Warning! Deceased critter content! This morning's buck...

Codger mentioned that some of you folks are interested in the gutting process.

This isn't the only way, but it's how I do it.
I start by removing his testies and nuts; with a doe I am careful and remove the udder. The milk can be sweet, but I try to keep it off the meat.
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I then work the blade around the bung and remove it. Normally this will all come away when the gut are pulled out AFTER the Pelvis is split, but on this deer it (the pelvis) was really thick and had to be cut later.
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Time to cut up the belly. By inserting your fingers in and putting the knife between them, you can avoid hitting the guts!!

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I make this cut all the way up to the Sternum. Some guys cut through the Sternum, but I've found it no help to me.

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Pull out the guts and try not to tear the stomach chamber.

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All of this work was done with the Ryan Weeks custom via the http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/990920-RyanW-SPK-Passaround-WIP well worth a look see!!

Kent
 
Codger mentioned that some of you folks are interested in the gutting process.

This isn't the only way, but it's how I do it.
I start by removing his testies and nuts; with a doe I am careful and remove the udder. The milk can be sweet, but I try to keep it off the meat.
IMG_2495.jpg

IMG_2496.jpg

IMG_2498.jpg

IMG_2499.jpg


I then work the blade around the bung and remove it. Normally this will all come away when the guts are pulled out AFTER the Pelvis is split, but on this deer it (the pelvis) was really thick and had to be cut later.
IMG_2501.jpg

IMG_2502.jpg


Time to cut up the belly. By inserting your fingers in and putting the knife between them, you can avoid hitting the guts!!

IMG_2503.jpg

IMG_2505.jpg

IMG_2506.jpg


I make this cut all the way up to the Sternum. Some guys cut through the Sternum, but I've found it no help to me.

IMG_2507.jpg


Pull out the guts and try not to tear the stomach chamber.

IMG_2508.jpg

IMG_2509.jpg


Once the guts are out you need to reach inside and cut the Diaphram from the rib cage. The Diaphram seperates the guts from the Heart/Lung cavity. While pulling the lungs out, they will seem attatched, they are, to the wind pipe. Reach up as far as you can and cut the wind pipe off. In my experience the wind pipe rots faster than any other part of a deer


All of this work was done with the Ryan Weeks custom via the http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/990920-RyanW-SPK-Passaround-WIP well worth a look see!!

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Kent
 
"When the deer is down, the fun is over and the work begins"... one of my favorite sayings.

I kind of enjoy the whole process. Over the years I have finally figured out the most efficient way to disassemble a carcass and how to debone it quickly. Not fast as the guy who can do it in 8 minutes, but pretty fast. If you've never seen that video it is pretty amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xijmge8_NJw

Now that my mother in law has passed away I feed the liver to my dogs. I just can't work up a taste for internal organs. I figure God put them on the inside like that so they would be easy to remove.

I'm a big fan of making jerky from ground meat. A lot of people at work like when I bring them sliced jerky, but if I'm making it for myself I will always make ground.
 
Thanks for taking the time, Kent.
Shotgun season opens this weekend, and your tutorial will be of great help to me.
 
Thanks for taking the time, Kent.
Shotgun season opens this weekend, and your tutorial will be of great help to me.

Best of luck to you, and have a safe hunt. Remember, ya can't eat antlers:D
 
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Success at about rainy sundown today with a small buck. I'll document the process here using the same Ryan Weeks SPK knife in the place of my usual Sharpfinger. I've talked my daughter into playing photographer since her daughter and boyfriend want to see it done as well.

ETA: As usual, events conspired against me tonight, so no photos to show of the gutting process. Heavy rain, and daughter backed out, so I went out and got-r-done between showers.

Essentially, it was the same process Mewolf1 showed above except that I had my deer hanging head up rather than laying down as is normally the case when field dressing, or head down with a gambrel through the rear hocks as most people do. I had specificly asked the hunter who brought me the deer to not field dress it because the cavity gets nasty being drug through the woods and across a creek. "I rinsed it out when I crossed the creek". No ditch water please!

Not a typical kill for this hunter, he shot twice, one shot through both upper front legs and a finishing shot in the upper neck. Not my favorite combo, but no damage to the shoulders, hams and backstraps where the majority of the larger muscles are located. Since it had no damage to the internal organs and, for the most part I didn't damage them in removal, blood in the cavity itself was minimal, and no spillage of digested or partially digested food from ruptured stomach or intestines. If this happens to a deer you are dressing, wash it out with clean water as soon as possible and also wash your hands and knife. No, I don't wear surgical gloves when dressing and butchering deer. If you do or want to, there is nothing wrong with doing so, I just never have. I do keep a bucket of clean water handy to dip and clean my hands and knife occasionally while working.

Severing the esophogus as high above the stomach as I could reach, I allowed the digestive system to drop complete into a wheelbarrow below. I only opened the abdomen as far up as a few inches into the breast cartilidge, then reached in with both hands and the knife from below and severed the diaphram, cut out both lobes of the liver and removed the lungs and lower esophogus. The heart was last. It is enclosed in a sack that has to be cut or torn open, then the large arteries and veins at the top are cut allowing it to be pulled out undamaged.

This is the only organ meat that I normally save. Hunters usually don't want it so I keep it for myself and either bake, fry, make soup or jerky out of it. I wash it out thoroughly until water runs clear, then set it in a glass bowl of salt water to soak overnight in the fridge.

Something else that I will mention here for those who have not dressed a deer before. I was told to remove certain glands and the testes first because they would taint the meat if left on even a short while. I haven't found that to be so, at least in the case of the tarsel glands on the rear hocks. I keep my knife away from them all together and remove them when I pull the hide, leaving them attached to the hide and lower rear legs when I cut them off at the joints as I will be doing tomorrow. These are good to save to use as a scent drag if kept unbloodied and fresh for the next hunt. Tied to a boot drag string, I have had deer trail the scent to my stand.

I'll try to take pictures of the rest of the process in the morning.

As for the Ryan Weeks SPK knife, it performed flawlessly in this first phase of use. It has the same basic dimensional envelope as the knife I've used most often for this chore for years, so I suffered no nicks of my hands or miscuts, even when working blind up in the chest cavity. The edge type (microserrated), the handle shape, blade length and belly, jimping fore and aft and safe choil all made this knife a pleasure to use so far.
 
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I've not had another deer to process since this last one, though I've been expecting to get one any day since then. Sorry I could not enlist a photographer to record the process better than my written description. Our regular gun deer season continues here thru Sunday, then youth hunts on the next weekend, 12th and 13th.

I can return the knife now if you wish or I can keep trying until the middle of this month. Of course before then the ducks and geese will be flying.

The knife did hold it's edge all the way through the whole process on one buck. It was beginning to get dull be the time I processed the shoulders, the last to be deboned and stripped down for jerky. It will definately need to be resharpened before it is used again. I note no gross staining on the blade, but a nice overall even patina. The handle scales were comfortable and held up well through a lot of use, washing and rinsing (by hand). They don't appear any different than they did when I received the knife. I am overall pleased with it and have no real need to suggest changes to the design, other than to the thumb grooves (increase size of grooves, i.e. fewer TPI) and deletion of the foreward grooves which I did not find particularly useful.
 
Perfect Michel! Hang on to it and use it as much as you can. I am very pleased with your input, you have been a huge help with this SPK Design.
 
Thanks Ryan. As I said, I don't see much of a way it could be improved. The edge tooth was very much reduced by the time I received it and I used it as-received. I'll increase the microserrations when I resharpen it. FYI, on some cuts of tissue, a fine edge just wiggles the muscle tissue like a butter knife would, even if sharp. The toothed edge cuts/saws through it like a serrated bread knife.

This is especially apparent when reducing the loin muscles (backstraps) into portions for partial freezing to stiffen them for the electric slicer since the need is to slice completely through the up to 4" thick muscle in as few strokes as possible, hopefully one. These two muscles run along either side of teh spine from the neck to the hams.

I reduce them to 6 to 8 inch lengths and slice them either 3/8" thick for jerky, 1 inch thick for steaks or 2 inches thick for butterfly steaks. These whole muscles often exceed 24 inches, sometimes as much as 36 inches. So each might require as many as five complete transverse cuts. Major muscles in the hams are prepared the same way, but each one being approximately the size of a hen, they take far fewer, though deeper cuts.
 
I have shot deer in Ontario, Saskatchewan and BC, and a lot of Moose in BC, and have a few comments on the subject.

Get the hide off fast if you want good tasting meat. 30 or so years ago I shot a big whitetail about 8:00 AM when it was 15 below zero. We gutted that deer and loaded him in the pickup and drove around for the rest of the cold day (got two more bucks - there were three of us). That first deer was still steaming when I pulled the hide off after dark.
I don't think it is possible to properly cool them with the hide on. Ageing them with the hide on leads to wives who don't like deer meat in my opinion, though I am sure that your mileage will possibly differ.

I skin critters on the ground.

I cut my deer and moose up into several pieces with my knife to make them easy to move. I cut only the sternum and no other bones. Splitting the backbone is nuts. It damages far too much meat and is totally unnecessary. Quarters of moose are too heavy for one man and too awkward for two to pack any distance. A moose gets cut into 9 pieces before I move it, that way it can be packed out in several trips on a pack frame. I have packed out several moose by myself this way.

I saw no bones in processing meat because I don't eat bones, and because a lot of the fat of deer and moose is in the bones and I have found that the meat tastes better without the fat and keeps better. Processing deer especially, is not all that hard. Give it a shot. You won't damage the food value with some weird cuts, and its part of hunting to me to do this. A moose takes some time all right. I used to do this with a friend with whom we would share the meat. Our two families would get together for the whole day. The two men would cut the meat and the wives would wrap. Then we would grind and mix the meat with beef or pork fat and stuff sausages. As the kids got older they had their part to play in the process too. The whole day was used and we had good times doing it.

These days the kids are grown and we don't need a moose, though they wander around in our area and I see them while I hunt for a deer every year. I usually get one or two. We have both mule deer and whitetails where we live now.
 
Thanks for all the great info in this thread. I know that I'll be rereading it again before my next hunt. After having the chance to use Ryan's beautiful SPK recently, I hope to be carrying one like it very soon too.
 
Codger, I had to look up this thread and bump it up for this season. I really appreciate the info shared here. The wife and I processed the two does I got last weekend. As is my usual routine, I brought it home deboned in a cooler. We cleaned and trimmed the meat, cut steaks and roasts. This was the first year we ground our own as well. (Last year we had a bad experience from the butcher. They must have ground up someone's rotten deer and the meat was not edible. That's when we decided to do everything ourselves from now on)

In the past, I have tried to make my own summer sausage from one of the mixes at the farm store. It turned out ok, but obviously I missed something from not adding any fat.

I was hoping to tap into the knowledge and experience here. Does anyone make their own deer sausage? What do you add to yours? Pork or beef soot? I have an electric smoker. Can I smoke some of it successfully? Any tips?

Thanks!

This is the larger of the two we did Mondy night. The other is already in the freezer. I even found similar bags online that the butcher used for ground meat.

 
Congratulations Schmittie! Years ago I ran into similar problems using a commercial deer processor. One never could be sure they were getting their own deer back, or even that equipment was cleaned between deer or especially broken down and sanitized daily. So the club I belong to decided to change the way we did things. We had about 40,000 acres of upland hardwoods, pines and river bottom with some swamps, with 100 members. About half really hunted deer to any real extent and about 20 of those were young, passionate hunters like myself. We worked a deal with our wildlife agency to check our own deer and provide the agency with jawbones from each deer. And we did it all at our central camp. And did our own butchering. So I developed some habits and methods that have served me well since then.

Yes, you can get sausage and summer sausage spice kits, and you can get the casings and everything else you need. One source, where I get my equipment and jerky seasonings, is Gander Mountain. Hi Mountain is the brand I've had good sucess with. They come with full instructions and darn near everything you need. After a while, you can develope your own favorite blends, and change the processes slightly to eliminate problems that crop up.

And you can buy beef and pork fat by the pound from your local grocer who employs a store butcher. Just let them know ahead of time what you want so they can save it up for you. I sometimes get it free, but often pay a nominal price for it. That is breakfast sausage. My butcher will also sell me a large container of pepper and sage if I ask. It is commercial size and not something they keep out on the shelves. Another item I have to use and buy from my butcher is food grade machine grease. I use quite a bit since I clean my slicer and grinder every time I use it, and clean it completely. So it all has to be relubed each time. Butchers use the same grease and mine gives me a two-finger snack baggie that lasts me a season. It is the amount he uses daily for his industrial sized machines.

Clean, clean, clean. I've not had one person get sick from meat I have processed and I am meticulous to keep it that way. Even if it means dropping saw blades and guides and some knives in a kettle of boiling water like surgical instruments. And using a boiling water rinse on my stainless processing bowls and marinating tubs. And dehydrater trays.
 
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