Ok Purplechicken I'm going to give you a way to skin and dress the deer that's practically unbeatable as far as ease goes.... now thats my opinion. This method will leave ZERO hair on the deer when finished as well. I bet some of you experienced hunters will like this way too if you'll just give it a try....
Tools needed:
Sharp knife
10' of medium/small diameter rope
Enough rope of any size to tie around the deers head and then around a rafter/large tree limb or whatever strong point you can manage.
A car or truck
And finally a golfball or rock approximately the same size.
After gutting the deer as others have previously mentioned in the other thread.
Hang the deer like this.
First cuts are around the legs like a bracelet. I usually make my cuts near the joints but it really doesn't matter.
Next thing to do is cut around the neck as close to the skull as possible. Then follow up with a cut from the chest cavity on up along the neck in the wind pipe area till you reach the cut around the neck at the base of the skull.
Then work your fingers between the skin and neck muscles behind the deer's head and pull down towards the back. If you need to use your knife to work the hide down go for it. Peel down the hide until you can place the golf ball or rock in that area then wrap the small/medium diameter rope around the hide/ball and tie a TIGHT knot.
After you've got the rope secured around the hide/ball attach the other end of the rope to your car/truck. Hop in and SLOWLY back up. It'll pull the hide off the deer leaving a perfectly nekkid deer carcass to work with.
By myself I can gut, hang, skin, butcher a deer in less than an hour this way. There are other similar methods people use based on this same principal.
Once that's all done you can work the meat up at your own pace. I've bagged them and let them hang for a few days at this point or butchered and tossed the meat in a tilted cooler full of ice with an open drain plug for a week or so rotating ice in as it melts.
I hope this helps and really hope some of the experienced guys give this a try. I've done the hang by hock cut pull cut pull cut cut pull pull way MANY times and this beats em all by far in my opinion.
