How do you clean a deer?

HOW DO YOU CLEAN A DEER?

The phrase, there is more than one way to skin a cat applies twice to cleaning deer. Everyone seems to have their own way depending on geographical location, hunting style, and upbringing. It's less important how you clean your deer and more important not letting anything go to waste.

The situation dictates how you clean a deer, typically at least. Do you have to pack it out or can you pull a pickup truck next to it and take the whole animal to be hung up and cleaned.

Either way, I focus on 7 main parts. Make sure to always harvest the 2 hams, 2 front shoulders, 2 backstraps, 2 tenderloins, and the heart. The neck and rib meat depend on where I am hunting and the size of the deer.

Steps To Cleaning A Whitetail Deer

The quick version on cleaning a deer! Start by skinning the deer, making a cut around all 4 wrist joints, and connecting them all together, forming an almost “X” on the belly, always keeping the knife blade facing out to reduce hair on meat.

1. From there you will skin the animal down starting at the hams and working my way to the neck. Once you have the deer skinned, you will first cut off the front shoulders. Note: Try extending the legs out and keep my knife blade close to the ribs working up throughout the armpit of the deer.
2. After the shoulders, you can move to the back strap. If you like back straps as long as possible, start as far back as possible, without taking meat from the hams, then work down toward where I cut the shoulders off.
3. Always keep your knife blade as close to the backbone as possible. Next, go in for the tenders. Carefully cut the skin supporting the gut sack and allow it to fall forward just enough to be able to reach in and peel away the tenders, most times this can be done without a knife.
4. Once the tenders are out, cut both hams at the ball joint and allow the head, guts, and ribs to fall away leaving both hams still hanging up.
5. The last step is to open the frontal portion of the ribs and grab the heart. Once you find it with your hand, simply cut both the vein and artery and pull it out.

Now you have all the main cuts of the whitetail, make sure to keep the head and tags with the meat. In a more advanced cleaning lesson, we could get into rib meat, neck roast, other organs, and one of my favorites, the shank.

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