I've got an interesting cautionary tale to tell from skinning a deer last week. I lowered my gambrel down with my electric hoist and it was laying against my skinning base. My base is mounted to a 4x6 pressure treated post. I went to grab the gambrel and received quite a shock. It was a good one. I put my voltage tester on the cable wire from the hoist and it was most certainly hot. I didn't have a chance to look at everything until today and here is what I found.

I have outlets in my pole barn ceiling that I plug my lights in to as well as my skinning hoist. Using a plug tester I got Hot/Ground reversed lights on the duplex in question as well as the duplex upstream and downstream. However, I opened them up and everything was wired correctly except on the duplex downstream two of the ground wires had come out of the wire nut. Upon further inspection I noticed that a stink bug had crawled under the electric tape and bridged itself between the neutral terminal and the ground wire, making the metal box hot and sending hot current back to the duplex upstream. This electrified the metal housing around my hoist as well as the cable. At this point the ground wire for the house should have still been the best ground, but when I touched the gambrel to the skinning base connected to a 4x6 sunk deep in our wet ground, that became the best ground. At least as far as I can figure out.

I believe I'm going to replace the breaker for that circuit with a GFI and also buy a lottery ticket. I'm no electrician but I figure it's some kind of luck...

Good points about double checking stuff. I can't believe you are still using wire nuts in 2022, I am not speaking to whether they are code or not, just to me there are far better solutions that work way better. I bought the little push in connectors and electrical tape the ground wires to the connector just to prevent them from coming out. I guess you could solder it too if you wanted, but makes me want to go out and check all of my stuff. They make these push in connectors that can bridge 4 wires together, it's what I used when I rewired my house after Hurricane Laura. See pic, just a recommendation, but man glad you are ok.

Those do look easier, especially for multiple wires pig tailed together. Unfortunately even with the grounds staying in the wire nut I believe that the easiest path to ground would still have been the gambrel touching the skinning hoist base connected to the pressure treated 4x6 sunk deep in the wet ground. It's a real oddball case, everything is to code as far as I can tell, but again I'm a novice electrician at best.

I don't like the push connectors first of all . Have gone behind other electricians using them on fluorescent lighting. When they put the lights back together they come loose. My opinion on them.
AS for the issue of neutral being hot vice versa. SOMEWHERE a recepticle or light fixture the wires are under the wrong post. Stink bugs and loose ground wires won't electrify the hoist. PLUS only time any power goes back on neutral is when the hoist is actually raising or lower Motor. Then don't know if it will be enough to sting. IF it's hot all the time it's a problem in the cord that has the controller or the windings in the motor...

But if you changed all these things and fixed it glad it did....

Removing the blackened stink bug and re-nutting the ground wires resolved the issue. The hots and neutrals were all wired correctly. The stink bug on the neutral terminal was touching the ground wire when the duplex was pushed back in, which created the issue. The juice finding ground in the 4x6 PT post is the crazy part. I'm sure other trappers on here have skinning machines on 4x6 posts in pole barns.

I doubt the bug had anything to do with it.
It was all likely due to poor grounding.