OK So one thing i have noticed on most of the pics you guys are posting of your kills is that from the look of it most of the deer make it home without being cut open.
Is there something in FL i should know about? Where I come from the first thing we do when we find a down animal is cut er open and get to cleaning.
When the deer is back to the truck or camp we hang it and skin it. Whats the secret down here? I know a couple guys here locally that have a butcher cut their animals up for them and he will take care of everything.
Unless I am going to have sausage or burger made I cut up my own deer. One thing I will be trying to find is a grinder so I can start doing my own Sausage and burger.
I will give you my reasoning. It is based on cleanliness of the meat. I hunt in some pretty nasty stuff, and if I were to gut an animal where it fell, the body cavity would be full of mud and trash by the time I got it back to the truck. I try to get real busy and get an animal out, in the truck and on the way home or processor as quickly as possible. In almost every animal I have killed, I have it home, skinned, and packed in ice within 3 hours maximum. Most of the time, less than that. I can say out of several hundred animals Ive killed, I have yet to have one spoil
Also, I hunt the same stands regularly, and I prefer to not have a gut pile around it
if you hunt the wma's down here a lot of them want to see and weigh/eval the animal before cleaned. also all of the wma's I've seen have some type of cleaning station or at least a hangin rack. I too do not like to clean where I hunt and cleaning an animal while it's hanging is much easier and neater for me than doing it on the ground. heat can be a real issue down here so however you do it, do it quick, having a big cooler with you and if not ice at least ice not too far away helps also.
Time is of the essence espedially if you don't field dress in the South. I have only been in the South hunting since 1998 and have seen hundreds of deer and hogs after three hours or more on the back of a truck or ATV that I wouldn't let my dog eat since they were blouted so bad. IMHO this has alot to do with folks talking about a "Gamie Taste" of meat. I bet it does taste Gamie after sitting in the 40-70 degree temperature for 3-8 hours without being gutted. We use the logic of a 2-3 hr max - until the animal must be quartered and on ice or hanging field dressed in a cooler. As far as field dressing, sometime before the animal hits our truck or ATV my animals are field dressed and off to the cleaning station-home to be skin and quartered.
I have dragged them a quarter mile before field dressing as not to ruin an area with smell or to get to a dryer/cleaner area before field dressing them.
This is an example of how hot venison is on an animal after being shot. Three weeks ago I shot a huge doe in upstate NY that tipped the scale at around 230 lbs live weight. It was 30 degrees, about a 25 MPH wind, snowing it's azz off, 4 inches of snow on the ground, and cold as hell. I field dressed the deer about 300 yards from the tree stand on our property where I have shot 5-6 deer over the last 20 years and then went for the tractor. Got her back to the barn and immediately skun her out and left her to hang all night (no skin, guts, or head), it was 6:30 pm when I finished. At 9:30 the following morning after hanging all night in below freezing temps we went and quartered her. I cut off one of her hams and the meat under neath the ham where I cut it off of her body was still warm with heat... My point is, the quicker you can gut them, quarter them, and get them on ice the less chance of spoiling or our infamous "Gamie Taste" our tastey friends supposedly have... It's not the animal, it's called spoilage at varying degrees... Gut them ASAP and get them quatered on ice or hanging in a cooler soon after. My two cents...
I readily admit I'm a rookie to southern hunting. I'm also very willing to be schooled. I think if the law requires the intact animal to be shown at the check station, then that should be done- in as quick as possible time span. But as soon as possible after that, the animal should be dressed out and kept as cool as possible until it can be butchered. I have absolutely no desire to see anything I worked so hard to hunt and harvest go to waste because I failed in the last few steps.
Just my $.02.
