SKINNING or NOT

[DuckHunt]

Same as Grizz and bstout for me. The sooner I can get it packaged and in the freezer the better. The day of recovery I will have it quartered and on ice at the very least within a few hours of the shot. For an early morning kill I try to have nothing but packages in the freezer at bedtime.

Being close to the hunting area has some advantages.

DuckHunt

[BigTiny]

I get the deer cut up as quickly as possible and once it is quartered, I leave it in the cooler in ice water to bleed out. I drain it twice a day and put more ice in once per day. I keep doing that until the water comes out light pink. An older guy at my church who used to be a butcher told me to do it that way.

[saxman]

I hunt on my own farm (live right here too), and can pretty much engineer my hunting opportunities for convenience ... most of my deer are boned out and in the fridge within an hour of the shot.

I keep the meat in stainless steel pans covered with Saran-Wrap until I am ready to can or freeze it ... there's no need to get to it immediately once it's boned and refridgerated.

Hanging carcasses is very impractical here. For one thing, you can't often do it without a refridgerated cooler, because the weather is too warm ... and even then, you're just asking for bear trouble. There's no advantage in it for me.

I don't think hanging with the skin on does a thing for deer anyway. I've had lots of friends who used to do that, and after eating deer meat with me, they don't do it any more!

I think quick kills, quick butchering and quick cooling contribute more to flavorful game meat than long hanging.

Just an opinion, though ... worth no more than you think it is!

Same down here.
We keep bags of ice handy to put in the body cavity after field dressing at the kill site for the ride back to camp and the we do our butchering when we get there,same day.

[blackdi]

OK, I LEFT IT ON!!!!!!!! Today in PA. the temp was 4deg. I had 2 bucks and 1 doe to skin. My wife and I went out to start skinning. NEVER AGAIN !!!! With both pulling and it was a bitch ! ! Mabe cause it was so cold. I don't know? For 35 years I have been doing ASAP. I was going to put a golf ball under the skin and pull it off with my GMC, but I think I would have ripped the meat off of the bone. If it would have been warmer, I think it would have been a LOT EASER. But when they were frozen hard as a ROCK. I didn't work. I learned from this.