and an exceptionally large one, I might add). He didn't want to take it back to camp and have our dad pay a fine, but we sure as hell weren't going to let the deer go to waste. Accidentally killing a knothead is wrong, but letting it rot, well that's just shitty (save your lecture about taking it back to camp and fessing up--we were kids and $100 was a lot to us).

We told dad we were going to go shoot my brother's gun to make sure it was on, b/c he missed the deer, and we took an icechest for a "prop". We then found an abandoned barn, and took our gun slings off and hung the deer from the rafters with our gun slings. We found an old burlap sack for the guts and tossed 'em in a dumpster. And came out with an ice chest full of deer meat. In the interest of plausible deniability, we didn't even tell Dad about the deer until on the way home at the end of the weekend (this predated tags).

We may not have known better than to lie about my brother's mistake, but we by God knew better than to let a deer go to waste.

It was tender.

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We have to drag a lot of ours out from the back of the swamp

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Might be a bad idea, but i'm kinda loopy after driving 1150 of 1200 miles today. Have you thought about puting the deer on its back and attaching fun nnodles to either side of the deer to help float it out? They are cheap and light just stash a couple around you stands until needed...

I'll try anything. We're gonna try and pole one out headhunter style this year.

We always take them to the skinning racks at the camp for skinning and quartering. I don't even know of a processor who would take a whole deer.

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I've seen people cape bucks and throw the whole damn thing away.

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I would have hauled that sucker out and put him in my freezer. That is crazy. I would also never let that person hunt any of my land.

Now back to the original question. I have always done every bit of the gutting, skinning, and cutting up the meat myself. Up until about 10 years ago I didnt even know people that would do all of that for you. I have taken prolly my last 5 deer to a processor and it sure make life easier. Now the first time I think I was cheated out of all my meat then I will prolly go back to my old ways of doing it all myself but so far so good.