We went with electric hoists that are mounted in a cleaning station with a water source and drain. Surprisingly, I'd bet we use the hoists more for other things than deer. They are pretty handy for loading and unloading things into truck or UTV beds. The electric option is nice if you are ever alone and need an extra hand.
We finally did too. After grunting your deer up on the buck pole the hard way for 2 or 3 decades, everyone should treat themselves to an electric hoist for their buck poles.
We gradually moved from an open air buck pole to hanging them in the wood shed....but we still had to grunt them up...
So we eventually bought an electric hoist to do the grunt work. I framed in a wall on one end of the barn lean-to. It may seem like a little overkill but that wall faces South and it can get pretty warm next to the wall so I decided to just frame in the wall to support the beam for the buck pole and then insulate it to keep it cool. As mentioned by @Hoytventrix above. One person can easily hang his/her own deer with the electric hoist.
A welder buddy of mine fabbed up a steel bracket to hang one end of a 4"X6" beam and the hoist onto a joist and the other end of the beam was supported by the framed wall. I attached a 10' long strut channel to the beam with 4" X 5/16" lag bolts and washers about every foot or so...
No problem at all holding big bears or several deer...
Everything we need is kept right there by the buck pole - gambrel hangers, scales, jaw bone extractor, chains/ropes.
Every deer we tag - bucks and does is weighed before we hang it...
We always hang them from the front end loader or snow plow to drip dry for a while before hanging...
We also age every deer by the tooth replacement and wear method when we hang them. Later, I will take either the head or jaw bone to the local DNR field office and compare age estimates with the biologists there...
All of that data plus the date, time, location of kill, antler points, antler spread, etc is entered into our camp log book for future reference.
While you can't see it too well here, we found out that if we place a plastic "Jet Sled" under the deer when we hang it, clean up is pretty easy afterwards.
