where to gut your deer

[ants]

I have seen deer walk right by gut piles, maybe give a sniff or two and keep on their way with out spooking or even flinching. I don't think deer know what their own guts smell like.

[greensider]

i drag my deer so i gut them where they drop

[YFKI1983]

I'm not scientist but I'm pretty sure a deer doesn't know what they're looking at when they see/sniff a gut pile. I doubt they watch outdoor channels or have been hunting themselves.

That being said, I gut them where they lay.

[HuntOrBeHunted]

Gut em dam near were you drop em. Then start yote hunting.

[Five Seasons]

I actually prefer to gut on a slope if I am near one. the gravity seems to work great for rolling the guts out and draining the blood from the cavity.

 

depends on the degree. but yeah i'll try to get near a slope to let it drain a little while i go get the cart. We have some nasty ravines in Tully and I've had some pretty comical gut jobs on some of those. Just picture a deer rolling when you don't want it to. haha.

[jjb4900]

I suppose all animals are exposed to the smells of their sick, dying and dead, and maybe they don't associate it with danger??? I would think that the human scent that's left behind at a kill site would be more alarming to them than anything.

[dbHunterNY]

guts on the ground do not bother deer.  I've had them walk right over gut piles like it wasn't even there.  i gut them where they die.  i and others should gut them elsewhere though.  a gut pile only promotes presence of opportunistic predators like bear and coyote.  not really a good thing encourage on your hunting grounds.  maybe some should make it this years new years resolution.

[Two Track]

move the deer off trail if they are on one then gut them for the drag out.

 

No yotes or bears where I grew up.  Now yotes are starting to drift into the state.  They have to either swim 1/2 mile or across bridge to get to my previous home state.

[gjs4]

Coyotes will check spots for free meals- why would you gut where you hunt?

[bkln]

As it was said before, just gut it where they drop. It wouldn't bother deer, I shot second deer at the same spot 2 days after the first one.

[papabear]

gut them were they drop 

[wolc123]

I have always gutted them in the closest, semi-clear spot to where they fall.   It don't make sense to me to drag that extra weight around and getting the guts out asap also improves the quality of the meat.  Meat is the primary reason that I hunt.   I cringe when I hear of folks "backing out" and coming back to find their deer the next morning.  If they only knew the effect those steaming guts had on the flavor of the tenderloins they would never do that again.   The coyotes are too abundant now in most of NY to get away with that anyhow so it's not such an issue any more. 

 

Of the hundred or so deer gut piles I have left in the woods over the last 30 some years, three were particularly memorable.  The first was from a big doe up in the Adirondacks.  I shot her early one morning with my ML, high up on an oak ridge.   She was the largest of a group of 5 or 6 antlerless deer and she led the group as they climbed up the ridge to feed on acorns.  I will never forget how she just stared me down after taking the sabot thru the lungs, until her knees began to wobble, then she toppled over the edge of the ridge.   I slid down after her and was surprised to find that she was lying dead center, on the private gravel road that twisted around the mountain leading to the cabin my in-laws had rented for the long weekend.

 

That made for a very easy recovery.  I gutted her right there in the middle of the road.   I walked down the road to the cabin, finding the whole gang of in-laws seated around the kitchen table eating breakfast.  My older sister-in-law, who is somewhat of an anti-hunter, was not able to choke down her eggs after getting a sight of me holding the bloody bag containing the heart and liver.   My father-in-law let me use his ATV to recover the carcass.  Later in the day, I caught some flack after my sister-in-law reported the gut pile in the middle of the road after her morning jog.  I told them I would clean it up the next morning, but not a scrap remained the next day.  It must have been easy for the scavengers to locate it there. 

 

The next gut pile I remember was that from another doe that I had shot on a rainy opening day morning about 6 years ago.  She and a button buck, nearly as big as her came by my comfortable ground blind about a half hour after sunrise.  I shot her thru the lungs with a 12 ga sabot at 50 yards and she ran into some thick brush, falling in a little clearing about 50 yards in.  Even with the rain, there was plenty of blood to follow and it was an easy recovery.  I gutted her right there in that little clearing in the brush.    That was right in the  middle of the longest streak I have ever had of consecutive successful hunts.  The Saturday prior I had filled my archery tag buck tag with a nice tasty 6-point, 1-1/2 year buck.  

 

The following day I killed another big doe from a tree stand in a hedgerow a couple fields away with my longest shot ever with a 12 ga sabot (163 yards).  Since our venison supply was ok, my brother-in-law took that one home for his family, transferring his DMP to me.   Fortunately, we tagged it proper, remembering to dot all the i's and cross all the t's,  because the DEC pulled my niece over on their drive home with it strapped to the top of their mini-van.  Just 16, it was her first time driving with her learners permit and I hear she got pretty nervous, maybe even cried a little bit, when she saw those red lights flashing. 

 

The following Saturday, seeking to extend my streak to 4, and fill my last DMP, or my gun buck tag, I stayed out a little longer than usual on the morning hunt.  Sure enough a big button buck walked out of the brush and began feeding on clover, standing broadside, about 75 yards from my ground blind.  I aimed behind the shoulder and fired the "chip shot".  He ran into the brush, across about 50 yards of fresh snow.  I was surprised to see no blood on the trail.  I walked back to where he had stood and on very close examination, located two drops of blood the size of a pinhead.   When I got back on his trail, I found him in the brush, right in that little clearing where his momma had fallen the week prior.  All but a few scraps of her guts were cleaned up, but the area was littered with fox/coyote tracks.

 

The last gut pile that stands out was that from the 6-point buck I killed with my x-bow last season.  I gutted him at the edge of the brush he died in and I examined his stomach contents as I always do, to see what he had been eating.  It was stuffed with corn as is always the case with deer killed on our farm.   The following weekend, all that remained of the gut pile was two little piles of corn.   I decided to do a little experiment and see if that corn would sprout, after passing half way thru a deer, and if it did, if it would still be "Roundup Resistant".   I planted 12 kernels in an egg carton and not one sprouted.                          

Edited September 19, 2015 by wolc123

[wheelieman]

I always drag them out and bring them home during bow season, ive seen a hundred deer walk by gut piles and not be scared, But the one time a bucked spooked it was a good one, To me its not worth leaving them, Or giving on open invitation to predators, I have a deer hoist in the garage and it takes me less time to get home then it does to gut it, 

[Fantail]

At my camp as well as a friend's property we drag at gut. I have a spot for guts & carcasses. Wma, where they drop generally. For me it's not really a oder spook thing I am just trying to keep yokes from my stands.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

[Rhwrhwrhw0426]

When driving deer I offer ten bucks to who ever will but it right there for me. I never have any takers.

[Napping in the woods]

Last year, opening day of regular season, I put one down around 8 am.  cleaned it out, got it back to the car.  Had to go back up as I left some items on stand.  around 10 AM, when I got back to my stand, I watched a buck approach from downwind right up to and passed the gut pile left about 2 hours earlier.

 

I wouldn't sweat it much either.

[rooster85]

Gut them where they lay. Most times yote's and crows among other critters will have the pile cleaned up within a day or so. Your scent in the area from gutting the deer will alarm them more than the gut pile itself.

Exactly. I remember while on a hog hunt a few years bak in CA i shot a nice sow in the morning, took her back to camp and came back a few hours later to nothing but critter tracks where she was gutted.

[tcosmic]

It will in no way spook deer. It will bring bear in pretty quick but will not spook deer. 30 years ago I went hunting with a friend who put me in a stand that had been hunted from opening day and 3 days in a row it produced with gut piles all around it.

[Taylormike]

I gut deer down next to camp, about 150 yards from cabin. The reason being is so I can easily clean up, fill out tags, etc. Also, I place the guts in front of one of my game cameras. You see everything, including deer. Rest assured, deer are not at all spooked by the smell. Not the slightest bit.

[Critter4321]

I gut them where they drop, But I can say bear gut piles are different nothing seems to eat them other then crows we had a bear gut pile in a open field for over two weeks.

[growalot]

hey will haul them away guts and all and then gut them just before they are ready to skin them.  Drop the guts into a bag or pale from a hanging deer.  Sometimes this is hours after the animal was killed.  This never made sense to me, being that the temperatures are generally warmer down there.  I guess traditions are a hard thing to break.

 

 

 

Makes sense to me...the smell would attract flies in a hurry. Better to get them to a place where you'd have fewer flies to deal with,unlike in the woods...By the time we are hunting here there are fewer flies due to temps....I know I have gutted and plucked spring turkeys and the flies drove me wild...now I either breast them out or skin them then gut....

[Huntscreek]

Gut where they drop no need to drag extra weight. When I hunt in the South (8 out of 10), bring them out ungutted, nothing worse than gutting a cold bloated deer.

[skully]

If I am hunting the next day I will def drag them off and gut them somewhere else just because you might have a dozen coyotes in there all night long.  That will make some deer alert.......

[GrizzlySils]

I don't believe that deer have the capacity to feel fear in the same way as human beings.  They don't associate dead things with fear, as they encounter them frequently in the natural environment.  If this were the case, then if a deer died from natural causes, the deer would avoid that area as a result and that doesn't seem to be the case, nor does it seem to be logical.  They don't have the capacity to understand natural causes vs. human causes.  Another perfect example, deer crossing areas, the sign is there because more than one deer has been hit in that general area, clearly they aren't changing where they cross because a dead deer is lying in the ditch.  I've also seen plenty of deer in cemetaries.

 

Gut them where they lie, or close to it.  If you can get it back to the barn inside of a half hour, then it is easier to do it when they are hanging, but I would say you want to get the guts out as soon as humanly possible as it does impact the flavor and condition of the meat.

[johnplav]

Public land, gut them where they land.  However I usually hunt the family farm, and quickly get the deer hung and gutted in the barn.  I then bury the guts and scraps... no need to attract addition coyotes.