I was able to get the front drive shaft failry easy and noticed the yoke on transfer case side is bad. I also noticed that on both couplings, the was a nut holding the couplings to the front differential and one holding the coupling for the transfer case.

Would it hurt to leave this shaft off until it is repaired?

 

Do a search. There are lots of opinions.

 

Yes you can, but you need to fix the problem.