Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Minimum number of young guys to pack out your elk?

Seriously though, I kind of want to hunt elk on horseback. Maybe not completely exclusively. When horseback riding in central Colorado, I often have bumped into elk far more regularly when travelling on foot. Also, just seems like it would be fun.

Only experience is 2 cows. Wife and I each 2 trips. In our 50s. Big bull may require another round trip

Have a good bud who just packed out a tatanka. Solo. On his back. Round trip was 8 miles. Took him 14 trips and he's a badass....

I'm not a badass anymore, so I cheat......

He's 54....grin...

Tatanka packing. As an old-timer once said, "now that's man's work."

Think I am just going to have the butcher come out with his kill truck and take care of my steer. No 14 trips for me! A big mulie is one thing, a bison is something in a different realm....

He's 54, 150 soaking wet and a badass.....

Took him only 2 1/2 days. Luckily it was cold...

The most badass guy I ever packed a load with was 145 soaking wet.

Sheep guide, smoked my ass. I told him "remind me to never pick a fight with a sheep guide."

Like momma said, if you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tuff.

Five middle aged guys, but it was a Roosevelt, four of them were studs.

Well.......
I packed out my Utah bull all by my lonesome.

My son and I killed our Colorado bulls a 100 yds and 3 seconds apart. I did notice by the time I got to the truck with my 1st load my 21 year old son was already back at the kill site strapping on another load. Doesn't seem that long ago I was hearing "Wait dad". "Slow down dad".............

In both cases it was relatively flat ground but some really thick azz timber. It's been a while since I have had to carry an elk on my back, but but at 64 years old it wasn't as bad as I feared.

I can't remember how to post a pic from the gallery so here's the link


https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/galleries/15828858/packing-elk

I have only shot bison from the rear tire of a jd7210, single pack trip. I would grumble a great deal if packing a whole bison out very far.
My niece shot her first elk last fall. We quartered and brought it out in 4 trips. She carried a lot of it.
She is maybe a buck and quarter with the pack and elk on.
Mile and a half in with a large ridge between kill and truck.
She was pretty thrilled.

Hell of a business model.

That is a badass.

All that just reaffirms my theory that the bigger a guy is and more muscle they have, the more weight they need to pack up and around in the mountains. Every time I hear folks recommending to newbie elk hunters to gain muscle (as opposed to just getting in better shape) I always think back to my days of hunting with University of Idaho football players. Great athletes they were, but I'll be damned if they could make it a mile up a ridge with only a relatively light pack on. Getting an elk out? They never even could get to the elk to shoot one.

I'm 6' 1" and 155 lbs. I love being a bad ass.

My experience with hunting with skinny underweight people is uniformly poor: slow going up, slower going down, and glacial with a load. Very limiting.

Huh....interesting. Thanks for that perspective but I have never been told that before, at least on a uniform basis.

I've seen a roughly even mix of skinny, mid sized and even some bigger dudes be able to run the mountains, but as a rule the bigger they are (not just gutted or fat, but also meatheads that can bench a fridge) the slower they have been. Some still make it because they're determined to, but are usually slower getting there. I've seen plenty of bean poles that can't make it either, but it is more mental on their part than physical, I think. I am sure exceptions exist on all levels.

I was talking to some movers about this once, when they were moving our furniture. An example of one, but they said basically that smaller wiry guys did better than big beefy guys, moving furniture.

They were small wiry guys and did some impressive stuff.

I think a lot of it has to do with how a guy trains and comes by the bulk. I see some big dudes in the gym that look like they could move mountains but I never see them lifting a lot of weight. Just a lot of reps to build bulk.

Then there are the normal-looking unassuming guys that load up the squat rack and do twice their weight with no problem.

My partner and I once brought out an elk 4 miles on a loggng road in a garden variety wheel barrow. Granted, it was mostly down hill. The few uphill spots we encountered weren't nearly as much fun as you'd expect. It sure beat back packing it.