As winter approaches and people desire more self-reliance, the hobby of hunting has become wildly popular. Because of that, there are two main methods of field dressing an animal, and here are the pros and cons.

First off, just to give you all an idea of how we approach hunting, I’ll give you a sort of disclaimer. I am not a hunter and I do not pretend to be. However, my husband is a very experienced hunter but he does NOT participate in trophy hunting at all. If he hunts an animal, it is used for meat. We have saved skulls and antlers ourselves, but that is not the goal when hunting for us. We use as much of the animal as we can and even save the gristly chewy hocks to make into food for our cats and dogs. I do not hunt because I do not enjoy the actual killing of the animal, however, I participate in all aspects of helping prepare it for storage.

We also teach our children where meat comes from and how we get it. We have them say “thanks” to the animal, and we thank the animal for giving its life so we can sustain ours. We thank the animal as we process it and we thank the animal at every meal…