I'm looking for a good book with pictures/ diagrams to learn how to field dress and butcher a deer.  I'd appreciate some recommendations.

Also looking for the knife, saw, hanging rack, etc to clean and butcher with.  I've seen on deer field dressed but never done it myself.  Not sure what I need or what might be helpful for this.

Youtube.  Plenty of good videos walking you through the process.  That's how I learned, and I dressed out my first buck earlier this year.  You can also find plenty of articles/diagrams/walkthroughs on Google.

I recommend a Havalon knife, a Sagen Saw plus a medium sized fixed blade knife (take your pick of hundreds of viable options, I like to use a Mora Companion).

"Venison From Field To Table" by John Weiss is a good source.

For field dressing....just search it on youtube.  There's thousands of how too's on that.


There's quite a few for butchering as well, however, I find the 4 video series with DeadOnHunting to be the absolute best.  They don't cover skinning, but that's not that hard and there are tons of video's on that too.  They do, however, cover how to steak or roast all of the cuts of meat.  They also tell you exactly what all the cuts are, and a general guideline on how to cook them.  They explain what they're doing and how they're doing it very well.  This guy is an actual butcher and has been doing this for many years.  Learn from the best.

Link for DeadOnHunting's video series on Butchering



There's no replacement for experience.  I would watch that series about 3-4 times.  Then do it!  You won't be good at it the first time, regardless of how many times you watch the video's.  It will take 3-4 possibly more deer before you feel comfortable butchering.  I've done quite a few now and I'm to the point where I can pretty much go from hanging, to packaged and in the freezer in about 1.5 hours per deer.  That's taking time to make sure all the cuts are cleaned up.

Thank you gents.  This will give me something to study on.  

So do I need the hangar thing to string the deer up with or is that just for gutting?

Pretty good for deer, but the livestock sections are great


Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game
by
John J. Mettler

I gut them where they drop.
I find it easier personally.
Also the fact that back in the 1960's and 70's where I hunted if you brought a deer with it's guts intact back to camp you would have been looked upon not so good.
I learned as a kid by reading an hunting magazine article complete with pictures about twenty times.
When the morning of my first kill took place I went right to work and didn't have a problem at all.

Hanging by the legs with those devices is great.  It's a lot easier to skin from the rear legs forward to the head.  Gutting should be done in the field where they drop...there's no need for hauling the guts back to camp, just to have to haul them back out to the field again.  


If you watch the video's I linked to, they will do all their work(as do all butchers I've known) with the deer hanging from the rear legs.  There's probably a very good reason the people that get paid to do it, do it that way.