Accepting that it is now too late to do anything with yesterday's deer as the contamination will have spread despite the cold weather it is a shame. A badly gut shot deer can not easily enter the commercial food chain but there is no reason not to use a significant proportion of it. The DSCertification process was designed around the European Game Meat regulations which are now nearly twenty years old. Prior to that gut shot deer were routinely swabbed out with sphagnum at the time of the gralloch, sphagnum having mildly antiseptic qualities. That, at the time, was considered sufficient with a good and thorough wash down in the larder.
The practice of using water to wash out the inside of a carcass was widely condemned as it tends to spread the contamination if not done very thoroughly. Disposable paper towels were preferred as being less likely to spread bacterial infection - true, BUT if you are to use future carcasses for your own consumption, which I would encourage, then, as I used to teach folk at the time, use NO water or LOTS of water - nothing in between and that washing out of the interior of the carcass, although it will discolour the meat compared to a perfectly clean dry carcass, it need not be greatly discoloured IF the interior of the carcass is wiped with a solution of Milton (or other food safe disinfectant) and the interior is also then dried (with disposable paper towel) before being hung conventionally. It is also sensible to cut out any areas of visible remaining contamination and to cut the carcass so that blood, water and contamination can drain without "sitting in a pocket" anywhere on the carcass. This frequently means the removal of most of the belly flaps and conceivably some of the brisket area. It will never hang for as long as a perfect carcass without deterioration but the meat will be usable in large measure.
Just as we went from wooden butcher's blocks to plastic, before it was discovered that bacteria tended to live longer in cracks and score marks on plastic boards than on a properly scrubbed wooden block so I believe one can salvage, perfectly safely, a significant proportion of the meat from a gut content contaminated carcass if common sense and care is taken to remove the bulk of the contamination and to kill/neutralise the remaining bacteria. Remember there are many membranes within a carcass which will assist in preventing the spread of bacteria and continue fulfilling that function so long as they are undamaged.
Yes - you will get a lot less from a damaged/contaminated carcass. No - you should not sell it. But you can safely use much of it with the application of common sense, care and a little chemical help. Yes - you will have to butcher sooner than with a clean carcass and I would recommend doing so as soon as it has come out of rigor mortis [carcasses butchered whilst in rigor will invariably be tough]. But you can use a damaged carcass this way, or by some field butchery, as advocated above in a number of posts; this is not the definitively correct way - like so many things in stalking it is a way; this happens to reduce waste and making usable meat from that which we all try to avoid - wasting life.
