Heard this ad on the radio this morning and just found this on Slovacek's website.

This season, due to limited space, and in an effort to maintain reasonable processing times, skinning services will no longer be available. We will only accept SKINLESS quartered and boneless animals for processing.

I don't use them but know a lot of friends who do and figured a heads up to anyone taking game to them in a couple of weeks. I initially thought it was due to the new state regs on disposal of deer carcasses/bones but maybe not. I just wonder if other processors are doing this.

No it's just due to limited space and an effort to maintain reasonable processing times.

CowtownAg06 said:

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I've done it both ways. Once, I was in rush to get home and took it straight to the processor without even gutting. Other times I've done with guides/buddies. I've never actually done it solo and would be a little nervous to mess up good meat. I wish I could and don't mind the work, but when you only practice something once a year, it can be hard to be confident you won't screw it up.

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YouTube is your friend. Go slow, buy some outdoor edge replaceable blade knives and get after it.

I learned how to skin a whitetail with a rock, chain and a truck.

Hang the deer. Remove the forelegs and open and gut as normal.

Cut around the high neck and skin down just enough to put a rock in the loose skin. Tie a loop of chain around it. Put the other end of the chain on the truck hitch. Drive the truck off and the deer will skin itself. It literally pulls the entire hide off in one shot.

Red neck as hell and it works.

When I first started hunting I had an older relative that had a place in Robertson County. My job opening weekend was to field dress, skin, and de-bone anything shot by him or his buddies. After that he gave me the run of the place for the rest of the season.

Back then I didn't know we weren't supposed to do-bone. I learned that later. But they would sit there drinking whisky as they evaluated the job I was doing. Like a peanut gallery.

This was before antler restrictions so a lot of young bucks were killed. But there seemed to be plenty of them.

Slovackeks is a good place. Haven't taken a deer there in years but they always produced good sausage.

AgySkeet06 said:

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It still surprises me how many take their deer in to be skinned.
If you are not capping a deer you can have it skinned, gutted, washed and quartered in about 15 minutes or less

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I don't even gut mine. I skin (using the above method with a SXS and golf ball), quarter, and debone. I have a Game Warden on my lease, so I typically get him to fill out a form so I can ditch the head with the carcass. Then it goes on ice for a few days until I take it to the processor.

I used to suck at it when I would only do 1 or 2 a year, but then started helping the old men on the lease with their deer. I think I did about 30 one year and had it down to the point I could do it in my sleep.

I don't actually gut mine anymore. 90% of my kills are neck shots so I'll hang by the hind legs, remove head and front legs at the knee then pull the whole hide off. Next I open up the lower abdomen and pull the intestines into the chest cavity then reach in and remove the tenderloins. I then give it a quick rinse to wash off any hair. It's easy then to cut off the front shoulders and remove the blackstraps. Grab my reciprocating saw and cut the backbone at the top of the hips dropping the chest cavity full of guts into a tub. Split the pelvis and cut the hind quarters into the cooler.
Easy peasy

CowtownAg06 said:

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I've done it both ways. Once, I was in rush to get home and took it straight to the processor without even gutting. Other times I've done with guides/buddies. I've never actually done it solo and would be a little nervous to mess up good meat. I wish I could and don't mind the work, but when you only practice something once a year, it can be hard to be confident you won't screw it up.

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100% where I'm at!

I'm a novice trying to teach myself on youtube. I've helped a friend (i.e. watch him do most of the work for me) a couple of times and watched youtube videos and just not sure I'd be comfortable on my own yet. I'll need someone with experience with me at least the first time, and probably several times, before I decide to harvest one on my property on my own or with one of my sons. or maybe i need to buy a few guided hunts for me and my sons to absorb knowledge and experience from a guide. My plan is to just provide supplemental food/protein and water and manage habitat for the whitetail and have fun with predator control for a while- lots of coyotes and hogs and a bobcat on my cameras. who knows - maybe in a few years when i'm more comfortable skinning and quartering, i'll have some trophies running around.

re: slovacek: I get skinning and quartering on site before taking to the processor. I guess my newbie self thought everyone already did that- didn't know you can just drop off a whole carcass with skin on... but deboning the quarters seems like overkill (pun intended). Seems that would add a whole other level of difficulty for a novice like me and might waste some good meat. ha!


few questions popped into my mind reading this thread:
1) how important is field dressing & removing the guts to not spoil meat vs just hanging, skinning, & quartering right away? seems like all the youtube videos gut the carcass, but in my only real life experiences, we skipped that part and hung it on a gembrel to skin right away .

2) I'm really intrigued by the rock-chain-truck or golf ball-chain-utv skinning method mentioned by two posters on this thread.. any youtube videos for this?

3) how important is bringing antler verification and proof of sex to the processor? ...I think I might have failed to do that the one time I brought quarters and backstrap to a processor and they didn't say anything to me.

If other processors in the state require de-boning, I would guess a lot of shoulders never leave the campsite.

Quote:

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re: slovacek: I get skinning and quartering on site before taking to the processor. I guess my newbie self thought everyone already did that- didn't know you can just drop off a whole carcass with skin on... but deboning the quarters seems like overkill (pun intended). Seems that would add a whole other level of difficulty for a novice like me and might waste some good meat. ha!

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Bringing in a deboned deer for a long time was technically illegal, though I have never heard of anyone actually getting ticketed for it as long as they had the head. I think it still is illegal but am not 100% sure. I have done it dozens of times but don't anymore. I only debone the last two deer of the year which we process at home with pigs.

Don't take in an entire carcass. That's just too risky. These places are generally really busy with deer on top of their normal year round processing operations. it may take a while, even maybe overnight. THey do their best but bringing in undressed deer adds a lot of pressure to their operations. Most operations are rejecting that now, as they should.

The right thing to do is bring in a deer field dressed and skinned. Quartered is up to you.

Any carcass with guts is riskier than a carcass that has had the guts removed.