How to Quarter a Deer in the Field

You do not have to gut a deer to get the meat out of the woods. The gutless method takes five pieces off one side — front shoulder, backstrap, hindquarter, neck and trim — then you roll the animal and repeat, and finish by reaching in through the flank for the two tenderloins. No body cavity is opened, nothing is punctured, and what you end up with is a set of pack-sized pieces instead of a hundred-pound carcass to drag.

If you are buying one knife to do this with, buy the Morakniv Companion below. A 4.1 inch fixed stainless blade with a grippy handle is the whole specification, it costs less than a tank of fuel, and it does this job as well as knives costing ten times more. If the thought of sharpening halfway through a deer bothers you, buy the replaceable-blade RazorLite instead and carry spare blades.

When gutless is the right choice — and when it is not

Both methods are correct; they answer different questions.

• Use the gutless methodwhen you are far from a vehicle, when the ground is too steep or thick to drag, when it is warm and you need the meat cooling in pieces rather than inside a carcass, or when you are hunting alone and cannot move the whole animal. It is the default for public-land hunters who walk in, and it is the reason a frame pack exists — see our meat-hauling frame page for what carries the result.
• Use traditional field dressing when you can get a truck, a cart or a sled close, when you want to hang the carcass whole to age it, or when you plan to take the whole deer to a processor. Our field dressing guide covers that route properly.

The real advantage of gutless beyond portability is cleanliness. The single worst outcome in field dressing is nicking the paunch, and the gutless method removes that risk entirely because you never go near it.

Before you cut: three things

1. Check your tag and your state’s rules.This is the only part of this page that can cost you a citation. Many states require the tag to be attached before the animal is moved or butchered, and several require evidence of sex or species to remain naturally attached to a portion of the meat — which changes how you make the first cuts. Rules vary by state and sometimes by unit, so read them before the season.

2. Pick your spot. Move the deer, if you can, to the highest, driest, most level ground within reach. Working on a deer lying in a wet depression with its legs uphill is the most common self-inflicted difficulty in this job.

3. Get your bags out first. Have the game bags open and laid out before the first piece of meat comes off. Fumbling for a bag with bloody hands is how meat ends up on the dirt.

The sequence, one side at a time

Skin only the side facing up

Roll the deer onto its side. Cut the hide along the spine from the base of the neck to the tail, then peel it down over the ribs toward the belly. Leave it attached at the belly. The hide now lies flat on the ground as the clean work surface you will set meat on, which is worth doing even if you are carrying a tarp.

Front shoulder

The easiest piece on the animal and a good one to start with. Lift the leg away from the body and cut between the shoulder blade and the rib cage. There is no joint to break— the front leg is held to the skeleton by muscle alone. Follow the seam and the whole leg comes free in one piece. Into a bag.

Backstrap

The best meat on the deer. Make one cut along the top of the spine from hip to neck, pressing against the bone, then a second parallel cut down the ribs a few inches out, and lift the long loin out as one piece. Take your time here: this is the cut most easily ruined by hurrying, and it is the one you will actually be excited to cook.

Hindquarter

The heaviest piece and the only one with a real joint. Cut around the ball-and-socket hip joint, keeping the blade tight to the bone, then lever the leg outward to pop the socket and cut through the remaining connective tissue. Working close to the bone rather than through the meat is what separates a clean quarter from a bag of scraps.

Neck and trim

Neck meat and rib or flank meat are grind cuts. They are genuinely worth taking when you are close to the vehicle and have bag space, and they are the first thing to leave behind when you are three miles in and already looking at two trips. That is a judgment call and not a moral one.

Roll and repeat

Roll the deer onto the stripped side and do the whole sequence again. Keep every finished piece on the hide or in a bag, never on bare dirt.

The tenderloins, last

The two tenderloins lie inside the cavity, tucked against the spine behind the last rib. Reach in through the flank from the outside and cut them free. They are small, they are the most tender meat on the animal, and they are the piece most often left in the woods by hunters doing this for the first time — so go looking for them deliberately.

The knife, honestly

You need one blade in the three to four inch range and a way to keep it sharp. You do not need a saw, a cleaver, a gut hook or a set of three knives, because this method never cuts bone.

What you will discover on your first deer is that a knife goes dull faster than you expect — hair, hide and the odd brush of bone take an edge down quickly. There are two honest responses, and they are the two kinds of knife on this page:

• Sharpen it. A fixed blade plus a cheap stone is the cheapest and most durable setup, and the skill takes an evening to learn. Morakniv publishes its own guidance that hunting and outdoor knives are ground to roughly a 23 to 35 degree total edge angle, and our sharpening guide walks through it.
• Swap the edge. A replaceable-blade knife lets you click in a fresh scalpel-sharp blade mid-animal. It is the right answer for anyone who will not realistically sharpen, and the trade is that you are buying blades forever and that a thin replaceable blade is easier to snap. Our fixed versus replaceable comparison lays out the full argument, and the knife rankings cover the field.

Cooling the meat is the part that matters

You can do everything above perfectly and still ruin the meat by bagging it tight and stacking it. Heat is the enemy, and the mechanism is trapped moisture. On a warm opener this is the whole job — see how to cool a deer in warm weather for the sequence from the shot to the ice chest.

• Breathable bags, never plastic.Plastic traps heat and moisture against the meat. Cotton or synthetic game bags let it breathe — our game bag rankings cover which published sizes fit a deer quarter and how many bags one animal actually needs.
• Spread the bags out. Do not pile them. Lay them in shade, on cool ground, with air able to reach each one while you make the first trip.
• Hang them if you can. Off the ground is better than on it, for temperature and for keeping scavengers honest.
• Get the hide off and keep it off. The hide is an insulator; it is doing the opposite of what you want once the meat is off the bone.

Getting it out

A quartered whitetail is usually one or two loads for a fit adult, depending on how much you bone out and how far you are going. Plan for two. Mark the carcass site on your phone and with something physical — flagging tape you then retrieve — before you walk away with the first load, because the woods look different in the dark and everything looks the same on the way back in.

Carry the heavy load against your spine and high, which is the same rule that applies to any pack — our guide to packing a hunting backpack covers it — and carry two light sources, because this part always finishes after dark.

The short version

Skin one side. Shoulder, backstrap, hindquarter, trim. Roll. Repeat. Reach in for the tenderloins. Bag everything breathable, spread it out to cool, and mark the site before you leave with the first load. One sharp four-inch knife does all of it, and the whole method exists so that a deer killed a long way from a road is still a deer you get home.