Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Winching out Elk setup...

Asking about the best way to set up my truck with a in/out steel drum holding 3/4” non-stretch rope for ripping elk out.

Curious on drum size to rope amount. I would want a minimum 3k feet...More? Drum would ride in the 6’-5” bed of a Tundra.

Brackets would need to be fabricated probably. I would want to be able to remove drum and hardware at the end of the season.

Ideas on best way to set a stop or brake on the drum wheel for pulling. Then winding up slack line, crank handle I imagine.

Off season project..,. 😎

Northern Tool has a capstan winch" Marine Tugger" about $700. 1500 lb pull rating , 12 volt. if you know how to coil rope this could do the job. Used a capstan winch to move scenery in the theater for years.

Thanks...I run a Capstan right now...It works good, but it’s a slow way to move an elk. Looking to upgrade to a bed reel set up. 😎

Also have seen some pig hunters that built drum winches that used 2500 lb Polyester Pull Tape which can be bought spooled up in 10,000 ft wooden reels. Easier to handle than that much rope.

Let me start with this...I am NOT judging your approach. As long as it's legal, have at it brother.

I have to ask though...have you had much success road-hunting in the past? I'm sincerely asking because in Idaho at least, I can only remember maybe a single elk in the last 25 years I've taken that I could even get a full-size vehicle remotely close to it.

I'd LOVE to be able to winch an elk out of course, but the only place I seem to be able to find elk are in remote locations that require a great degree of suffering and sweat to remove.

Private land maybe? I'm slumming it on NF lands myself, so that could certainly explain it.


I'm mostly just genuinely curious as to whether or not you've been able to have some success with this approach in the past, as I'm getting well on the North side of 40 and my days of doing it my way are certainly numbered.

Dave

3000 feet isn’t really that close to the road. Mule tape and 4 wheelers in tandem pulled a couple out from over half a mile. If you haven’t seen this stuff, you would be impressed...

That’s pretty funny....You haven’t read much or seen what and how I hunt. I know you’re question is legit... It just made me laugh....Stringing a 1/2 mile or more of rope into some of the steepest, thickest schit you’ll ever hate yourself for killing an elk in, is a far cry from road hunting...😎

Get yourself a Chevy Avalanche and ass-shoot a bear, for starters.

We don't hunt off of fourwheelers but use ours to retrieve deer and elk. Sometimes 20 ft tow straps and two fourwheelers are the trick in steep or slick terrain. I keep 2 - 20 ft straps on my fourwheeler all the time. We also have a 4 ft wide piece of old conveyor belt with fittings for a drag setup that works well for long pulls. I've used that drag sled to move a bull over 2 miles with a fourwheeler. The capstan idea sounds good for some situations, too. Happy Trails

Just this past elk season, we saw a system that some folks were using. They used the polyester “pull tape” on a plastic water hose reel. It could easily be moved ( not bolted to vehicle) to various trucks or 4-wheelers. The reel merely held the tape. He would spool-off down to the elk, tie-off to the 4-wheeler hitch, and pull. If he ran out of driving room, he would back up to his original start point, while winding-up the tape that he had slack. He would repeat the process, until the elk was retrieved. If, a direction change was neede to make the pull, he would run the tape thru a “snatch-block” to facilitate the change of direction. He had recovered several elk for his group, as well as helped other hunters retrieve!

We will have this system next year! memtb

Why not just cut the darn thing up and leave all the junk in the woods? I never have, nor would I, take a whole elk home. It is a lot easier to load quarters, or boned-out meat, than the complete carcass.

As I read it, he was looking for retrieval strap, not knives for cutting it up.

We pulled this bull out in one piece using Mule Tape and 4 wheelers by staying on the road and pulling the tape around the hitch of the other 4 wheeler. A 1000 yards is over half a mile...

So I am flying a trip with a copilot who lives in a western state. He says " You are a mechanical engineer aren't you?" I say yes what do you need? He goes on to tell me about elk hunting at the bottom of a steep canyon. They use a winch to pull out the carcass to avoid horses but it does not hold enough cable. I design a cable and winch system Hercules enough to pull an aircraft carrier into it's berth from mid Atlantic Ocean. Out of appreciation he invites me hunting. First retrieve is far enough back that we communicate to the winch operator by means other than yelling or hand signals. Initial pull is going so well we leave the carcass to scurry up the slope to get a cold one waiting at the top. About halfway up we hear this commotion behind us that includes snapping lodge pole pines. Just as we turn around this elk carcass goes flying by us at a very high rate of speed. We get it all sorted out at the top. His Dad is dismayed by the elk hamburger that has not seen a grinder yet. I console him by saying I guess that is why they put arresting gear engines on the carrier. I also tell him look at the bright side - no grinder to clean. The rest of my career when I ran into him on the line we would just burst into laughter. Be sure and account for stretch in your system.

Very helpful, I just ordered mine.

Thanks for posting!

David

Taking out an elk, even in “small” pieces, can be a challenge up a steep grade, with a foot of snow on the ground. If there’s a two-track road available......I consider it “gift from God”! memtb

1500lb mule tape doesn't work on huge moose. I learned that the hard way. We had to double it up. It still broke twice. Then the 2500lb towing strap we were using broke. It was a big moose.

Do you take them to a processor whole?

Fred’s high lead elk retrieval!! Haha

There were no engineers involved in ^^^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^^.