Awesome![]()
Also spooky to most who see the carcass when I am done. I do not gut the animal. I skin it, then cut the meat off the skeleton, leaving the skeleton connected as it was when the deer was alive. that is unsettling to people that havne't seen me do it very much.
I learned because here we are allowed to kill 4 deer per person per season and, we have a neighbor that is not the best shot. he tends to shoot deer in the stomach, meaning he ends up with gut shot deer. He is highly adverse to the smell of the contents of the gut of a deer and, will not butcher those animal or, eat the meat from them. He brings them to us. One morning, four years ago, I awoke and found three such dead deer laying in my yard. He knew I would use the meat so, he left them for me as he returned from a weekend hunting trip.
That day was going to be 75, but it was in the 40's that morning. It would be too hot to have meat outside later, and it was going to get hot quickly so, i had to think of a way to save the meat before it got too hot for it to be safe to eat after being outside. Gutting a gut shot deer is a messy, smelly time consuming project and, after you do it, you have to wash all of the meat very carefully to get all of the urine and feces off. I didn't have time for that, so I figured out how to get the meat off the deer without gutting the animals.
Now, "Gut Shot George" as I call my neighbor, brings me at least two such deer every season. I appreciate the meat since we make our own sausage, hams, jerky and other products from the meat and, do not purchase commercially raised meat at all. (we also raise rabbits and a hog every year and, have a friend that raises a steer for us as long as we buy the feed for it. Rabbit meat is all white meat, like a chicken breast so, we don't have chickens. I can buy eggs from my step grand daughter cheaper than I can feed a flock of chickens.)