Used to use a knife for both, graduated to a small hatchet for the pelvis, light taps, you ain't splitting wood,lol
Now.... I hang, skin and debone, no gutting,... no decent tree?, I'll skin and bone on the ground.
Meat goes in game bags, bags go into the pack, walk the critter out. Dead to done in maybe 30 minutes,
No more dragging.

The splitting allows you to open up the carcass more to facilitate cooling.

Me neither,,I just gut them properly.Gut them,,then open the bung hole and yank whats left out of there.

Which doesn’t need done until its hanging in the garage. But by that point I have it skinned and its not needed.

Years ago a Game warden showed me how to gut a deer without getting blood on your watch with a pocket knife.

A serrated blade helps for the big sternums but no need to split the pelvis, IMO.

I just drag the deer to where I can drive up to it, load it and drive to a scaffold to hang it on. Cut off the head at the first vertebra. Cut off the 2 lower front legs at the joint. Expose the hocks. Hang the deer by the hocks and skin it. Take off the front legs under the shoulder plate. Take out the loins. Cut of the other meat on the neck, back and rib sheeting. Cut around the bung and push it in. Cut the abdominal muscle. Plop the guts in a bucket. Cut or pull out and save the liver. Cut through the abdominal wall. Pull the lungs out. Cut or pull the heart out. Cut the tender loins out. Cut off the back at the pelvis.

I then take the edible meat to the house. Cut off the lower back legs and discard them. Clean and package the loins, tenderloins, liver meat scraps and heart. Put the legs in the fridge for Diane to debone later.

Keith

I like to hang a deer to let it age.

Same here, if the ambient temperatures work in my favor I’ll let them hang a week or more. As long as daytime highs are between 32° and 40° and it doesn’t drop too far below freezing at night. I left my buck hang for eight days this past season.

Heck yes that’s what I do. I have a specific pair of tree limb poppers that couldn’t cut limb for anything but works great on deer pelvis. Been using it for 20 years, two chomps from that and the pelvis is gone.

There you go. Up here when I took deer 5 days hanging that got to 45 degrees and then they are ready. As you did Lug, adjust accordingly.

Osky

I don't split either. Heart and lungs are easy enough to pull put without splitting the sternum and opening the pelvis only allows for more debris to get on the hind quarters which you or the butcher need to shave off, wasting a fair amount of good meat. As long as the bladder and intestines are out there is no need to split the pelvis to remove the little "tube".

When I did split it I used a folding saw because they're compact and cut clean. A hatchet splinters the bone, making it too easy to hurt yourself on jagged bone in the field.

My two cents is all because it works for me. Different strokes for different folks.