Take it or leave it - Forest Reindeer Meat?

[AdonisReed]

Let's say you do really well during a hunt and you down 4 or more Forest Reindeer's, while marking all of their locations on the map as you go before you finally lose the herd.  They are a little spread out (maybe 40 - 75 or so onsite tiles away from each other).  It is noon when the hunt is over, every reindeer was brought down during late morning. You woke up early morning, so you should have plenty of energy as well.

In general (and I could be wrong, but I'm speaking from personal experience), skinning the hide off of one reindeer of decent size takes roughly an hour and yields a 10 lb pelt (a cub takes less time to skin, but produces a smaller pelt that may or may not be of the same value as a large one).  Butchering a reindeer on the other hand takes can take 3 hours or more, and is very labor intensive (can potentially leave you dead tired) and may only net you 100 cuts of meat or less.  You also get bones and antlers as well.  I'm playing vanilla, but I could see the bones and antlers being useful if you have mods that use them.

My question here would be, what do you prioritize getting done in this scenario?  Would the time of year change your priorities?  (As in, winter vrs summer)  Would the skills your character has influence your choice?  Lastly, is there an upper limit to the number of large game you would bring down in a day?

I figured I would ask this question here instead of the gameplay questions forum because it's more of a philosophical question, rather than a gameplay one.  Feel free to relocate this thread to the gameplay questions forum if that is more appropriate.

EDIT by Erkka: Okay, seems like AdonisReed was a spambot. For this post is a copy of a topic from 2018. After getting some replies the spambot came back to edit this post to insert some links to suspicious websites. Either this is real people with a lot of time to spam all the world, or then just a spambot algorithm more developed than they used to be.

[PALU]

I don't kill more than one at a time (obviously, successfully defending against a wolf pack, or a herd of reindeer getting themselves trapped in a trap line is a somewhat different case).
In general I kill, skin, haul, drop in cellar (return to get the rest of the meat if an elk), clean, tan, prepare meat (dry or smoke), tan, dry/smoke again if there's more to process, finish tanning (essentially takes a day for an elk hide), with sleeping in between as needed. For trapped animals I'd then proceed to the next one.
If I were to deal with multiple dead wolves (or, potentially a bear and her cub, which so far hasn't happened to me), I'd skin first and butcher afterwards, doing as much as I can before having to sleep, storing hides in the cellar. I'd prioritize tanning over meat processing.
Also note that you've got a lot more time in winter when meat basically doesn't degrade (I don't know to what extent carcass degradation is modeled, though, but given that you can sometimes find perfectly fine elk cadavers from ice accidents in autumns, I suspect it isn't a factor).

Another thing to consider is fatigue. I don't do skinning or tanning when having fatigue (sometimes I don't care if the skin preservation has already failed in a previous step), but wait to do that until the fatigue is gone (to get the best possible skin), and meat processing is a process that actually reduces fatigue, so I may well process a small batch of meat rather than just twiddle my thumbs.

[JP_Finn]

Is it freezing outside? If so, push the whole carcass in to a tree, to minimize scavengers getting to it. If you have a decent supply of alder/Rowan bark, you could tan the skins before butchering.
And if it’s the cold season, build a shelter at the kill site and dry the meat right there.

If it’s warm season, I’d likely skin all 4, butcher one, take to cellar. If any village nearby, butcher 1-3 more and trade the meat. Then hustle to homestead, possibly getting 1-2carcasses in cellar as is. Then clean and apply tanning agent on the hides.  Start smoking some of them meat. Butcher another carcass. If you have bear pipes, eat some when getting weary.