Head up or head down?

[Tuffy]

We seem to have a diversified group here on Rokslide. IF you hang your big game to skin, do you hang them head up or head down?
It seems to be a regional thing, with most of the people who hang game head up being from the east.
Growing up in the '50s & 60s in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, our house was the meeting and skinning place of our family and friends. There would be dozens of deer skinned on "The Old Oak Tree" every season, with not one hung with it's head up. Not to say we had the right or wrong way, it's just how we did it from the get go.
We also butchered our own deer with a hand meat saw and a Cleaver.... lots of bone chips and bone dust in our meat. Thank God somebody learned how to bone out meat. A third of the time and WAY cleaner, not to mention trying to wrap a piece of meat with a sharp bone ripping your wrapping paper.... I think we had as much Tape as we had paper on some of those packages.
So back to the original question.... Head up or down and why?
T

 

[CentennialELK]

Head down. When I remove the head I don't want the spinal fluid all over my meat. And it is easier to cut out the back straps to throw on the cooker...

 

[mt100gr.]

Head down. Blood drains away from the thickest sections of meat. Don't want that stuff concentrating in the hind quarters. Blood in the fastest to begin decomposing and sours meat.

I also grew up learning that it is disrespectful to the animal to hang it by its head...though I don't really think they'd mind...

 

[5MilesBack]

Personally, I've never had enough guys with me to be able to lift a deer or elk to hang it. It's usually hard enough just to debone it where it lies.

 

[JG358]

Head down, blood drains better and because I use a gambrel.

 

[Poser]

If I'm hunting somewhere where a deer can easily be recovered whole and taken back to where there is a gambrel, I'll hang it head down. More times than not, I end up skinning and quartering whitetails in the woods. Sometimes, I do this on the ground, other times, using some 550 cord, a screw in step and a carabiner, I'll hoist the deer up the side of a tree hanging from its neck. Never had any issue with any of the methods.

 

[JP100]

Head down. Just the way we learnt to do it as kids on the farm.
All commercial operators I have seen always hang head down. Major blood vessels in neck I think is the main reason.

But the majority of stuff I do know is just on the ground