How to Field-Dress a Deer

The first and most difficult step in field-dressing a deer is the kill. Go out and procure yourself a lease, or access to a lease, or buy a ranch or a farm or an old field grown up with scrubby trees and a nearly impassable understory, or find some public land that permits hunting. Invest in a good rifle, commit gun-safety procedures to habit, and learn to shoot accurately. Acquire a gun safe. Do not neglect to consult your state’s hunting laws—the rules are inflexible and the penalties harsh. Game wardens possess wide discretion and broad powers, so beware. Leave the whiskey at home. Decide whether you wish to sit for untold hours in a small, cramped, elevated box, known as a blind, staring at a corn feeder, or use some other, more sporting method. (Somehow, shooting an animal that you’ve been feeding for six months feels like cheating, or killing a pet, but maybe that’s just me.) Some hunters, like Ted Nugent, sit in trees clutching compound bows. Others stalk through the brush like Natty Bumppo. Personally, I prefer hunting from a warm pickup, with a thermos full of coffee or hot chocolate at my side, because that’s how we always did it on my family’s ranch in Texas.

Squeeze the trigger. When my ten-year-old son shot his first deer, it leaped high in the air and went bounding off through the brush. It was an axis buck, an exotic species from South Asia, beautifully spotted with tall, elegant antlers, that has recently established a breeding population on our ranch. Unlike native species, such as whitetail and mule deer, exotics are typically not regulated by state authorities. It’s open season all the time, though the best hunting season for axis deer is the summer, when the bucks are rutting. Perfect for a school-age child living in a large city far from his ancestral ranch.

We followed spots of blood for about a hundred yards and lost the trail. A common outcome, so fear not. Trace ever-widening circles, looking for footprints, blood, or broken twigs. This is called “cutting for sign.” We soon found the animal. Dead, fortunately. It was a young buck, a six-pointer. If your deer continues to breathe when you approach, I suggest you shoot it again. A wounded deer can kill a person. Beware the sharp hooves as well as the pointy antlers.

I didn’t really expect my son to shoot a deer that day. We had been hunting these axis deer for three years. It was late in the afternoon, and now I had a large dead animal to butcher the night before we drove to San Antonio to catch our flight home. I felt somewhat unprepared. I had a good knife but no gloves. When I was a kid, we never gave a thought to blood-borne diseases.

After determining that your animal is in fact dead, cut its throat and let it bleed for a few minutes. Make a small incision...