by Renee Bennett

Created on: February 17, 2007   Last Updated: April 27, 2007

You just harvested your first Deer so what do you do with it now? After you have properly tagged your deer you will be able to proceed to field dress the deer. Depending on the state you are in, some allow you to field dress the deer after tagging and before calling it in. Both Bucks and Does have a scent glands that needs to be removed. The sooner you remove these glands the better you meat will taste. Some people may not believe that the glands have no affect on the taste of your meat but, I have been around deer hunting for over 14 years now and it definitely makes a huge difference. These glands are located on the inside of the back leg just below the knee joint, you will be able to feel them. You MUST use a separate knife to cut these glands off with, then what you are going to use to field dress the deer with. Other wise you will contaminate the meat. Deer do urinate on these scent glands during rut and you don't want that on your meat. A very good detailed field dressing instructions can be found at: http://www.surviveoutdoors.com/reference/fielddress. asp

You need to consider if you are wanting to get your deer mounted though before field dressing it! If you do, you don't want to cut all the way up on the chest. Part of this hide will be used to mount your trophy. Once you have gotten your deer field dressed you will want to take in account the weather. All meat needs to be kept under 40 degrees and deer meat is not an exception. If the weather is over 40 degrees you will want to take your deer to a processor so that it can be hung and cooled out. Even if you want to process the meat yourself. You have to keep the meat under 40 degrees or you can quarter the meat and place it inside coolers on ice but, it is best to let the deer hang from 2 to 4 days in a cooler. The longer you let your deer hang the more that its own natural body acids will begin to break down the meat and the more tender your meat will be. You don't want the deer to hang over 5 days though, other wise you will begin to see the meat start to rot.

If you have a garage and the weather is cool enough you can let the deer hang inside of your own garage. Which is what we do, unless it is too warm. We have done a lot of deer processing for ourselves and have come to the conclusion that if you leave the hide on and remove it when you begin to process your meat. The meat stays fresher and you don't have to cut off a whole lot of waste. There is catfish tenderloins in the deer that you will want

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