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To bury or Not to bury


Greycat

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I have had a couple of discussions lately about field dressing your harvested deer and what is best done about the organs and entrails. We have had an exploding coyote population and more attacks on the local deer by coyote packs and aggressive singles.

One surprising opinion that I can’t get out of my head is the guy that prescribes that any hunter that doesn’t bury the remains is lazy and doesn’t care about increased coyote attacks on deer or the exploding coyote population.

I am not sure it is always practical and even if buried, I am sure coyotes would sniff it out and dig them up anyway. In addition I don’t know that there is any evidence the gorging on deer remains entices more deer attacks than would normally occur.

So are we lazy and uncaring and does any of this have merit?

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No merit IMO. A coyote has an icnredible sense of smell and if one caught wind of entrails buried or not, they'll dig them back up.

Saying someone is lazy for not burying the entrails is just plain naive.

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My take on the subject is that gut piles have been feeding animals for hundreds of years. so what! Any healthy deer can escape yotes anyday, so no I'm not going to rent a backhoe to rip up the frozen tundra that is northern Minn in deer season just so I can bury the guts.

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It's ridiculous to bury a gut pile. The larger animals that may feed off it will just dig it up, and you may keep the smaller ones from getting an easy meal. What about all the birds that feed on it?

It's all about the cycle of life. Food chain. Don't deny any of the woodland critters access to this natural food source.

Bury it so other people don't have to see it? I certainly wouldn't leave a gut pile in the neighbors yard but anywhere else and it will be gone in few days, as nature intended.

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NOT!!!! How does this even come up???

Some of the most entertaining moments of deer hunting occur a day or two after you taged one and you are sitting in the same stand watching the birds and other critters eating away at the gut pile.

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Burying them is a waste of time. I gutted a buck in the Black Hills once, and unloaded my rifle and opened a beer. Four feet away from me, two Gray Jays were already picking the fat chunks off the pile. As for the coyotes, they make great targets for the rest of the hunt. I've seen gut piles disappear overnight in Pine County.

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Icehouse, You didn't have a hunting buddy that was the 'butt' of a cruel joke involving a little too much brew, that gut pile and a forked stick, did you?? grin Phred52

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I've actually set up trail cameras over gut piles, very interesting!!! Coyotes, foxes, cats, crows, hawks, they keep coming until its all gone!!

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