Great comment by LeifCarrotson pretty much explains it. I gutted and skinned it, removing each quarter, and the meat along the back, ribs, and neck. That took basically all day. I use a knife with a replaceable blade. The guts are held in by connective tissue near the spine. If the belly faces downhill when you open it, gravity starts to pull them out. I removed the lungs to get room to work (just indiscriminately slicing), and then reached up in the neck as high as possible, and cut the trachea and esophagus. Then I used a hatchet to cut through the pelvic bone, a sharp knife to basically excise the anus, and cut any remaining connective tissue from behind. Eventually, gravity did the rest.

The big goal is to not puncture intestines, as they are gross and contain bacteria that will spoil the meat.

To skin it, I started at a back leg, just making a cut, pulling the skin up, and seeing it's connected to muscle by very soft fat. You can pull on the skin, slice the fat, and the animal basically unwraps. You want to keep hair off the meat because again, bacteria.

Front quarters are easy as there's no bone joint. They pop off quckly. Rear are harder, you need to find and cut the ligament(?) that holds the leg in the hip.

Then, I put about half the elk on a children's sled, and pulled it (mercifully downhill or level) about 1.5 miles. Then, I went and got the other half. She was a cow, so no antlers to carry.

Then, I hung all the meat in a frienda garage for about 2 days, took it home in several coolers, and fought off my dog while every evening for 4 evenings, I separated the muscle groups, and/or chunked meat to grind (lower quality meat gets turned into hamburger or sausage), vacuum sealed eveything, and froze it.

I'm originally from Rhode Island, and this is only my third animal (first was a deer, then an antelope) so it was pretty overwhelming.