Gett'n em out

[bstpeter]

For those of us who have never had the wonderful experience of shooting a coues a mile or three from a road in the desert or high desert areas does anyone have some pointers...keeping them cool, packing them out...and anyone no a meat processor and taxi in Camp Verde area? THanks.

[.270]

i haven't killed a lotta midget deer, but everyone of em has been a backpack job. of considerable distance and difficulty. main thing is gut it and skin it and get the temp down to what ever the atmosphere is. get the heat out of it. they are small enough the heat leaves pretty quick. get em out and get em in an ice chest. and before you go, go to the store and buy a wyoming saw. that is the best tool i own. you can reduce a couse buck to not a lotta weight pretty easy. leave the spine, the head minus antlers, lower legs, all stuff with no meat on it there. the saw doesn't weigh a pound and on a coues you can reduce it by 20 pounds without even trying, with a saw.

[TREESTANDMAN]

Good info Lark. I would also recommend to process the coues deer yourself. I put a tarp on my backyard table, buy some "freezer paper" from walmart for a couple of bucks and cut steaks, roasts, jerky strips, and stew pieces. It is very easy, free, and I think the meat tastes less gamey.

 

Mike

[youngbuck]

If you have a buddy; guttin and splitting is is the quickest if your some what close to camp. I leave the hide on and take the hind end off as far back as possible (think long back straps). If im solo and some what close I quarter it up and pack it in my back pack. A whole coues buck quartered will fit in a good sized pack, mine is a gunslinger. If im real deep, I refuse to haul bones. I bone it out on the spot. I can fit 2 boned out coues in my pack. If its handy I hang a quarter in a tree and put my game bag or trash bag or t-shoot below it and cut/shave the met off the bone and let the entire piece fall intop the bag.

[.270]

we have a big grinder, a tenderizer, a couple different vac packaging machines, and all the other stuff like knives and everything. the grinder is really handy. but if you don't have a grinder there is a real slick way to take care of all the stuff that you normally grind up. take the shanks (lower part of the legs), neck, ribs, all the trimmings, etc., and put em in a big pan, add a little salt and pepper (don't use garlic on game, makes it taste funny) and put it in the oven for 12-16 hours. cover it with a lid or foil. bones and all. when it's done the meat just shakes off the bone. then package it up and freeze it. when you wanna make tacos, green chili, burros, enchiladas, beans, gravy, just about anything, just nuke a package and fix it up. you get every speck of meat that way and it is great. my wife will take about half of it and make green chili with it and freezes it. my dad lives on the stuff. absolutley his favorite thing on earth. he mixes a little mayo and mustard with it and makes lunch meat for samwiches. a crocpot or one of those big electric roaster pans works real well too. i know it's a real problem for a lotta folks to find something to do with all the leftover stuff you would usually make hamburger out of and this is a really good way to do it. never throw the neck away. from anything. it is topnotch this way. for green chili, the more sinew the meat has, the better. if you cook it long enough the sinew disolves and makes things real juicy. anyway, try it. it's a great way to take care of meat. Lark.

[NRS]

+ 1 to what Lark said about the crock pot. I just made up a large batch last weekend and then rolled up about 2 dozen green chili burros and individually wrapped them with aluminum foil and threw them in the freezer. I just grab one out in the morning and throw it in my lunch box and it is thawed for lunch.

[youngbuck]

+ 1 to what Lark said about the crock pot. I just made up a large batch last weekend and then rolled up about 2 dozen green chili burros and individually wrapped them with aluminum foil and threw them in the freezer. I just grab one out in the morning and throw it in my lunch box and it is thawed for lunch.

 

They work real well for an easy supper around a fire like that too. Just take em outa the ice chest and lay em on a bed of coals and put some more on top, works good. I agree with Lark on the neck meat, I make chilli with it. Its best with small cubes of neck meat and ground bulk italian sausage.

[CouesWhitetail]

I usually just completely debone the buck. Just have a bunch of game bags (or some use something like a pillow case) with you and you can remove all the meat from the carcass without packing out any bones (except the head/antlers). I have packed them out just a whole deer (gutted) before when I didn't have time to bone it out, but it made for a tough hike out with all my gear and the whole deer. Coues are nice and small and when you debone them it really makes it nice for packing out. And when you debone it, much of the processing work is already done so you can just cut it up and package it at home if you like.

[BigB]

Outdoor edge has some great videos on processing, quartering and de-bone big game in the field.

 

http://www.outdooredge.com/index.php

[CouesWhitetail]

CouesWhitetail.com also sells a Field Dressing DVD that is good.

 

http://www.coueswhitetail.com/bookstore/hunting_videos.htm

 

 

[.270]

if my boys are with me we just build a fire and eat it for lunch and pack out the head. Lark.

 

ps. if you leave the neck bone and leg bones and othe bones in when you cook it, it puts a lot of flavor in it.

[bstpeter]

Thanks for all your advise and tips, I think I've been spoiled shooting deer back in Maine and VT we gut em, hang em for days and then bring em to the meat shop. It's been a long time since I've actually help cut an entire deer up. So if I'm lucky enough it will be an interesting day. Maybe I'll buy a goat and have at it before...and eat the bugger..lol

[audsley]

Get comfortable. We're gonna be here a while.

 

First, you'll want to take a saw like .270 mentioned plus a good skinning knife, 2 or 3 short bunjee cords, nylon cord and game bags. If you don't have all of these things, you'll pay a price for having gone under-prepared.

 

After you've field-dressed it, hang the deer in a tree by the hind legs with a cord tired through the gambrel (inside the leg tendon below the knee.) Use your skinning knife to take off the hide and the saw to remove the lower front legs below the knees. If it's a small buck and your saw is up to it, you can try sawing the skull plate and keeping only the antlers for evidence of legality, but I've always just taken the whole head.

 

When the hide and front lower legs are off, you're going to cut the deer in half. I cut it just ahead of where the rump-thigh muscle ends up near the spine. Cut crossways through the meat and spinal cord. The vertebrae will separate after the surrounding meat is cut through and you've twisted the around a few times.

 

All this should take less than an hour from the time the field dressing starts. It should all be done in the shade. At this point you need to gauge the conditions for the trip back. By conditions, I mean the trade-off between leaving sooner with a heavier load vs. spending more time butchering to get rid of a little more weight. You can even go further with the butchering by removing the loins from along the spine and the neck meat, allowing the spine and rib cage to be discarded, or you can move out immediately with those items still part of the load. Because I'm not an experienced butcher, I always just accept the extra weight. However, a fellow named Bill Quimby once - 26 years ago to be exact - told me that a rod saw (goes on a coping or hack saw frame and is used for cutting circles in ceramic tile, such as around a toilet phlange) works really well to take meat off of bones including around the vertebrae and even along the ribs if you want rib meat. Rod saw blades are flexible and weigh nothing. Every time I have a deer down on a backpack hunt I wish I'd brought one.

 

If you're one guy alone and have a complete backpack camp plus rifle and optics, you'll almost certianly need two trips. The deer alone is a full load for most guys. Take your camping and hunting gear first because it's probably less safe out there than your deer meat. While it's possible your deer could be bothered by some scrounging bobcat, skunk or ringtail, I personally haven't had any serious problems with deer meat left in a tree in a game bag, even overnight. But make sure it's in a game bag. That way, if something does try to feed on it, the game bag limits them to where they've chewed a hole through the bag and most of the meat will remain unharmed.

 

Unless it's really warm, a deer can hang in the shade all day. Cool air, shade and wind are your friends. Sunlight, warmth and flies are your enemies. Hang the two pieces well off the ground where they'll still be in the shade in the morning if you think you'll be gone that long. If it's a good buck with antlers other people might like to have, take the head and cape with you. It's doubtful anyone would bother the meat especially if they have no way of knowing how long it's been there. Then get back to your backpack camp and get your tent, sleeping bag, cooking gear, gun, optics and all the rest of your gear and hike it to your truck and lock it up.

 

If daytime high temps are expected to be in the 80s or above, don't attempt a hunt like this. That's the time for truck camping and limiting how far from a road you hunt. Stay where you can drag the deer to a road and get it in the truck in 3 hours or less and have plenty of ice. High temps in the 70s aren't a big problem as long as you keep the deer in the shade when it's not traveling. When you pull it out of the shade to travel with it, try to keep up a good pace as it will be warmed some by your body and most likely youll be walking in the sun quite a bit.

 

A backpack hunt that requires 3 or more hours to reach your campsite should probably be a two-man, one-tag hunt, and definitely only one rifle. Maybe things are just looking harder to me now that I'm older, but that's how I see it.

[AZkiller]

No one gave you a taxi. Mark Plunket is in camp verde. The best taxidermist I have ever known.

[PRDATR]

I travel lite with my frame pack and just bring the necessities out from camp each day. My pack is waterproof but I also carry a trash bag and a game bag. All Coues get boned out on the spot. I carry a skinning and a boneing knife. I have a wyoming saw but don't use it for Coues.

A few cuts into the spine with the boneing knife is all I need to sever the spine. I start by skinning the deer on one side and fold the hide up off the body.

I then slice the meat off the bone starting at the knee adn work to the hoof. Then using the boneing knife, I make a cut on the inside of the leg at the knee to the bone and yun the knife tip against the bone all he way to the hip socket.

Then I slice up and around the hip and work the knife slicing lengthwise along the leg bone (femur?) and remove the meat in one big piece. I basically do hte same for the front shoulder. The I take one backstrap and lay the hide backover the deer and roll the deer over and do the same to the other side.

Depending on if I am going to keep the head I skin/tube the hide around the neck and remove the meat. I put the game bag inside the trash bag and that gets put into the pack before I start to dress out the deer.

When I am done I leave the trash bag open to vent out the heat as I go back to camp.

I do not gut the deer during this process which helps to keep the flys down if it is warm out. This can take anywhere from 30-60 minutes to do and you end up with about 40% of the live weight of the deer.

I came up with this on my own after killing a deer far from camp and hunting alone. I have also taught a couple of others how to do it.

It helps to have some 3/8 rope along if you hunt alone and shoot a deer on s steep hillside. I forgot to mention that this is done with the deer laying on the ground since tthere are usually never any trees around to hang these little buggers from.