MTLabrador
Well-known member
I’ve just frozen them in game bags without a problem. You’ll be trimming off the outer rind on a quarter anyway.
Freeze first, butcher later
- Thread starter AlaskaHunter
- Start date
texwest44
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2020
- Messages
- 210
This thread gives me at least a little bit of relief. I found a poached deer yesterday in the early AM that had stiffened and started to freeze throughout the night. The warden let me have him and the hide was frozen to parts of the carcass on the lower legs top of the front shoulder facing up. I've been kind of concerned that this meat might not be worth keeping but it looks and smells pretty ok so far (left the loins; had to go gutless method). I've never worked with or gotten meat off a deer that's been half frozen with the guts in overnight, but I guess so far it seems ok. People seem fairly adamant that it will be ok, though clearly less than ideal.
Not to get off topic but it was my first time processing a deer on the ground and lot of hair got on the meat. How do people do this regularly? It seems WAY easier to hang it up in a tree if it's available, skin the entire thing and then do the gutting and quartering. For me, it keeps the hair contamination down to right at 0. I had some nearby trees but the warden was helping me piece it out (super nice warden, btw) and wanted to get it done ASAP so she could go look for casings and tracks and the like, and I obliged. She thought me and my dad were oddballs for wanting to hang it up. Said it seemed like extra work. Weird, I felt like I was doing way more work than usual having to maneuver this deer around on the ground getting hair all over him, cutting at weird angles and slicing the flesh, and now spending a day washing and picking off hairs. Still I'm happy to have had the help, and I hope she hammers the sorry SOB who's out shooting muleys at night.
Not to get off topic but it was my first time processing a deer on the ground and lot of hair got on the meat. How do people do this regularly? It seems WAY easier to hang it up in a tree if it's available, skin the entire thing and then do the gutting and quartering. For me, it keeps the hair contamination down to right at 0. I had some nearby trees but the warden was helping me piece it out (super nice warden, btw) and wanted to get it done ASAP so she could go look for casings and tracks and the like, and I obliged. She thought me and my dad were oddballs for wanting to hang it up. Said it seemed like extra work. Weird, I felt like I was doing way more work than usual having to maneuver this deer around on the ground getting hair all over him, cutting at weird angles and slicing the flesh, and now spending a day washing and picking off hairs. Still I'm happy to have had the help, and I hope she hammers the sorry SOB who's out shooting muleys at night.
