Instanton calculations in QCD are generically plagued by infrared divergencies associated with the integration over the instanton size ϱ. Here, we demonstrate explicitly that the typical inverse hard momentum scale Q −1 in deep-inelastic scattering provides a dynamical infrared cutoff for the size parameter ϱ. Hence, deep-inelastic scattering may be viewed as a distinguished process for studying manifestations of QCD instantons. For clarity, we restrict the explicit discussion to the simplest chirality-violating process, y * + g → q L + q R . We calculate the corresponding fixed-angle cross section as well as the contributions to the gluon structure functions, F 2g and F Lg , within standard instanton perturbation theory in leading semi-classical approximation. To this approximation, fixed-angle scattering processes at high Q 2 are reliably calculable. In the Bjorken limit, the considered instanton-induced process gives a scaling contribution to F 2g( x, Q 2) and the Callan-Gross relation holds.