Back in November, I shot a buck with a muzzleloader. The deer could have had the good grace to drop on the spot, near the top of a ravine--but no, it ran off about 70 yards and fell dead next to the brook at the bottom of the ravine. I tried to drag that deer back up out of the ravine, but it was too heavy for me and I couldn't, so I had to resort to Plan B: dragging it down the stream bed about half a mile to where a gravel rod would let me drive up with my Jeep.
I had left my rubber gloves in a fanny pack back at the car, and without them I didn't want to gut the deer, which would have lightened the load by a quarter or so. That means I had to drag said buck over rocks, through water, under blowdowns, and through narrow gorges where there wasn't even a stream bank. I WAS wet and TIRED and sorely tempted to gut that deer to get rid of some of that accursed weight, gloves or no gloves. If I'd been smart in the first place, I would have stashed that deer so nobody would steal it and hiked to the car and back with the gloves from the get-go. However, since I hunt in crowded NJ, I didn't want to leave that deer for a minute.
Finally, when I got close enough to the road, I hiked to the car and got my gloves and lightened that deer load. That sure helped.
After reading the story about a hunter contracting bovine TB from a deer, I'm glad I didn't give in and gut the thing without the gloves. Sometimes being prissy pays off.