If I know it's a good shot, I will get out of the blind right away and go look for it. Once I find the deer, then I will tag it and go get my Polaris and load it up and take it back to camp to hang and gut right away (within 30 minutes of the shot.) If its warm out, then I will go ahead and start to skin it and quarter it and put it on ice. Everything gets done right away (no lolly gagging around.)

Gutting as I’m putting in cooler whole: Might take 4 mins on ground

Leave Guts in: hang(up side down) and proceed to skin and qtr, might take 15 min(if body is still pretty warm, longest part is skinning, I have a clasp I use to pull skin down.

I seldom wait to recover on rifle, of all that I have shot in last 10 years(mule deer whitetail, elk, pronghorn and aoudad) only one went any where.

The older I get, the more tools and equipment are involved lol...

Typically I drag the deer to where I can get to it with the UTV, throw it on the rack on the back and then haul it back to camp where we have a hoist and gambrel station set up..

Once hoisted up on our rack, gut, skin, and quarter there... lately we've been using the "golf ball" method to assist with the skinning process.. its maybe a 30 minute process start to finish doing it that way..

Everything goes into the rotocooler for 3-5 days.. gets brined and ice changed as required.. then processed into roasts, ground, etc after that..

As a kid growing up the first place i had access to hunt was a place where there was no place to hang deer. it was close to home and so we didn't have a camp or anything there either. The owner of the property lived on it but didn't want us bringing the deer up to his house so we were told to just dress them where they lay and leave it all out in the brush. So that's how i learned and that's still how i prefer. just as they lay on the ground dress them out. we would then load them up and take them home and had a place to hang them to skin them. to this day i still dress them on the ground and then hang them to skin.

i think i could skin/quarter one on the ground if i had to pack one out of somewhere but i've never had to do it. always been able to drive reasonably close and just load them up. If i dress them where they fall i'll usually carry the guts a little ways off my shooting lanes

after a shot.....depends a lot on what i was aiming at and how the shot seems to have gone. i shoot the shoulder majority of the time. as long as it felt like the shot went well i'll usually give 10-15min or so to go down to point of impact and start to see how good the hit looked. if i'm seeing good sign i'll usually start to slowly follow up (my deer typically run a little...20-30yds tops most of the time). or if deer drops....then same 10-15min or until it looks to have expired.

age has changed things for sure. The older I get the less I will gut a deer on the ground. I like to hang them and gut them. If that is not possiable then it is the back of the truck or mule. I also used to sleep in a tent on the ground. now I have a travel trailer lol. Getting older does have some advantages