the boned-out meat from my Shiras moose was exactly 4 lbs more than the last bull elk. ...... Don't underestimate the size of a fully mature bull elk. They are stocky, heavy animals with very big bones. FWIW, Dutch.
I can back what Dutch is saying here. I shot a rather large Shiras bull in 96. He was large enough to make the B&C book at 172. It was the biggest critter I had ever delt with for sure.......at the time. Took 2 of us a good 3 hours to get him ready to pack out on horses. Mainly due to the tight trees he went down in. We ran out of daylight so I put the quarters in the air laying on some pinebroughs. We came the next day to pack out nice and cool meat. All four quarters (not just legs) fit into our meatpack panyards without a problem. All I know is it took every bit of mustard I had to lift the quarters onto the horses to slide them down and in.
2 years later, My Dad shot a 6x6 Elk that was really old, he was far into regresing. His teeth were worn to nearly nothing left. His head was bigger then my moose's and that wasnt all. We quarterd him up in exactly the same fashion and using the same panyards (these are meat packing panyards not box panyards) we did on the moose, the quarters would not fit. We ended up trimming 3 ribs off of the front quarters and six inches of the mid section off the rear quarters to get them to fit. The Elk was significantly larger. I picked up the one rear quarter to place on the horse. After that I picked up my brother who goes 220 and I can tell you without a doubt that bulls hind quarter was heavier than him. I am 6'3 250 and pretty stout, I have zero desire to ever lift an Elk of that magnitude onto a horse again. After being around well over 100 dead Elk over the years, I can tell you this bull was freakishly big and not the norm but I can tell you too, he isnt alone in his size. When gooing for Elk you better be prepaired to work and work hard to get them out, you never know what your going to walk up on.
