Hanging A Deer - - skin on or skin off

clivej

Is There much of a difference between hanging skin on or off?

Rows Grower

I think hygiene wise it's better to get the skin off and the deer hanging in a fridge asap.

It's also a lot easier to skin them when the animal is freshly killed, or so I'm told but to be honest I couldn't vouch for that as I've only ever skinned them asap.

kunekunesika

clivej wrote: »

Is There much of a difference between hanging skin on or off?

They cool quicker with the skin off.

cookimonster

Just throw this one into all the other debates, best calibre, best binos, best scope...

....everybody has their own preferences.

About cooling - absolutely they need to be cooled, but not as quick as some may think. Gralloching and splitting the carcuss will aid cooling, but so will the transportation and initial handling of the carcass. Throwing a carcass into a fridge straight away can cause cold shortening, the best practice is to allow the temperature to drop prior to refrigeration. This would be an argument to skin the deer, but the hide offers more protection against exterior contamination. During colder months of the season and unless you are knocking deer on your door stepp the normal time frames involved between the gralloch and return to the larder will aid the cooling. Unseasonably warm temps as seen at the opening of this year's season will need a fair degree of common sense and fore thought.

To remove the hide or not, yes the hide may contain contaminants, but it also protects the rest of the more valuable meat. Best practice is to reduce the amount of cuts to the carcass to reduce extrinsic contamination. If it's a rutting stag by all means remove the offending sticky area. If you've managed to drag half the hill side with you then carefully wash and dry the animal.
The hide will also help reduce shrinkage of meat during the hanging period as well as stopping the flesh from drying to an almost leather like property if left to hang too long.

Lets face it most of us don't have access to meat processing standard refrigeration in which not only is the tempature carefully controlled but also the humidity, which is very important in the storage of hanging meat.

Lots of people take the jacket off and get satisfactory results, while just as many leave them on and are just as happy.

My vote is for the hide on for hanging.

bobbyy gee

hang a deer

https://www.realtree.com/deer-hunting/articles/you-ve-been-hanging-your-deer-wrong-for-years

Rows Grower

Hang a deer....