Field Dressing a Brown Hare

Description

In this video I field dress a Hare. Its very very rear that I would shoot such an animal as there numbers are scattered and modern agriculture gives them a hard time. There are large numbers were I shoot and I was asked to thin them down by the landowner, so I decided I would just take the one and make sure it didn't go to waste.

They are non native although not classified as a pest unless in high numbers, but despite this you should avoid shooting them from early February to late September ideally as the leveret are dependent on the mother. Personally though I would avoid shooting them all together.

Thank you for watching.

More information

http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/features/hare-shooting-the-law-folklore-14203

https://basc.org.uk/cop/brown-hares/

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Video Transcription

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hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here welcome to another video on the channel got out doing some shooting this morning and at this time of year for me it would normally be an invasive species like grey squirrel hazelnuts and other fruits like beech nuts are coming in to ripen and even before they're ripe the scrolls hammer them and they litter the floor with unripe and cracked fruit and other animals suffer because of it and this morning I turned off early and the landowner asked me whether I could take a brown hare for him they can be passed species when they get in high numbers like they are here on the way this morning fairly early and took myself a brown hare over the far side of the woodland and I've got it just here in front of me it's a rarity for me to take a brown hair and it's very large animal in comparison to what I normally shoot much like a big rabbits and dressed in the same way and they're very interesting creatures and I'm very fond of them actually in this case in this video I'm going to show you how I dress an animal like this because of its size and weight normally I would hang it up because it's quite heavy you can roll it around in the dirt so I propped something up just over here a stake in this log stack here outside where I can put it through the tendons and the back legs hang it up and dress it quite easily so let's get started first thing I will do is get the urine out of it like oh with a rabbit and I can already see by this it looks like we have blood in the urine I just need to run your hand down like this as you would a rabbit

yeah I can see there's some dark red blood in the urine just there at the back but not too much coming out so this is really why you want to get it dressed quick you used a shotgun not a clean gun really in a way a clean tool so it caused a lot of damage inside and they quickly get this dress the batter I'm using my small neck knife today always carry this when I go hunting or just out on walks or small trips is a useful little knife to carry but before I dress the animal I'm just going to run it on the stone

make sure it's completely sharp and also have a strop on me as well if you can just ensure that your knifes got a sharp edge if you haven't done already as I didn't have time this morning you can look at the edge looking good shaving sharp to be ready to go I'm just going to take the back legs we can see there we have a thick tendon there and I'm just going to face the blade away from me make an incision then go down as well

so I can put my finger through and I'll do it on both legs the reason I'm doing this is so I can put a stick through it and just hanging up and work with it pretty easily and a stick will hold in there quite nicely just got to make sure the sticks strong enough to hold such a weight I've jammed this piece of hazel in and just strapped it up and hopefully it'll be strong enough it's a flexible word hazel so it's not ideal for this hopefully it should be able to support the weight of this and see it's bending very slightly

Thanks till we get it here the better it will be should be good enough so I'm going to get the skin in the fur off first because I don't want to get lots of blood all over it even though it can come out in the tanning process it's good to keep the hide fairly clean and they can see I've already stripped back one leg it's fairly simple really you just really need a knife to start things off just pinching the skin it can just start to come off very easily you shouldn't really even need to use a knife you can see it's all just starting to come off it was hit on the back end as well so I've just got to be a little bit careful you can see that leg it's been hit a little bit hard actually and it broke one of the tendons that came away so I've got a little bit of work to do around there so through most of this process you should just be able to use your hands much like you would a rabbit but it won't come away quite as easily as a rabbit that's for sure

if you're having difficulty at any point you can just use your knife to free things up

it's starting to come away nice I'm getting away from that area which is good

lots of pallets to can feel so I can get my fingers round there now I've just worked the skin off down both legs just ring around the top and freed it up started coming down just taking it all off and just take that out there should just start to come off quite nicely you can see a lot of this clotting here starting to begin where it was shot just going to work my hand around the back as well and so it's starting to free up all the dues will just ring Ram here as well so when we get to this point skin will come off really easily not too worried about preserving anything round there you can see it comes up the arm now let's try not to be too forceful with your knife on the bone there we are really at the point where everything's just come off very easily we can pull that arm up there like that obviously we have a poor in the way and that poor needs to be taken off ideally now what I try and do if I can avoid it especially the way I'm working here is avoid snapping the bone they're really sharp and you can cut yourself really easy which you don't want to do if you don't have gloves like me at this point so you can actually joint the animal by looking at where it hinges there on that limb I'm just bringing your knife in but I try not to force my knife in because you'll just damage the edge of the blade so you tend to just dig your knife in a little bit and open that up once you get through you don't need to force it in any way and then there's just tendon and it pops off you see I'll do the other one see it hinging just there so obviously that at that point just here just bring the knife in to get some of that skin out of the way just like that you just want the blade just to really be just to be touching the actual cartilage and just nipping through until it so the joint comes apart fairly naturally

just like that and then the arms will actually come out now it pops off it's a fairly clean clean area where it's been jointed you can see that so we don't have to worry too much about our hands going near it don't have sharp bone do the same on the other one now

just like that so there you go again no worries about getting cut so everything's past majority we've got a bit of fat just need to get a head off now get the actual fur off sometimes you can get it off the head it's tricky they're easier on squirrels just get the rest away from there that's it that's all the fur lots of blood sadly but the way it goes and you use a messy gun and that's coming off now I don't we'll get it off though try and use your hands too now the next can a break come straight off what I do is I'll admit defeat just going to take that straight off there like that now we've got this fur and like a a bit of a sock

just turn it inside out like that and roll it in a ball because we want to keep it damp we don't have to worry about the weather too much but if it was a really warm day we have problems with this drying out of experience issues in the past with that it's just something you have to contend with depending on where you live in the world but we'll keep that like that keep it moist and then what we'll do and we'll get home I'll roll it up into a bit of a tighter ball put it in a bag it'll go in the freezer and then it will keep come on I've got time I can then tan it so I'm just going to pop that in my game bag and that'd be saved for later so now we've slipped the neck a lot of the blood to come out we're going to need to take the head off anyway so I've cleared away some of the flesh on the neck there and you can see the vertebrae we don't want to actually just take our knife and dig it in and ruin our edge so you can see a gap there we just put on my fin just pop it through and it comes straight apart like that so we're just avoiding any stress on the edge now it's time for the guts just want to make a very small incision and put our finger through like that we don't actually want to penetrate the gut so if you left the skin away with your finger like that would use my other hand so you can see you can avoid slashing anything obviously all the guts are coming out now we don't want to punch those and we can just pull those out like this

and it should all this can act and come out

this is the liver so if we look at the liver you always want to inspect the liver of an animal this one looks okay a few white blemishes all over actually I'm not looking particularly healthy and the kidneys just here at the back as well you can eat the kidneys so we can we can hang on to those now we've got everything out of there the guts the kidneys the liver we've got the diaphragm we can puncture the diaphragm they actually need to use a knife that you can and deep down in there will be what produces a lot of blood when it gets hit into the lungs and the heart and the heart is edible I don't normally lungs some people do you can give them to a dog if you have one that will keep the heart as well and the rest can just be pulled out and cleared up I can see straight down through the rabbit and put my fingers through there actually it's obviously quite a clear hole goes all the way through like that it's nice and clean we don't need to split down the ribs just yet

really depends what we do with the rabbit but obviously with the hare sorry but what we've got to do now is clean the back end and I'm going to take this off

split the pelvis there and get all the feces out and just clean it up so we can open this up it's a little parcel put the kidneys but the liver in there won't be too many flies now the rains kicking in obviously that will keep the flies off of them and you've got everything there I can just go in the game bag but all you've got to do is clean this up a little bit on the back end just going to open this up here like that I'm not going to touch the bone you can just get your knife and crack it like that but that life's too nice to be treated in such a way where the knife is a lot tougher my field master knife and you could actually do it with that not really worry too much and I have them in the past but you can see we actually have no access to the fecal canal which I ripped out and it's all gone it's all clean you just got to watch these veins they're going to be going to be razor-sharp so you can just clean that up and that's basically it it's all cleaned up obviously we still got the back legs on but I've got no problem keeping those for the finding gives me something to hold on to so you get a lot more meat at one of these and you do a rabbit and this is probably will be well the last times I ever take one of these in my life I don't I don't really sell them comfortable with it and but the lamb dinner will obviously have what he wants and I will eat it make a stew out of it or something I'll take it home see what Megan's France is doing with it but now I need to get cleaned up obviously this is the thing about dressing an animal in a not so ideal environment a lot of the time when I'm at I look for water running water I could River or something along those lines to dress something near you do have to contend with flies sometimes you have to pick your area I'm not talking about still stagnant water we're just going to disturb eggs and things will start flying out at you I mean like a nice river with rocks and something running well and then you can wash this off in the river too or just keep it like that really it depends what you want to do with it but I'm going to get this transported back I got to carry it's got I've got nowhere to put it I wasn't after these today I was asked a gray squirrel well that's what I thought I was after anyway so I'm going to make my way back going to go to my vehicle I've got some sand things I can put it in and I'll leave it there for the rest of the day while I'm obviously put the hide in there too and take it home and it should be good and maybe you'll join me in another video and I'll show you how to cook something like this maybe out in the woods maybe in the kitchen we'll see

and what mehgan's feels is best to do that I'll leave it in her hands but thanks for watching guys I hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you very soon in another one take care

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