Reply #63: Hmm...

[MineralMan]

If you have a serious camp set up, it's pretty easy to skin and quarter a deer in the field. In a lot of cases, though, particularly in the midwest, the hunting takes place not far from home, so no camp is involved.

The deer is field-dressed at the site of the kill, but then loaded up and brought home at the end of the day. In some cases, where the carcass is to be donated to one of the fine organizations who process meat for distribution to the needy, the skin must be left on or they won't take it. That's the law in Minnesota.

I live within the city limits of Saint Paul. There are hunting spots less than an hour's drive from my home, both on public and private land. As I said, there have been deer hanging from trees around the neighborhood since the beginning of hunting season.

Different places, different situations. If you day hunt close to home, you load the field-dressed carcass up and bring it home for processing. If you travel far to hunt, it's a different story. I hunted in Wyoming one year. We field-dressed the deer and pronghorns, then hung them in camp and skinned them there. Then, we took them to the nearest town, where they were butchered by a pro, flash frozen, and packed in dry ice for taking home...a two day drive.

One of our pickups had a chest freezer in the back. The meat was loaded into it and the freezer got plugged in at the motel we stayed at at night. The dry ice keep the meat frozen during the day. My brother flew there, so his meat was packed in dry ice in Styrofoam cooler boxes and taken on the plane as luggage.

Different hunting situations; different methods.