After the Shot: How to Field Dress Your Deer

Field Dressing Your Deer

You finally bagged a big one! Congratulations! Do you know what to do with that deer now that you have shot it? Approaching an injured animal can be deadly and an improperly dressed carcass can spoil your meat. Knowing a few basics of field dressing is essential for any serious deer hunter.

After the Shot

Immediately after the shot, you may feel intense joy and excitement, but it is important to keep calm and consider safety first. Securing your weapon is the utmost priority. In addition, you need to take care when climbing down from your tree stand to avoid injury. Unloading your weapon and lowering it to the ground with a cord before you climb down is safest. A shoulder sling attached to your gun makes this easier. Once on the ground, you need to reload your weapon and track your prey.

Approaching the Animal

You may need to track an injured deer for several miles before spotting the animal. Taking your time and looking carefully for blood spots, tracks, overturned leaves, and crushed vegetation can help you find your prey.

Field Dressing

Although field dressing is not absolutely necessary, if you have to drag it any distance at all, it makes hauling the deer out of the wild much easier.  Roll the deer onto its back to begin the procedure.  If possible, it is best to position the deer with the head uphill.

Using a high quality, skinning knife  with a sharp blade and a gut hook will make field dressing your deer much easier than using a normal pocket knife.

First, make an insision in the middle of the deer’s stomach.  This should be a very shallow cut, so that the skin and stomach muscles are cut, but none of the organs are punctured.  Next, use your knife’s gut hook to extend this insision up to the ribcage, and down to the deer’s pelvis.

From this point, everyone does things a little differently, but the idea is to remove the organs from the body cavity without spilling any undesirable materials, like urine or feces.  Many people cut the rib cage open with a saw, as well as the pelvis, to create a little more room to work.  If you  are going to mount your deer, be careful in sawing the ribs, as you will make things tough for your taxidermist if you cut too far forward.   

You will need to cut the deer’s esophagus to remove the heart and lungs and will also have to cut around the rectum and genitals to remove the intestines.   For bucks, make sure you remove the penis and scrotum.  It is usually easier to pull as much from the body cavity as possible before you cut out the rectum and genitals. 

If the deer’s urine or feces come in contact with the meat, you must immediately wash it out.

Drag your deer to camp, hang it from a sturdy tree, and wash it out.  Once the deer is hung, it is easier to skin and quarter so it can be put on ice or stored until it is butchered. 

Congratulations on a great hunt and a successful field dressing.