Field Dressing

The end of January I was helping a family friend with management deer on his ranch. I ended up harvesting a cull buck fairly early in the hunt. I was alone and out of phone range. I sat and patiently waited a good amount of time and then proceeded to go look for the buck through the thick South Texas mesquite brush and cactus. The blood trail was hard to follow and this particular day was in the 80’s. When I found the deer I realized that I had hours to wait before my ride would show up. The heat on this particular day meant I had no choice but to field dress him right away and drag him to some kind of shade.. I honestly hadn’t field dressed an animal in a while, I usually just load them up and take them back to camp where we hang them up at the cleaning station. Hanging the animal to dress and skin is much easier than doing it on the ground. I forgot how challenging it can be when the animal is on the ground. I was just about to start dressing the deer out when I heard my dads truck. I made my way back to the road to tell him I had a deer down and to get some assistance with it. Not surprised at all to his response, “you shot him….you clean him” I was on my own with this field dressing task! And task it was……taking care of all the insides so the meat won’t spoil can be some what challenging when he animal is not hanging.

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Some people prefer to dress them in he field and others like to do it at camp. I understand that sometimes the situation calls for dressing animal in the field but it is not always a necessity. If it is cold enough and camp isn’t to far away it can be done hanging. In my opinion the hanging is much easier because gravity and a spreader assist you in the process of dressing the animal. It really is up to he hunter and the particular hunt. If you had a choice which one would you do? Does anyone have any secrets that might help in both scenarios? I would love to hear some feed back on this!