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

You need about 40k feet.

That’s a New Year’s Day Llama. 😂 lmfao.

To be clear, this guy (me) would have happily used a winch if I could have gotten one to the rather unpleasant drainage this bull came out of on the Selway…




This is my boy doing the same a month later. He would have sold off his little sister to a shoe-factory in Indonesia for a winch I assure you...





We aren't doing it this way because of some "moral" issue. I'll take a dead elk any way I can get one. I'm just not a good enough hunter to get one in a more friendly arena so they come out in pieces, and usually several miles from where we started our day afoot.

Of course the payoff doesn't suck and the pain has a way of fading when things work out....

Dave, our road systems are a lot closer together than that selway country. Grin

Amen brother. Any way I can get them home is cool with me. Helo support wouldn’t stink at all!

Good stuff right there!...Yep, rope, reels and winches are just another part of our gear. Nothing more to it. Your boy get’s his “elk on” for sure. Nice bull!
You do look all kinds of pissed in your selfie. Wonder why? Maybe cuz packing, though a huge part of hunting, can have major suckage 😄😎

You’re assessment is spot-on across the board.

You aren't always wrong.

Mule Tape pulls are handy at that in between zone of packing quarters and killed it on the 2 track.





Cross river recovery.

A few years ago, 3 hunters in the WA Cascades went down in some hell hole and shot a huge bull. While dressing it out, 1 of the hunters died from a heart attack. It took a rescue team 3 days to pack his body out of there. Can you imagine what it would take to pack out a 1000lb bull? (granted, they probably didn't bone out the hunter).

In all fairness, that's a lot different walking country compared to the PNW clearcuts. They are straight up miserable.

The Selway is every bit as steep (and in many places, as thick) as anyplace I have been in the PNW, including the Olympic Peninsula and the Oregon Cascades.

That wilderness area is no joke.

Techniques for getting elk out vary a lot regionally...nothing wrong with any way as long as it is legal, but I almost think I would rather pack quarters than drag a mile of rope through brush. That sounds like a nightmare to me, but I do like the idea of getting elk out whole and not having so much red crust to deal with.

Different strokes and all.

I've never been anywhere as miserable as a coastal oregon, Washington, or pow clear cut, nowhere. ...... That's why I gotta laugh when (blacktail) hunters from Jackson \joshophine county Oregon, klickitat county Washington or anywhere in California say they're hunting blacktails..... All due respect Ted I've hunted the selway and lochsa....

Fact....

Self righteous? I was asking a serious question. Anyone have three miles of rope? How about seven?

Fred.... learn me on this killing elk by the road. I'm getting real tired of cutting the turds up and packing them out on my back.

It's all good dude. I have hunted both the Cascades and the Selway/Lochsa myself. I think they're on par with each other. Both were tougher or equal to hunt (terrain wise) than most all places I have hunted in Alaska.

Never hunted Cali blacktails but the country I have seen them in is pretty mild compared to their habitat further north...

Selway is a stupid Steep sumbitch for sure, just not the devils club, maple, tag worst of briars like we have.. Wish there were some in the selway like the 80's and early 90's....

Like has been stated earlier the road system in the coast of wa and or adds much more accessible, Than some of the areas east. That said I kill when and where the opportunity occurs. Pack fram never sits in the rafters. 😉

You guys have devilsclubs In Idaho?

yall fellers are a hole bunch tuffer than this flat lander my hat is off to you

Devil's club is appropriately named, for sure. It adds another level of miserableness, and I sure am glad it doesn't grow far from the coast. In that sense, I'll agree the Selway doesn't compare.

I grew up hunting the Selway, riding in from the Montana side into Idaho. I've seen mules loose their footing, fall off the trail and start tumbling, never to be seen again. Steep defines many of the drainages and once you're off the trail, it's sometimes not safe even on foot. How critters live on those slopes is beyond me.

That's the attitude I like to hear!


No to the Devil's club in Idaho...at least I have never seen it. Lots of spiny rose bushes and the like, but nothing like Devil's club.