by Jeremiah Jensen

Created on: January 08, 2007   Last Updated: April 27, 2007

How do you gut a deer? How do you skin a deer? What is the process to get the meat off the deer? These are some of the question you might ask when confronted with processing a deer. Processing a deer is not a short task but a relatively easy one.

The first, step in processing a deer is to gut it, this is easy but you have to be careful not to cut the intestines, because if you do, you will have a big mess that is not fun to clean up. Let's start with what kind of knife you will need. There are knives made just for this purpose they are called gutting knives, but there are also regular knives with what looks like a hook at the top of the blade which is called a gutter and is used for the same purpose. The first step in gutting is to make a cut between the hind legs "but make sure that it is only through the hide" up to the rib cage. Now that you have the hide cut you should be able to see a red spot located where you cut between the hind legs. You will want to pull up on this spot the reason you are pulling up on it is so you don't cut the intestines open, now cut the belly open up to the rib cage. With this done the intestines should start to come out of the deer's belly. Now you will want to split the rib cage open by simply cutting it down the middle, this is so you can get to the heart and lungs. Once you have the rib cage split you can reach in there and pull the heart and lungs back. There should be a thin layer of skin holding them in there cut that layer where ever you see it now do the same with the guts. Now for the finish since you have cut the skin that is holding the guts in tip your deer up and they should fall out or if you want you can pull them out with your hands but tipping the deer up is less of a mess. Now you have the deer gutted. Since you have the deer gutted it is time to move on to skinning the deer.

The skinning process is not a hard task, a bit time consuming the first time but not hard. First, you need to cut the front legs down; you will want to cut them off right below where the leg bends. Next are the hind legs these are a little bit different, there is a thick part in the leg where a tendon is located then right below that the leg gets smaller again. You will want to cut it off where the leg starts to get smaller. The reason you don't want to cut the tendon is because you will need it to hang the deer later. Now it is time to cut the head off to start this you will want to cut the throat right below the chin now just keep cutting

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