If you Google it, you will get quite a few pages, but most of them are for deer. I will give you the quick version here for several game animals so you can get the idea. Hope you don't mind getting blood and crap all over your hands and be ready for some good smells too. Sometimes, guts just stink! Anyway, lets start with the smaller ones like squirrels. Squirrels, rabbits, pretty much anything that is considered small game or a rodent is about the same. Now, this is if you DON'T want to keep the hide intact. A sharp pocket knife works great for these. I will use a squirrel as the example character here. Also, a hatchet is nice or a cleaver or a butcher knife or something to use for the little amount of chopping you have to do, but if not it's no big deal, just improvise. 

 

Take the squirrel and cut off it's tail right up against its butt. Take your knife, and without cutting into the belly, cut open the hide from the tail stub to the neck and start to work it loose. You want to kind of pull it back and may have to slice a little with your knife to get it off enough so you can get a good hold on it. Do this down around the hind legs. Once you get enough of it loose you can pull on it by hand, take one of the hind legs and either nail it down to something that won't move, or, take a piece of strong twine and tie it to one of the hind feet and then tie the other end to something like a little tree. Start to pull off the hide (it's a little tough to get off) towards the feet first. Once you get it down to the end of the meat on it's legs, take your hatchet or whatever you have and chop each foot off as you get to it, leaving the severed part in the hide. Do the bottom two first, then pull the hide off the body up towards the head and then do the top two. Once you get the hide all the way off and your feet are chopped off, make sure your hide is pulled up around the head and then chop the head off. Take the skinned squirrel, easily slice it's belly open, taking care as to not cut into the intestines. You ought to cut from the sternum all the way to the groin area. Flip the thing over and hold each end of it with your thumbs on the spine and snap it like you are trying to break a twig. The guts will come out pretty easily. Take you knife and cut the sternum open up to the stug of the neck and pull it open and make sure you get all that out of there too. It's best to do this around somekind of water as it's a lot easier to clean them out. Make absolutely sure that you clean your meat. Don't leave any guts on there at all as it will spoil the meat and you can get very ill from this. After that, you can either spear it along the spine and cook it over a fire, you can grill it like The Wiz does everything (lol), or you can boil it, you can cook it anyway you like. Be careful about the ribs though as they are very slender and easy to swallow. If you want to bone it out, the way we always did it was just boil it and then pull it off after it's cooked.

 

Larger animals like coyotes, wild cats and deer are a little more involved, especially deer. I will use a deer because once you know how to clean a deer you can do just about anything. Now, this is the way I have done it, it's the way my uncle taught me and so on and so forth. I can do it with anything but I have a folding knife with a cutting blade and another blade that has a saw with a gut hook on it that I use for deer and other larger animals. Take the deer and flip it over on it's back. Without slicing the stomach open the animal up from the bottom of the sternum down to just above the pelvis. *Note: if you are legally hunting, check your game laws in your state about the sex organs.* If this is a male, cut around the side of the genitals, be careful not to cut too deep as you can hit the bladder. Then take your knife and cut in above the anus and then down and around it to it's free. Remove the rest of the genitals and roll the deer on it's side. Pull the cavity open and the guts will more or less start to fall out, you may have to help it along some. Now, everything isn't going to come out here. Pull the guts out as much as you can and then anus should come right out with the rest of the intestines. Something you may want to do though, depending on the weather is take a piece of twine and tie it around the bottom of the colon. This will keep the shit from coming out if the animal was having a bad day (that is before you killed it, lol). Take your knife and cut the sternum open. Reach up in there and cut the windpipe and esophagus as far up as you can and you may have to cut the pluras away from the lungs some to get them out. Once you have everything out in a pile make sure you have all the guts out. Now, if you live way down south where it's 80 degrees out during deer season, the meat will not last very long in the heat so you need to take action very quickly on this part. The colder it is out the better the meat will stay. If it's below 45 degrees outside you don't have anything to worry about. Now, take the deer and roll it back over. I cut the pelvis in half on larger deer, smaller ones I don't. Pull the animal up and if you can get it up so the body is sloped or even hanging so it can drain. If you are near a stream, drag it down to the stream and wash the inside to get out the blood and any remnants of gut that may be lingering. When you drag the animal, make sure you drag it on it's back so you don't get a bunch of dirt and leaves and stuff inside of it. If you are planning on doing it all yourself then you need to skin it also. If you would like to know how to do that then post and I will tell you. It takes a little time to do it and do a good job so the hide is useable. Don't worry about the bones, you can leave the meat on if you like and cook it like that.

 

Please post any questions, you will get an answer(s).

 

Darth