I wish I had read all this information from experienced elk hunters before my first elk hunt ever which was in the San Juans in Colorado near Pagosa Springs. Here is a summary of that hunt -
Showed up in not anywhere near good enough shape to tackle the high altitude and the mountains. Tried to hike a lot uphill the first 2 days before adjusting to the altitude and felt like I was going to die a few times from carrying too much gear, wearing too much clothing, and having altitude sickness. Was already dogged tired by the 3rd day of the hunt but started adjusting a little to the altitude and learned that drinking a ton of water and packing less weight was best way for me to combat the altitude sickness.
4th day I decided to walk down a road that was a little off the beaten path just over on the other side of a smallish mountain from where a bunch of guys were riding all over on 4 wheelers/ATVs. Didn't really expect to see anything with all the hunters tearing it up on the 4 wheelers on the other side of the mountain, but by sheer dang luck I ran into a herd of elk just below the road I was on in a meadow at the bottom of a semi deep and steep canyon. I shot the biggest cow I could get a decent/ clean shot at out of that herd...Then the real fun started.
Called up my brother who was also as inexperienced as myself at elk hunting to come help get the cow out. We spent at least 3 to 4 hours getting down to it and gutting the cow and getting it on a plastic sled a buddy let us borrow...Put it on the sled whole/ with no guts and tried dragging it out uphill with no snow on the ground. Learned real fast that plastic sled was about dang useless with no snow, it kept digging into the ground..Spent about 2 hours to go maybe 60 brutal yards...Gave up on that and took the elk off the sled. By then it was close to 1030 or 11 at night. Decided to skin the elk out and prop its chest cavity open with a stick and leave it where it lay overnight and come back the next day. It was down in the teens in temp so figured the meat would be fine. Got back to hotel at 1/130 ish AM feeling like I been beat all too hell by Mike Tyson. Woke again at 530 AM, got back out to where the elk was around 7 AM and ran into some other hunters that loaned us a wheel cart. We decided to quarter the elk out and bring it up in pieces out of the canyon on the wheelcart in 4 trips. Daylight revealed the least steepest route up out of that canyon I shot the elk in which was still steep as hell and covered with deadfalls and we had no chainsaw. We spent all dang morning dragging quarters of elk up about 30 to 40 brutal yards at a time constantly having to lift the cart up and over deadfalls over and over. Constantly stopping to catch our breathe and drink tons of water. It was about 6 to 700 yards up to the road where the truck was, but felt like it was 10 miles dragging those elk quarters on that wheel cart. We should have deboned it and used packs to carry the meat out, probably would have been much much easier, but neither of us ever thought of it being as inexperienced as we were.
Anyway, In my younger years I did a lot of manual labor as well as a lot of physical excercise for sports, but I have never felt as physically washed up as I felt after getting that elk out of that canyon. The only thing I could compare it to is maybe the first day of "two a days" football practice in the middle of summer in Texas or hauling hay sun up to sun down.. I still feel the pain from it sometimes in my bones. Im always ready to go again though every time I get a chance.
