Welcome Trekker308, I have some experience with hunting mule deer in Utah and within my tale of a hunt, you might be able to form your own better answer to your questions.
The afternoon before opening day, I had spotted the nice looking basin on Public about 3 miles south of the blacktop road in NW Utah. Having both a valid buck tag and a need to kill some days before the Colorado opener, i parked, got up way early, and was near to the top, in a nice vantage spot, as daylight was just starting to show itself. Within 5 to 10 minutes, all hell broke out with deer running everywhere and not kidding, seemed 15 or 20 guys were emptying there firearms shooting at the running does and the few bucks that like me, had picked the wrong place to be on that particular morning. I had ducked for the rocks because of the flying bullets by me but when the shooting finally stopped, i hauled back around over the ridge i came up and down back to my rig.
The part that might help you out is that i then ran into a father and three sons who were dragging a buck back to the same trailhead that i had spent the night in my camper rig. Proud as can be they were happy to show me the buck "We" had gotten. It was a small forky about 120 pounds i'd guess but it had at least 6 or 7 shots entering or exiting just all over that poor critter. The deer was literally blown to bits and a bag of jelly yet they were happy as can be with their as yet ungutted buck. What may have been left after trimming off the damaged meat, might have come close to filling a good sized shoe box.
Last year on my antelope and muley hunt, we nice enough had almost no waste, ground it all but the very best of both, and i brought it to my freezer cold stacked in two regular medium sized ice chests nothing fancy about them. The guys i hunt with that are Very good shots and hunt out of the way places, they all seem to have the bigger ice chests than what might be needed. Hope that helps!
