Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting never hunted elk,need lil advice

I can see trees in the background. Plus, if you can drive to it, N/A.

You sure couldn't drive to that one, even with an ATV. It was close to a 1/4 mile to the nearest usable tree. He got sliced, diced, and backpacked.

So, what did you do with the meat you left behind, while you were packing loads out? If the pack out is not too far or you have help, it can be done the same day and it's not an issue. If it's far and you're solo, then it can be a problem, which was the point of my comment: Know what you're going to do with the meat and how you're going to handle it before it hits the ground. If you have to leave it all day or overnight, it's best to hang it.

We packed it to a shady, brushy area about 1/4 mile away to keep it as cool as possible. We put sagebrush under it to keep it off the ground. In the shade it kept fine. Luckily, it wasn't a hot day. There were 3 of us and we got it all out the same day.

Exactly. You guys had a plan and moved it to the shade, even though you got it out in a day. I hunted near some guys last year who had no plan. Or, their plan was to "call an outfitter with horses" if they knocked one down. They didn't even know who to call. It took over a day and a half for the outfitter to get there. And he charged $300.

2 years ago I got a cow high up on a mountainside. She slid into some really nasty brush where I couldn't budge her by myself. I had to be a lumberjack for a while to cut the brush just be able to dress & skin her. It was getting dark before I got her done. It was raining & about 35F so cooling wasn't a problem. I skinned the quarters and left her whole overnight. I have llamas now so getting her out the next day was fairly easy once I got her boned out.
If I'd shot her there in the morning of a hot day, it would have been very different as the brush offered no shade at all besides being on a south slope. I'd have had my hands full if that had been the case.

I have killed them in the willow brush and the alder brush and it took a few hours to clean out enough to take care of them, but this was the worse one. Luckily I wasn't too far from camp as I had to go back and get a buck saw to cut some blow down and then cut some trees. Then we had to pack it on our backs about 100 yards t get to the mules and very little of that was on the ground.

It was the last day of the season and every one had left camp except my brother and I.

That looks kinda like a moose my partner got a doz years ago. It did a DRT flat on its belly between 2 waist high rocks, wedged in tight. He had to do it by boning from the top down. His son was with him but there wasn't room for 2 men to work on it. They had to work in shifts. It took them 5 or 6 hrs to get the meat off.

To the OP , A good pair of Comfortable supportive boots, good usable binos, and a way to carry drinking water are first requirements. Without these the rest does not matter. Next is to spent time once you get there and learn the elk's movements. If a pressured area, look for the heavy cover areas that the locals will not hunt. Next learn what they do when weather changes.... Here the colder and wetter(or snower) the lower , warm dry weather the higher. If the pressure gets too much they will go WAY high or Way low to get away from the hunters. The low is private land so once they go there they stay. I promised to guide a friend with a pacemaker this year..... I am way more worried about his heart then where the elk will be (thankfully he draw what is considered a Gravy tag!!!!!)..... health and fitness are a paramount... Elk are awesome to hunt, but they are not anything like sitting in a stand, they require more from the hunter then most other western game.....

3o+ years of elk hunting and I still do that. The fun stops when you pull the trigger.

"Horrifying?" That's why you go hunting, right?

I'd go with daunting.

'Daunting' is 1/4 mile from a road uphill. 'Horrifying' is 3+ miles from a road, with much up and down in-between, and a blizzard has just set in.

I've seen some of each, and a tiny bit of 'Awesome', which is 200 yards uphill from your rig, which you just stepped out of to take the shot. Some I know have done 'Unbelievabe', which is taking the shot, and then backing the rig up to the carcass.

I haven't learned enough from my experiences elk hunting to start giving advice, other than that the elk are where you find them, and you better have a plan for getting them out as you hunt. And whatever shape you're in, the task at hand when elk hunting will strain it.

I guess we just have different definitions of horrifying.

Yes, I'm sure we do.

Just trying to keep it in perspective for the OP. If he had the same physical infirmities as you do, he'd probably have mentioned that.

Some seem to like to make it more difficult than it needs to be.

If you go in thinking it is going to suck getting it out, you'll never be disappointed.

Horrifying is shooting a bull 200 feet below a canyon rim with a lung shot and he runs to the bottom - 1,400 verticle feet down and dies just on the other side of the river.

It took every bit of ethics I had to not consider that one a "miss". Especially after I found him, dressed him after dark and hiked out of the canyon in the middle of the night.

�Horrifying� wasn�t my choice of wording but it fit pretty well, especially for the first few seconds after reaching a downed elk when my thoughts invariably run along the lines of �Damn, that�s a big animal � how am I going to get it to the truck without killing myself?�. Once the knives come out �daunting� is a better choice.

�Horrifying� is realizing you and your buddy have three elk down on a mountain top and the truck is 3 miles away as the crow flies according to your map. BTDT, lesson learned. Thank goodness temps were below freezing at night and around freezing during the day. We packed the quarters down to some trees to hang them, and deboned everything before packing it out. It still took us 3 additional days to get everything back to the truck.

In any case, the fun stops when you pull the trigger. The two biggest bulls I�ve ever had my scope on, both about 100 yards out, got walking papers. One was because my buddy had his first elk down and I figured we had enough to do. The second was near last light on the last day of the hunt and I simply decided not to ruin an otherwise perfectly good hunt with a lot of hard work. One cow I�ll never forget got walking papers, too. She was maybe 15 yards away. My truck was visible a mile away and 1000 feet down but the pack would have been though an area of horrendously tangled downfall. I dropped the rifle from my shoulder, flipped the safety back on and gave her a shout, sending her on her way. I took the long way back to the truck, returned to camp and packed up, then headed home empty-handed. There have been others, too. Sometimes just having had the opportunity is enough.

Horrifying to me means being mauled by a bear or breaking my leg alone, in the winter, as it's getting dark, many miles from help.

Me and my buddy having three elk down on a mountain top 3 miles from the truck, I'd call.....boneheaded.

I can't be the only one that actually enjoys packing elk out. One the toughest most rewarding things to do