How to Process or Debone a Whitetail Deer in the Field

today what we're going to do is we're going to show you how to debone a deer in the field now this is a little bit different than quartering an animal which you may have seen done before essentially what we're going to do is we're going to go through the process of not breaking any bones and taking this deer and putting it into a game bag so that we can transport it out leaving everything else here now this is a legally harvested deer and our game log has already been filled out we've already telechecked this animal now that's important because if you haven't telechecked your deer and you're in an area where you can't get cell phone reception you're going to need to leave proof of sex on the animal that's already been done in this case so we're going to go ahead and demonstrate how to get all the meat out leave the rest of it here and transport it out so what we're going to do here is this deer has been field dressed already we're going to use a couple of tools here this is the knife that we use to fill dress it you can see it's got a zipper blade here at the top i'm going to use another blade this here is an outdoor edge it's a razor blade we're going to wear protective gloves and we've got a game bag these are like cheesecloth game bags that are very common all this deer which probably probably gonna break down somewhere in about 30 to 40 pounds of meat is going to easily fit into one of these bags and be very easy to pack out so let's get uh these gloves on and we'll get started now the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to start here on the back right where the neck hits into the shoulder and i'm going to make an incision all the way down this this deer pull this hide back and remove the back straps and at that point in time once i pull this hide back i'll be able to expose not only the front shoulder but the back hams and i will come back and start taking off those chunks of meat on both the front and the back but first thing make a cut right through here and start pulling this hide back to expose the meat that we're going to be processing today so start that off i'm gonna use my little zipper blade here and go right in here at the neck and make this pull right here now once i've got my first incision there i'm going to start pulling this hide now if you'll pull this hide it'll start coming off almost on its own take your blade start making your cuts here and separating the hide from the actual body of the deer here good sharp knife is always good to have in doing this makes this job much easier now i'm pulling all of this cape to hide back this way and what the reason i'm doing that is it takes all the hair with it and it also gives me a spot that if i need to lay something down one that's easy to find too it's a better way to keep it clean it's also keeping my meat clean now i'm exposing that front shoulder you can see just making some cuts here pulling this hide down [Music] i'm gonna go ahead and show you how to take the back straps out now the back straps lay right along the spinal cord from the front shoulder all the way down to the beginning of the back hands so we're literally going from here to about here and that's where they're at the easiest way to get them out is to go right in by the spinal cord right beside the back hands close as you can get and start making your cut close as you can get to that spinal cord right up through here like this so what i've done here is i've literally went right down the edge of that spine on this one side and exposed this back strap right here now once i get there i can feel that big old tubular back strap of meat right there i'm going to come down here right at the right at the back ham right where the this piece of meat runs into the back ham right here i'm gonna make a cut there's a couple different ways you can do this you can start here and start working it around until you get to the top of the rib cage or you can find the top of the rib cage which is right here and work it this way but once you start getting it out it's very circular shape you you'll be able to get your hand on it and start pulling it out and just kind of make some feathering cuts take it right out like i said there's several different ways to do this honestly i usually do this while the deer is hanging makes it a little bit easier but this is how to debone in the field there we go easy as that that you know some people will tell you that the inner loins are the best piece in my opinion inner loins are really good there's a whole lot more of this that's a beautiful piece of meat right there we're going to go ahead and bag it up now you can see that piece of meat was removed from right there now there's another one on the other side but while we've got the deer laid up this way we're going to go ahead and start working on the back hand when i left the back hands while i go to get the back straps out i kind of had pulled the hide down to this point now i'm going to pull it all the way down to about the knee cutting up the back side so that i can remove all the hide from the meat all right now once i get to this point right here the way i like to do this is to separate these out in muscle groups it's the same way i do it when i process my own meat at home so if i'm going to go through the process of doing this there's two ways to do it you can take a boning knife in and just run along the bone and pull it off into a big chunk i don't package it that way so i'm going to go ahead and do it the way that i would be doing it at home and that is you find this seam right here you can see it's kind of right in the com almost more in the middle a little bit toward the front what you've got is you've got three or four distinct pieces of meat in here you got this right here then you've got these two which i'm going to take off together then you got the back the background so what i do is you'll find this spot it's very easy to see when you come through and you make a cut when you make that cut there now that i've got that cut open this up kind of feeling around where the the meat there is all right all this type of the seam the silver seam i'll leave some of that on in this process because it will protect the meat from getting any additional dirt bacteria you see there you can't help the flies are gonna lay on it i'll leave a little bit of this on there and then clean it up at the very last minute [Music] now i take this you see there's another seam right here i take this one and the next one out together now once you get to this area there's a bone that comes off right by the tail and it moves like a y so you have to be able to trace around that bone and right here i'll show you i'll make this cut it lays right here see that bone tracing around that bone once i've got that where i can get my fingers in there i'll put a light pull make some cuts with the knife and this piece ought to come out pretty easily this is much easier if you've got another set of hands let's get this cleaned up a little bit now that is that big muscle group right there it's actually two different muzzles you can see one and two this is great for a whole lot of applications you can grind it you can use this for burger sausage you can cut steaks out of this there's a whole lot of different things you can do now it doesn't look very great now but i'm going to get this cleaned up when i get home i wouldn't wash it a whole lot because there could be some bacteria on that and you could introduce the bacteria onto more areas of the meat take it just like this get home and get a real sharp knife and you can take this stuff right off and it'll just leave an absolute beautiful cut of meat let's get this bagged now once you get that big piece off you can see this hip bone right here plain as day see that that's what that is that's the hip bone so what we want to do now i'm going to come in and make a cut and trace right along that leg bone right there you can feel it it's very easy to feel and find see that bone that femur bone that goes down here i've just made a cut and i'm just taking this meat right off of that bone watch your fingers when you're doing this [Music] all right there's that big chunk of meat came right there and take that it's ready to bag now once we get to this area we've got another big piece of meat here a big old chunk of meat there and then it'll be on the the lower part here the shank so you can uh decide where you want to go from there just kind of taking off the pieces as they present themselves to me i think right now i'm going to get this this back part of this ham here so right here you can see is where my tenderloins ended right here i'm just getting this chunk of meat right here at the top of the back ham right here is the hip bone again i'm gonna come in around that hip bone make a cut got a big chunk of meat there it's almost like the continuation of the of the back straps there you go very good piece of meat there so now you can see this leg is getting pretty pretty thin here so what we're going to do is we're going to take this backhand and this lower shank and because the shank is the way i've got it laid out here is actually covering a little bit of the backhand i'm going to take the lower shank first so to do that i'm going to come right here where it connects make a cut remember i'm trying not to break any bone and there's actually two pieces of meat down here we've got a tendon here we're going to try to leave that there with the deer there we go we got the portion of the shank there that's the outer portion got one more little piece on the inside we're gonna get that back ham out again i grab these pieces of meat and i find where it attaches to the bone trace the leg bone right down [Music] all right we've got those out bottom is pretty much done now we're going to come up here and we're going to start getting this back ham off i'm going to separate it from the femur right here and work this back ham off then i'm gonna go on the other side there's a lot of different ways people do this like we're trying to showcase away here that we're not breaking any bone a lot of times you'll see people come in and make a cut and separate this all out like say we're trying to do this today breaking no bones all right so now i'm just working this knife in and around the pelvis making the cuts separating the meat from the hide and the pelvis bone you can see that is a big beautiful piece of meat right there so right here by this hip these are the inner loin so we went in here made a cut right here and you can see right here are the inner loins while we're here we're gonna go ahead and go ahead and take these out that's this side interloin and we flip the deer over we'll get the other sides so we've kind of finished up the back straps all the back hams the inner loin and now we're going to start working on the front shoulder once we get the front shoulder meat out we'll take some meat from the neck and essentially the process is half done it's exactly the same on the other side so let's go over here now and locate this shoulder now a lot of different ways i've seen people do this what i like to do is locate that shoulder the interesting thing about a deer's front shoulder is that really there's no bones attached you can come in and find that front shoulder blade and literally kind of carve around it and it will come completely off separated what we're going to do now is we've got the shoulder almost separated we're going to make a cut along from the where the brown meets the white we're gonna make a cut right here and cut up through here to the to the elbow now once we get there we're gonna take it on on up once we get that done we're going to pull the hide back may need a knife to do some of this here we go now at this point in time i've got to hide away i'm going to leave it right here on the carcass and use this as a work station now i'm going to try to separate this out of muscle groups again you can see see that bone comes right through here as part of the shoulder blade i'm going to make a cut right here once i get that in i'm going to start peeling that meat right off what i'm doing here is i'm just i'm working along that shoulder blade right there i'm just kind of almost filleting it off there it's very similar to the back i'm just trying to separate these out in the biggest muscle groups that i can get now this part's going to take some cleanup when you get into the kitchen you got all this connective tissue i will get this in and clean it up exactly as i want it when i get back in to the kitchen on a table that is the majority of the meat right there on this front shoulder now you see i still have some here and i've got a little bit down here but that is uh the big portion of it so let's get this bagged now we've got our shoulder that's separated we've got the big part on the outside of the shoulder blade we're going to come in on this side of the shoulder blade make another cut up through there these are really good for grinding for burger or doing jerky or sausage this is perfect cuts of meat for that so we had the piece of shoulder meat that was on the back side a little bit bigger piece shoulder meat come off of the front side we're going to lay that right there we've got a little bit down here we're going to get that off by locating the bone and making a cut right down there to it now this particular piece of meat right here is a lot of individual little muscle groups in there it's kind of stringy again it's good to be ground or you can cut it into into stuff for jerky so i'm not gonna sit here and try to separate this out in individual muscle segments in in the field all i'm trying to do is to get this piece of meat off so that it can be used leaving all the bone behind all right essentially our front shoulder is now picked pretty clean we're done there so now the last piece of meat that we're going to get out is going to be the neck meat you kind of see where the neck meat lays it kind of ends right in this area here so what we want to do is to go in right inside where we took that piece of meat off of the shoulder we're gonna go in go right down to the spine here make that cut and you can see it's just a big sheet of meat that kind of starts right under the shoulder blade it works its way up here in and around the neck there you go that is the neck meat now it looks like there's some meat here we're right on top of the spinal column very very very very little bits of meat there i'm not going to take a chance on any of that because remember we're doing this we're deboning a deer to try to avoid any contamination with any any of the bones or the spinal column so we're going to leave that right there we'll bag this up so essentially that's exactly half of the process to recap we came in we made a cut along the back we removed the back straps we took those out we came in we found a seam made a slice on the back ham took that out separated that out in muscle groups came down and removed the lower shank went in took out the inner loins then we moved to the front made a cut there where the shoulder blade is removed the back part out came and did the exact same thing on the front went down and got the lower shank removed the front leg bone went in and removed the neck meat now the other side is exactly the same so that's exactly what you want to do when you get done here you're going to have all of your meat completely deboned in a bag and ready to go if you're someone who's used to taking your deer complete deer out at home and doing this you know then you've got to deal with how you're going to discard the waste this is a great way to do that if you're someone who's used to quartering the meat you might want to give this a try as well once you get this done you got very little bones or nothing nothing to handle after that and if you're in an area that's a cwd surveillance zone to move that deer out of that cwd surveillance zone this is now required so give it a try make sure you take the right tools and be prepared it's not that bad

Channel: KYAfield

Views: 55,099

Rating: 4.9554658 out of 5

Keywords: kentucky afield, hunting, fishing, deer, Chad, Miles, Kentucky, Department, of, Fish, Wildlife, nature

Id: LBbdCBO3ADM

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021