I have had moose trail me. Mostly cows.
The best one ... At daylight I came almost half a mle down a long boggy meadow, got up in my birch tree stand on the point of the ridge overlooking said meadow.
A while later a cow came out and hit my trail and stopped . She stood there for a couple minutes, then dropped her nose down to the game trail and tracked me right down, standing there 15 feet under the tree stand with a puzzled look on her face.
The double tine bull that I killed had come to the stand I was calling from earlier, and had left to take a dump a couple hundred yards away. When I rounded the spruce tree on my return, he had his nose buried in my trail out from the tree-stand.
I wouldn't leave a deer in the field. At the very least it would be field dressed, cut in half and hanging in a tree. If I couldn't hang it I'd bone it and pack it out since I always have a packframe with me. More than once I've come out of the woods long after dark by flashlight with a loaded packframe. Coyotes are welcome to the gutpile, skin and bones
You ain't gonna do that with an elk or moose- not in one load anyway. I've done it with caribou, but those are generally 100# plus pack-outs, and I've oldened (not smartened) beyond that! Thank God!
