Prepare in advance for what happens afterward

This article was first published in my email newsletter in October of 2024. I've added it to my website, because I think the information is useful in general, not just for the month it was published. If you'd like to keep up with the latest hunting information, including my open dates and available hunts, you can subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of this page.

When you’re getting ready for your hunt, as part of your preparation, you really need to plan for what you’re going to do with your animal after it hits the ground. Too many hunters neglect that, and it can cause them a lot of problems.

I get it. There are reasons people don’t think about those things in advance. Sometimes it’s just an oversight, especially for new hunters. But I think a lot of hunters may avoid that advance preparation because they feel like they’re jinxing themselves. Counting their chickens before they’re hatched.

My advice? Just knock on some wood and do the preparation. 

What kind of preparation do you need to do?

You need to decide on your mount, you need to choose a processor, you need to choose a taxidermist, and you need to figure out transportation. All of these things apply no matter who you hunt with, but I’m going to explain it in terms of the hunts that I organize. It won’t be all that different if you hunt with someone else, but you should make sure you know in advance how things are going to work.

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS IN THE FIELD

First, let’s talk about what happens in the field.

When you kill an animal, I’ll field dress it for you. That’s covered in the price of your hunt. I’ll gut it and remove the internal organs.

Next you need to think about what further work needs to be done in the field, and that depends a bit on your plans further down the road. What kind of mount do you have in mind, for example.

Most of my hunters go with a shoulder mount, and that requires removing the hide from the shoulders on up and then preserving the skull plate — the piece of the skull where the horns or antlers are attached — along with the horns or antlers themselves. Of course, when you do a shoulder mount, you aren’t required to limit the hide to just the shoulders up. I prefer to remove the hide completely and then — once the entire hide is removed — I make the cuts to separate the part of the hide that’s needed for the mount. I think that approach does a better job of keeping hair from getting on the meat.

If you’re doing a full-body mount, you need to take a different approach. You need to be sure that any cuts you make to the hide won’t show up in the final mount. One of my hunters recently wanted a full-body mount of his aoudad, and before I removed the hide, I made sure to communicate with his taxidermist. I wanted to talk to the taxidermist so that the two of us could agree on what cuts I should make, in order to ensure that the hide would be in good shape for his work. That’s a conversation I want to have before we’re in the field; it’s not a call I want to make at the last minute in a place where there’s no cell service.

Incidentally, you can do all this work yourself, or you can turn it over to me or to your processor. Very few of my clients do it themselves. They’d rather pay the extra fees to have it handled by one of us. That way, they know it will get done right.

COOLING YOUR ANIMAL

Depending on the season, cooling your animal is something to consider. In the middle of winter in West Texas, it’s not a problem. If your animal hangs overnight, it’ll be plenty cold.

In warmer weather, however, you need to think about it a bit more.

All the ranches I hunt, except for my ranches in West Texas, have walk-in coolers where the temperature is set to the mid to low thirties. Put your animal in that cooler overnight, and you can drive two or three hours, with the hide on, to your processor without a problem. If you need to go further than that, you should skin and quarter your animal there on site, put it in coolers, and transport it that way.

Big animals like buffalo or eland are a special problem. You should transport them as soon as possible after they’re killed. Because of how big they are, they can overwhelm a walk-in cooler, and even though they get cold on the outside, their bones and the meat around their bones stay warm, and that can lead to a kind of inside-out spoilage that we call ‘bone souring.'

When I do buffalo hunts, I like to have a processor nearby who is expecting us. When my hunter kills a buffalo, we’ll get some photos, quickly lift it up with a tractor, field dress it, and then put it into the back of our hunter’s truck or trailer so that it can be driven straight to the processor.

COORDINATING WITH YOUR PROCESSOR

Speaking of processors: Make sure you’ve chosen your processor in advance, and then contact them to make sure they know when to expect you.

Something that’s important to understand about processors is that many of them are seasonal. That is, they’re only available to handle your animal during deer hunting season.

In Texas, because there’s no season on exotics, we can hunt year-round. But there’s significantly less processing business outside of deer season, so a lot of processors will either completely close down or they’ll switch to processing beef or pork. In either case, they won’t take your animal. If they’re closed, they’re not going to open up to handle your exotic. And if they’ve switched to beef or pork, they’ll be operating under USDA regulations, and they can’t bring game animals into the plant.

The good news is that in the Hill Country, there’s so much hunting of exotics that plenty of processors can stay open year-round. Outside of the Hill Country, however, you’re likely to have a problem. And even in the Hill Country, you should talk to your processor in advance and make sure they’re ready to take your animal. That’s especially true for a big animal, like buffalo, where you’ll want to move fast and you’ll want to be sure your processor is ready for you.

CHOOSING A PROCESSOR

If you’re from outside Texas or from a very different part of the state, you may not know any processors that are close to where you’ll be hunting. In that case, talk to me about it. I’ve got experience with a bunch of processors that can do a good job for you. A lot of them are located near my home, and I may even be able to transport your animal for you, if it’s on my way.

But the important thing is to think about all this in advance and make sure you’ve got your ducks in a row. Just knock on some wood and start planning.