Ask The Biologist

Feathers, Guts and All

Feathers, Guts and All

By Bob Humphrey

Why do Southerners drag out their deer without field-dressing them first?

QUESTION: I am from New York. Last year I did my first out-of-state hunt, in Alabama. The people I hunted with told me not to field dress my deer, but to bring it back to camp whole. At first I thought they were just kidding me, but they were serious. When I asked why, they just said, “That’s just the way we do it.” Am I missing something? Is there a good reason not to field dress your deer? — Jim F.

ANSWER: Being from New England myself, I was similarly confused when I started traveling to hunt. My Yankee logic didn’t see the sense of dragging an extra 30 or 40 pounds of waste out of the woods if you didn’t have to. So naturally, I asked and have received several explanations for this practice.

One is coyotes. Fresh gut piles attract predators and scavengers, and some people think the scent of coyotes will deter deer from the area. It’s also possible the added commotion of scavengers like crows and ravens might have a similar effect. While I don’t deny that’s possible, it has not been my experience. I’ve shot deer within feet of a fresh gut pile on numerous occasions. And I’ve shot multiple deer from the same stand several days apart – in each case dressing the deer where they fell. Still, there might be some minor, short-term effect and in situations that require kid gloves – like hunting mature bucks or where stand sites are limited – it certainly can’t hurt to pay extra attention to details and minimize disturbance.

There’s another predator-related reason sometimes offered for removing gut piles. Leaving them provides more food for the predators. There’s no denying that, but whether it makes a difference is another matter. You could argue that feeding them helps them. Conversely, if they’re well fed they might be less inclined to hunt for live deer. Besides, the unfortunate truth is that careless hunters leave more than enough unrecovered deer in the woods that gut piles aren’t going to make much difference.

A much more valid reason for removing deer in the round exists where records are kept. Deer managers often weigh deer round and then dressed, and use the difference as an index to population health. If there are other reasons for taking deer out of the field whole rather than dressing them, we’d love to hear them.

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