How long do I have to skin a deer.

well most of the time the issue is with the deer freezing solid overnight. Then you need a day or 2 for it to thaw out enough to skin it.

3-4 days of hanging with the hide on is fine as long as the deer is cooled off, prop open the ribcage to allow for air circulation.

if its warm, hide comes off as soon as its hung, and if you can quarter it and stick it in the cooler/fridge to cool off.
 
If I can if I'm headed home soon I like to skin the deer on the spot and cut it up into pieces.

1. The front shoulders/legs

2. The chest and neck

3. The back end.

On larger deer I might separate the hindquarters off individually. Then the pieces go in cotton bags made of old sheets.

I've hung 'em to cool, laid them out on sticks to cool, had them on snowy ground and just tossed them in the truck and put ice on them as soon as I got to a gas station.

In camp on longer trips in cool conditions, my friends and I hang 'em and skin 'em and hang them there, covered in a meat bag. After they're cold if it's going to rain or snow I loosely wrap a tarp around them or rig some kind of shelter to keep them dry.

The last time I brought a deer home gutted with the hide on with the hide on was when I got my very first mainland deer probably in '89 or '90. I got the deer on top of my '82 Datsun station wagon just at dark and was a three hour drive home so I just put a spreader in the chest cavity to assist in cooling and drove home. Hung it in the basement from a stepladder and skinned it the next day.

It all works. Cooling is essential. Even if you're a 30-minute walk back to camp and have to go for help getting the deer out, if you get the guts out and spread the abdominal cavity open and prop it open with stick, it'll shed a lot of heat. You can see the steam rise. I prefer to not split the chest open if you're gonna drag it. You'll just get a whole pile of crap into the deer that way. It'll sure cool faster if you split it once it's hung.
 
I have mostly shot my deer late season in the evening so I gut in the bush and drag straight home to hang and skin overnight, call in sick for work and get to processing before the meet freezes!

Keep yer knife sharp!

Congrats OP'er!
 
Grizzly Adams said:
Lot of crap here from guys in favor of leaving the hide on. Once dead, your deer is essentially in a slow cooker, you decide if that's good for meat quality. :confused:

Grizz
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And a lot of crap coming from guys who're saying leaving the hide on results in gamey, rancid, nasty tasting meat. Sure, if you're hunting in hot weather and hang the deer to brew for a few days when it's far too warm and the deer should have been butchered immediately after returning home anyways. Cold weather and a cool place to hang the deer permit leaving the hide on for a few days until butchering. Far less waste and nothing but mild tasting meat. No strong smell. No strong taste. I despise gamey meat and as a non smoker with great taste buds, it's very easy to tell what's good or not.

Warm temps, poor fat/blood shot trimming, dirty/poor handling, and meat contaminated by a gut shot or poor knife handling are what gives deer a nasty flavor and smell. It always puts a smile on my face when I use some of my "hide left on" deer meat to convince people that deer is tender and delicious and is not supposed to be smelly and gamey like the crap they ate previously.
 
canadian hunter312 said:
And a lot of crap coming from guys who're saying leaving the hide on results in gamey, rancid, nasty tasting meat. Sure, if you're hunting in hot weather and hang the deer to brew for a few days when it's far too warm and the deer should have been butchered immediately after returning home anyways. Cold weather and a cool place to hang the deer permit leaving the hide on for a few days until butchering. Far less waste and nothing but mild tasting meat. No strong smell. No strong taste. I despise gamey meat and as a non smoker with great taste buds, it's very easy to tell what's good or not.

Warm temps, poor fat/blood shot trimming, dirty/poor handling, and meat contaminated by a gut shot or poor knife handling are what gives deer a nasty flavor and smell. It always puts a smile on my face when I use some of my "hide left on" deer meat to convince people that deer is tender and delicious and is not supposed to be smelly and gamey like the crap they ate previously.
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What advantages are there in leaving the hide on for a few days?
I shoot deer, gut them, then take them home, hang them from a gambrel and skin. It's clean and everything cools well. "Gamey" tasting meat comes more from not knowing how to butcher and improper cooling. I debone, separate the muscles and remove all fat and silver skin. There's never an off flavor, except for the odd rutted up buck that has a slight mutton taste, but no handling practice gets rid of that.
 
The no skinning crowd are surely in agreement with European practice of hanging pheasant by the neck with guts in until the head separates from the body. Now thats tender.
 
woodchopper said:
well most of the time the issue is with the deer freezing solid overnight. Then you need a day or 2 for it to thaw out enough to skin it.

3-4 days of hanging with the hide on is fine as long as the deer is cooled off, prop open the ribcage to allow for air circulation.

if its warm, hide comes off as soon as its hung, and if you can quarter it and stick it in the cooler/fridge to cool off.
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Been my experience as well.

If it's cool out, it can hang with the skin on for a day or three, no problems.

Hanging for any length of time, with the skin off, tends to result in a large qty of semi-dried trim hitting the floor during cutting.

I rarely bother with any hanging time beyond what I need to do in order to rest up and face the day or so it takes to get the cutting done. As mentioned, deer isn't beef, and does not need to hang.

Cheers
Trev
 
bearkilr said:
What advantages are there in leaving the hide on for a few days?
I shoot deer, gut them, then take them home, hang them from a gambrel and skin. It's clean and everything cools well. "Gamey" tasting meat comes more from not knowing how to butcher and improper cooling. I debone, separate the muscles and remove all fat and silver skin. There's never an off flavor, except for the odd rutted up buck that has a slight mutton taste, but no handling practice gets rid of that.
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Keeps it clean when transporting, and keeps the meat from drying while it hangs.

Provided you are not hunting in the August heat, in which case time available to cool down the meat is a precious resource, leaving the hide on has few negatives and a few positives.

Agree re: gamey flavors. I've never had a skanky tasting buck, (yet, knock wood).

Cheers
Trev
 
MustangFrank said:
The no skinning crowd are surely in agreement with European practice of hanging pheasant by the neck with guts in until the head separates from the body. Now thats tender.
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I see no real reason to let my meat rot, which is what was done with the pheasants.

Never tried it (with the birds), though I have been told it tastes quite different from fresh.

Cheers
Trev
 
i was told that the gamey taste depends on what they were eating .. just like a grouse eating cedar buds can affect the taste of the meat

-leaving the skin on for a day or two doesn't harm the meat any ... its warm temp that i'd worry about ( no problem here as its alway friggin cold )


oh i do have a friend that'll skin his ducks several days after he shoots em... and he definitely eats them ( i horrified to find out that he didn't even gut them till later when he skinned em ... which i alway do asap )
 
dimeN said:
oh i do have a friend that'll skin his ducks several days after he shoots em... and he definitely eats them ( i horrified to find out that he didn't even gut them till later when he skinned em ... which i alway do asap )
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Years ago I took a buddy duck hunting. He went home threw the duck in the fridge un cleaned and had a nap. That afternoon he opened the fridge and a duck came running out and they had a little chase around his kitchen. Poor duck, but I admit I laughed.
 
We routinely hung our deer outside with hide on for a week, until the hunt was over and we could take them out.
The exception being really warm weather, and we found we could throw a bag of ice in the chest cavity and have no issue.

As already mentioned, it's harder to skin a cold deer than one freshly killed.
Deer also cool faster with the hide off.
5 degrees Celsius is only slightly warm for long term storage, the food safe ideal safe maximum is 40F and 5C is 41F.
The difference isn't worth worrying about when it's still cooling off anyway IMO. If you are concerned, throw that bag of ice in the chest cavity.
 
Here is what I do, right or wrong......


- regardless of weather, when I shoot a deer it gets gutted and hung head down..... just because it fits my gambrel and I can ensure the cavity is cleaned out and a full bleed is in effect.......

- on day two, I check out the forecast........ if it drops below zero, no rush.

Never had a game deer.....
 
Ha!
I knew it was coming. The seasonal P*ssing contest about hide on vs off & hanging vs no hanging
I'm not gonna vary my response; forget the old legends & ask a few butchers or meat inspectors. A few, not one...get a few responses and get back to us.
 
woodchopper said:
well most of the time the issue is with the deer freezing solid overnight. Then you need a day or 2 for it to thaw out enough to skin it.
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is it hard freezing or merely rigor mortis ? The time span you give is consistent with the time it takes for the latter to wear off.
 
tokguy said:
Ha!
I knew it was coming. The seasonal P*ssing contest about hide on vs off & hanging vs no hanging
I'm not gonna vary my response; forget the old legends & ask a few butchers or meat inspectors. A few, not one...get a few responses and get back to us.
Click to expand...


Butchers do beef. Beef is not bled out in the bush by being shot. Their opinions are based on beef.
 
John Y Cannuck said:
Butchers do beef. Beef is not bled out in the bush by being shot. Their opinions are based on beef.
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Not all of them.

The one I dealt with in Moose Jaw was pretty plain. He said that the longer it hangs, the drier it gets, and the more of it ends up on the floor as trim.

Any Butcher that has been to school in the last dozen or more years, should be able to explain quite handily, the chemical process which takes place as beef breaks down in aging, and why deer does not act the same way.

Every guy I ever heard of that complained of having tough deer, overcooked all their meat.

Cheers
Trev
 
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