The Butt Out 2

Review Date: January 2021

Back in the fall of 2008, as my former employer (Lehman Brothers) was collapsing and our financial system was teetering on the edge, a friend and I were in central New Jersey bowhunting whitetails. We knew that generally the NJ deer population was high and we were just looking for some action. He’s from New Hampshire and we both wanted a change from hitting the same over-hunted woods where you could go days without seeing a deer.

Unfortunately we didn’t get much action in New Jersey. The weather was warm, and the outfitter had oversold us on his deer herd and the number of hunters he takes each year. It was good to be out in unfamiliar woods - you could hear the bugle sounding “retreat” each afternoon at Ft. Dix - but the hunting was slow. My friend did shoot a very small deer, so he got to take home a lunchbox-size cooler full of venison.

I spooked one buck that wanted to walk past my stand, but he had learned to check first to see if anyone was sitting in it. So all I had to show for the trip was how impressed I was with the Butt Out tool the guide used on my friend’s deer.

When you are field dressing a deer, you have to remove the colon that runs from the intestines out to the anus. The old-school way of doing this was to use your knife to cut around the anus to loosen it, and then pull the colon into the body cavity so it can be removed along with all the other “guts.” This is easier to describe than to execute, you will usually damage some meat with your knife, and there is always the potential that feces in the colon will get loose and contaminate your meat. I think I remember seeing a diagram in the LL Bean cookbook where they had you tie the colon off with string, making a neat little knot so as to contain the “deer berries.” I’ve never seen anyone actually tie knots in their colon.

Well, the solution is to slip the Butt Out into that there colon pardner, give it a few twists, and then pull the sucker out - the tool brings the entire colon right out with it. The whole operation takes only a minute. I think the directions say that you pull out the colon and then cut it off, but I’ve never had to cut. When you pull far enough the tissue just seems to part all by itself.

My original Butt Out was shorter, which made it harder to get a firm grip on the handle when it was fully inserted, so I replaced it with the much improved Butt Out 2. The newer model is longer and has a disk that helps you insert the tool to the correct length and maintain a solid grip. The current retail price seems to be around $13.

Of all my hunting gear, the Butt Out tool attracts the most interest from my non-hunting friends. I caution them that it is a serious piece of equipment that should not be taken lightly, not to be tried at home, and never taken to cocktail parties.