Photo: Quartering a deer properly, knowing to leave the hide on and knowing how to remove the loins without gutting are skills all deer hunters should know.
In this age of ATVs, UTVs and 4-wheel drive vehicles that help us transport game to the processor quickly, we don’t always need to quarter up our animals like we used to.
Still, the need arises occasionally on moose, elk and even whitetail hunts, and my tip may remind hunters it can be done without a mess.
The trick is to not gut the animal, but to quarter it, leaving the skin on the hams to prevent insects and dirt from getting on the precious meat during transportation.
Once you’ve downed your game, it’s easy to take the four leg quarters off the animal by raising the legs and cutting them off at the ball joints (hind quarters) without removing the hide.
Front quarters have no bone attachments or ball joints to impede your knife, so simply slice them off parallel to the rib cage.
If you anticipate a situation for quartering game, make sure you carry a trash bag or meat bag in your backpack to transport the backstraps, edible organs and tenderloins.
You can remove the backstraps by skinning the hide off the back. The inner loins can be removed through the ribcage without having to touch the guts at all.
Remember to leave proof of sex on one of the hindquarters for the game warden to see.
Editor’s Note by Tim H. Martin
Knowing how to quarter and transport big game is something every hunter should know. Sometimes it’s required even if an ATV is available.
For several years in the 1980s, when Alabama farmers planted soybeans instead of cotton or pines, the body weights of the whitetails grew tremendously.
I recall having to help a buddy quarter up a 280-pound bean-fed buck when three of us couldn’t lift the whole beast onto his 3-wheeler!