Most people would be really messed up if all the grocery stores shut down or if you found yourself in a survival situation. How would you handle it? I’m not arguing that such a scenario is likely to happen, but it’s nice to know that if something did go down in the world that you would be alright. Being able to hunt is only half of it, what do you do with the animal after it is dispatched? I’m going to give you a rough lesson in prepping a deer for the table.
The easiest way to skin a deer is to hang it which allows you to properly skin and butcher the correct way. It can be done on the ground if you don’t have nothing to hang it on but it will make it way harder and hanging it allows it to stay clean if you have to do it on the ground I recommend using a tarp otherwise it can get dirt on the meat and trying to dirt off the meat is hard cause of how easy it sticks to the meat. If your using a gambrel, you can fit it through the tendons on the back legs and pull it up to chest height. When you start to work along the front of the legs, be careful not to cut the flap meat. You will find a membrane that holds the flap, and you want to make sure not to cut into it. You want the flap meat to stay on the carcass, because it will make pulling the hide off much easier.
The Bearded Butchers give a pretty good detail on how to finish the skinning process “The hide will be more difficult to remove in the neck, particularly with a buck. If you’re not cutting the cape for a shoulder mount, you can cut the hide down the throat to the jaw. This will make it easier to pull the hide off. Use your knife to cut through the spine at the base of the skull. Cut through the esophagus and pull the hide off the rest of the way. Pull the esophagus through. Now you will have an opening through the neck. Your carcass should be pretty clean without any hair on it. You can rinse the cavity out to get rid of any blood. If your deer was gut shot, you should not rinse it. All you are doing is spreading contamination around. You will need to cut the contaminated parts out and discard them. Skinning an animal is a skill that takes practice to get good at doing. When you first start out skinning, it will take you a long time to do the job, and that’s fine. You should be patient and be careful to make sure you remove the hide cleanly without damaging your meat.
A few good tip I would recommend is having a very sharp knife, A sharp knife will allow you to not mangle the meat when butchering, if you use a dull knife it is very common of the meat being mangled and a lot of the meat can be ruined. Another good tip I would use knowing what correct knife techniques, Using correct knife techniques will allow you to skin it easier and not waste meat. I also recommend having a sharp cleaver to allow you to hack at bones to break them off when butchering.
