Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Recovery of a whole elk?

I've seen a few in the back of trucks but never been anywhere near being able to put one in the truck whole.

I've seen guy's use a spool of rope and snatchblocks to pull one up to the road with a truck, but in most of the places I'm hunting I'd need a huge spool and impractical.

Has anyone tried a portable rope winch (capstan)? I'm thinking it would take a little while to winch one up to a road but it'd be at the truck in one trip.

Packing out pieces in big bear country is a nearvous prospect. Now theres a lot of wolves around I'm wondering how long until one of these packs turns on a guy packing meat. Dragging one out in one trip might be a lot quickeroverall.

Up on the Mogollon in Az, much of it is flat enough that a couple of guys moving logs and stuff, it was possible to maneuver a 4X4 and later years a quad to the animal or close enough to rope them out of small cuts.

Now it's pretty much illegal to go off road.

With a quad you have to get the head tied high on the back rack so it's just dragging the back half on the ground... and all the hair will be drug off that side, something to consider if you want the cape.

I've tried to drag an elk across the ground with my block and tackle, just to get it to the tree I want to hang and quarter in. An elk laying full flat on the ground is almost impossible to move like that... possibly if you had an electric wench and a battery.

It took 5 of us to move this elk 20 yards to a tree, my buddy is a lineman and used his pole climbing equipment to attache a block and tackle, we then hoisted it up and drove the truck under. It took us an hour of picking our way through downfalls to get the truck in a mile.

Anymore I cut'm up and pack'm out, much easier.

Exactly, my same buddy has roles of it. I once dented the side of my truck pulling an elk from way down a cut using muletape... the weight to the elk pulled me sideways into a tree.

Kent

I've used it for big pigs down in nasty holes, never on a whole elk.. But I know a spool of it and some carabiners can get a lot of chit done.

The Lewis chainsaw winch works well in getting elk out whole.

I wouldn't be without one, great for getting firewood also. Pulls a pretty good sized tree up hill if set up right.

Some day, I am going to hunt in an area that I could do that. So far that has not happened.

I've got a Simpson capstan winch and about 600 feet of 1/2" pulling rope and I've used it to get a couple elk out of holes to where we could handle them and a couple deer also. The Simpson comes with a cable that attaches to about any tree trunk/stump so you can move it along as you go up the hill. In the end, carrying the winch, gas, rope and then getting at least a couple guys from camp to help out was more work and time than just quartering it out and packing it out.
On the steepest hills I would still use the capstan winch, but anything else I pack.

Bob

We've used this receiver hitch crane for at least 15 years. I've loaded countless deer, elk, antelope and even a moose with it. We usually hunt in snowy conditions so it's easier to drag an animal close to the truck. We also do a lot of ranch hunting so even if you have to walk several miles to find the game it's possible to return later with a truck.

The whole crane breaks down into component pieces for transport. It originally came with cable loops, but my BIL (who is an excellent metalworker) replaced those with pulleys and added a circular Teflon collar at the base for ease of rotation.

That's my son with a 300 lb whitetail from 2006.

Only once in my life have we been able to take out a whole elk - last year. We found a herd in the snow on a hillside a few hundred yards off the road at dawn. We did a sneak through the sagebrush and got 2 cows. We were able to skid them down to the flat in the snow and get the truck right to them.

As far as dragging one, it's usually much easier to dice and backpack one than it is to drag. Dragging loses its novelty real fast.

Where I hunt in N. Idaho it is logging country. There are old or new skid roads on most every mountain around here. Usually with a 4-wheeler with a winch and a chainsaw you can get most elk out whole. I've never had to pack any of the 20 I have shot. I've even brought a few out with a John Deere Log skidder. And I know people who have brought em out with high lead Line Machines, I would really like to see that in person. A lot of people around here use chainsaw winches also. Not to say folks don't break em down and pack em also, I've just been fortunate.

In so. Idaho the government has closed most of those old skid roads to motor vehicles.

I've hunted with other folks that have shot elk where I participated in getting three of them them out whole. Every elk I've shot came out in pieces. With snow and mostly downhill, I halve them and drag 'em out. No snow and its quarters on a pack board.

I pulled one out whole last Year. Put him on the back of the quad and away we went. First time in a long time.

I pulled one out whole last Year. Put him on the back of the quad and away we went. First time in a long time.

Have never gotten one out in one piece. The first one we cut down the middle of the backbone and quartered it. The was the first and last time I hauled the spine, ribs or neck.

Since then the largest pieces have been hind leg with the hide still on. The filets and strap come out with the front legs or by themselves.

Shooting cows means I don't have to haul a head, either, although I usually do for CWD testing.

This guy was a small 6x6. By the time I got back to the truck my backside was so bloody I had to strip to my skivvies to drive back to camp.

I hunt a private ranch that has pretty much the normal distribution of two-tracks and jeep trails. Most of my hunting partners simply shoot elk within sight of one of these trails and we haul them up into the back of the "elk wagon" (an old 1990s era GMC pickup) with a winch mounted on the headache rack. We started out using a 4x8 sheet of plywood for a loading ramp, but have now graduated to a folding ATV ramp with aluminum panels over the the cross bars. Our first winch was a 2,000-lb Warn, but we burned it up several years ago trying to load a very big-bodied bull that I was fortunate enough to shoot. We now have a 5,000-lb winch that never really has to breathe hard.

Occasionally, an elk will travel a ways before it dies. When that happens, we tie the head up on the rear rack of an ATV and drag it to the nearest road. The ranch is on the north slope of the Flat Tops and has dense ground cover, so they slide along pretty good and even long drags don't remove much hair from the carcass. When this happens, it is usually necessary to use a chain saw to cut some deadfall in order to get the ATV to the carcass. (This is why my partners call me "Chain Saw": I don't confine my hunting to areas close to the trails and two-tracks, and we have had to resort to the chain saw/ATV scenario more often than they like.)

A few years ago, we rigged a couple of Polaris Rangers with 2,000 lb winches on the roll cages, and I have used one to drag a big bull elk to the nearest point where we could reach it with the elk wagon. Last year, however, one of my buddies and his son-in-law actually managed to get a mature bull entirely up in the bed of one of these. It looked a little silly (and top heavy) to me, but they got it all the way back down the mountain with no mishaps.

We have a very good processor down in town and we have found that we end up with a lot more meat letting our processor work over the carcass, so (as the kids say) that's the way that we roll.

Most of the Federal ground is closed down up here except for a few main roads. But the timber companies still for the most part are pretty good about public use on their lands. There are several million acres of timber company ground up here.

I've gotten a few out whole. I've actually been able to drive right up next to a four of them that died out in the sage flats.

The easiest one died on the uphill side of an old logging road that was cut into the side of the hill. I drove the truck up next to it and rolled it onto the tailgate. Didn't even have to pick it up.

In addition to those, there are several that died within a quarter mile of a road and we were able to pull them up to the truck with chainsaw winch.

But those days are over. About eight or ten years ago the elk changed their migration patterns in response to the drought. I've had to start backpacking in to get them and that means cutting them up and hauling them out in pieces.

KC

Mule tape is the answer, 1/2 mile on one roll...