Whitetails are America’s deer. Over 30 million inhabit the US with a total of 45 states having whitetail deer seasons. Every year American hunters kill approximately 6 million deer and consume roughly 300 million pounds of venison.
Along with deer meat, we devour an encyclopedic amount of literature on the subject. For one human to try and read everything written on whitetails in a single year would be a fool’s errand, it’s a rich field of...

You’ve got a sharp knife, a notched tag, and a big giant buck on the ground. Congrats on making it this far. Now the real work begins, it’s time to gut the deer.
Here at MeatEater, we want to give you all that’s needed to make quick work of this important task. Here are the essential steps to getting it done. 
Step 1: Cut through the skin around the anus, completely freeing the rectum.

Step 2: Begin gutting incision; do not pierce...

By far, the most popular kind of hunting story that exists today is the first-deer story. To kill your first deer is a rite of passage, and a hunter will tell his story with the same degree of passion and mystery that most guys use to describe their first sexual encounter. Indeed, there are many similarities between these two milestones in a boy’s (and in some cases, a girl’s) life. For instance, American hunters generally kill their first deer...