Yesterday my friends returned to the house with a roadkill deer that they’d already skinned. Being slightly into taking gory photos, I decided to photograph some of the process of butchering the dead creature. (As an aside, the omnivores pictured are mostly freegan. The animal wasn’t hunted. Most importantly, it wasn’t raised for slaughter. Its death is a sad thing, but not one that my friends will let go to waste.) Pictured above is my friend holding the heart. It gets a lot gorier.

This is the first thing I saw when I went to go pee. I believe they were washing it.

My friend brings it out into the backyard, onto the butchering block. What, your house in the middle of the city doesn’t have a butchering block?

After a fair amount of experimentation in the past, the house generally uses chipped stone tools for butchering, as actually much easier to use than steel. (Better combination of hacking, slicing, and sawing all in one tool, I believe.)

And here’s someone tearing open the deer’s ribcage by hand.

Pulling out the lungs…

The heart, exposed.

Tearing out the heart .

The insides, sans organs. Fucking gross.

The only way I can watch this sort of thing is by taking pictures, letting myself get absorbed in the photographic process. Even more detached than watching it on TV.

Here’s what it takes to deal with roadkill.

And voila, dinner!