This would be a reasonably timely article if I trusted ASJ.
Considering trying to get my first deer this season. Never hunted before, but we have 30 acres and I have a reasonably good chance of being able to take one on our property - more if I start baiting (which is legal here in WV).
Anyhow, pretty sure finding and shooting the deer will be the easy part. The hard part is going to be field dressing, then extracting the carcass mostly on my own. Have a side-by-side with a small winch. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
I just ordered a Morakniv Companion for the field dressing. Fixed blade, orange handle (so I don’t lose it). Recommended on various forums.
Just curious if that’s a good choice. It was reasonably inexpensive.
I’m building an old Savage 325 30-30 that was my late father’s, although he never used it for anything but occasional plinking. Putting on a Nikon 3-9x40 scope, bedding the action and floating the barrel. Should be more than adequate for the ranges I’m looking at once I get the scope dialed in. Our acreage is a bowl-shaped half of a holler with several creek depressions leading to a gully so I’m not going to be taking any long-range shots, but I may have to drag the carcass out of a steep ravine if it bolts before it falls.
Been reading about how best to process the deer afterwards. Kind of overwhelming and plenty of conflicting opinions about the aging and butchering.
Guns and hunting can be far more complicated than it would first appear to an outsider.
Morakniv was a great choice.
Field dressing is pretty easy. Just take the insides and put them on the outside!
Good luck with your hunt.
“Have a side-by-side with a small winch. Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
The ‘side by side’ can be your best tool when it comes to field dressing your deer.
I’m disabled and use a Kawasaki Mule for hunting, and I field dress the deer after I crank them into the bed with a ‘come-a-long’. This way you can gut them out standing up and the guts will just roll out on the ground.
Connect the ‘come-a-long’ to the rollover bar, tip the bed of the mule down, and crank the deer right up in the bed of the mule. Lock the bed of the mule and you are ready to gut the deer easier than you ever thought possible.
Once the guts are cut loose you tip the mule bed back down and the guts just roll out on the ground.
Lock the bed back up and drive back to the house. Tip the bed again a wash the inside of the deer with the hose.
Lock the bed and saw the hind legs off behind the gambrel and split the hide on the inside of the hams.
Back into the barn and put a gambrel hook on the hams and crank the deer up using a chain fall or the come-a-long you used before.
Then if the weather is cool enough, you can let the deer age with the hide on for 2 days to 2 weeks.
ALWAYS keep the hide on when you are aging. It will keep the deer cool if the temps come up a little midday, and it will keep the deer from freezing if it gets really cold.
I keep one of these deer dressing kits in the trunk of my mule, along with the come-a-long.
They work pretty good and have everything you need in one kit.