Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

My cow received the same efforts & soon we were decorating a tree with the spoils of the day.



I gotta thank my boy for taking these action photos of a lot of this work, good job kid, you got some great pictures up there.



We then packed ourselves down the mountain back to base camp with CBF�s elk. We carried it out without packs, good thing we had nice strong cotton game bags. We balanced out the meat in 2 bags, we (me & CBF) each took a bag. I tied a stick to the ends of the bags so we could sling the bag over our shoulder & hold the stick under one arm pit, this allowed us to still sling our rifles over the other shoulder & it was fairly comfortable.

CBF ahead of me heading down the hill.



Down at base camp we joined Dusty & we all shared our stories of the day. We told our story & we learned from Dusty that he had quite a day as well. He was hunting our direction but was stopped short by a cow he had hit and was certain of the kill but the hillside it went down on, rolled down on actually was covered in the most awful wiry brown buck brush you�ve ever seen. Finding an elk in it would be like finding a goose or duck that went down in the cat tails. He did his best to find it which involved many repeated climbs from his shooting spot up to where he believed she should be laying, spent every bit of energy he had but had to postpone his efforts as the day was growing dark and he simply needed to recharge with some rest & a good meal.

Dusty�s efforts would continue the next day as we also would continue with our efforts to get our meat off the mountain & back into our camp freezer so we could cool it down.

Monday morning came Dusty continued his hunt & I went to visit a neighboring camp that had horses. This camp is a good group from Kansas, our 2 camps have shared laughs, beer, chili & campfires many times over the years. We�ve also helped each other out when the other was in a bind.

Well I was in a bind with all of that meat 5 miles from base camp & only myself & CBF to pack it out.

It turned out they needed a little help as well, they had hauled a trailer down into the valley & they were worried they couldn�t get it back out with their truck. Well I had truckzilla down there with chains on all 4 & hell, I woulda hauled there trailer out for them even if I didn�t need help myself. It was a good trade.

Plus I gave them a bottle of whisky just to help sweeten the deal a bit & really show my appreciation��. Well, that and I also had a lot of fun giving away my uncle Dusty�s bottle of whisky when he wasn�t around

On our way up to pack our elk off the mountain we had a close encounter with this small group of wapiti.



Up half way to our elk tree with our borrowed horse for the day. I brought my own panniers along (my dad�s) just in case and I was glad they were a big set.



Up at the meat tree we set out a hillside butcher shop. We laid out 2 game bags to work on so we could keep the meat clean, we had a skinning station & a deboning station. CBF would skin & I�d take the bones out. (I�ve never put 2 elk on a horse before so I figured the only way to pull this off in one trip was to get rid of the bones & me & CBF still carried what we could on our pack frames)



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Soon we had the quarters done & all that was left was the shoulders & the back straps/tenders (which were already bagged from the day before)

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