Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Elk left overnight?

Buddy hit an elk last night at last night and ran out of light trying to find it. He Called me and ask to help find/retrieve. We will head up to look for it this morning. I wondered if meat will be any good? It was in 20s last night. Any thoughts.

Good morning Esox357, worst feeling in the world is not finding an animal you hit.

Is that 20 F or 20 C? If you are talking Fahrenheit, that should be ok IMO. If it was gut shot and the intestines are involved, I would only take the quarters, backstraps and neck meat and stay away from opening up the cavity.

I would definitely process it the "Gutless Method" in the bush and not even open up the cavity.

Good luck in finding the elk!

Thanks, its reassuring for him. Hope we find it and are able to salvage as much as possible. Its his 1st elk. If i didnt work yesterday, I would have gone with him.

It's already started to rot, if you find it and open it up it will be warm inside. Get the meat off the bone immediately, that will stop any further rotting. You will just have to cook some up and see if it's eatable.

I guess I don't get someone shooting an animal in the evening and not prepared to spend the night tracking, finding and field dressing.

Those guys on TV hunting shows that say they will leave an animal overnight and it's fine the next morning are full of chit.

Kent

Lanterns, flashlights, flagging tape. Hard to run out of light if you are prepared. Sorry to sound so harsh, but it is what it is.
Hope ya'll find it. If you do, get it dressed as soon as possible and de-boned. Your nose will tell you a lot.

The neck don't take long to start spoiling..... use your nose

Elk and Moose are very thick. The only way you can get the heat out and keep it from Bone Sour, to ensure the meat doesn't spoil in the field overnight, is to open the cavity up and remove the guts. The thickness of the quarters will hold that heat in, and that's why you have to hold the hinds apart with a small limb after you field dress if you're planning to leave it out overnight to retrieve the next day.


https://www.petersenshunting.com/editorial/avoiding-the-dreaded-bone-sour/272500



https://extension.psu.edu/proper-field-dressing-and-handling-of-wild-game-and-fish

See the 40*-140* above heat range where bacteria grows? How long do you think that closed body cavity of a thick elk will hold the temp in that range?

The neck meat spoils the soonest.

At twenty degrees it should be fine. Use your nose as others have said

Neverkilledanelk91... Pure Gold!

COLD SHORTENING Believe it or not, cooling it too fast will make the meat tougher. this link is a good explanation. In the morning, you'll want to get the hide off ASAP but the meat should be fine at that temperature. Instant cooling is often overdone and we don't have the option of controlled cooling in the field. The current practice of gutless dressing and boning while it's still hot has sent many hunters home with their steaks so tough that they have to be ground to be edible. Letting the corpse go into rigor BEFORE boning will give you more tender meat. Letting it come out of rigor before boning will make it more tender yet. I learned this the hard way with several elk and a moose. My game's been much more tender since I quit gutless dressing and let them cool slowly before boning.

Gutting will help cool it but skinning it will cool it MUCH faster. If you look at the amount of meat in contact with the guts compared to the meat in contact with the skin, it's tiny. The best insulation on an animal is on the neck. Even at 20F, you'll find the neck meat still warm the next morning if it's not skinned. Just overnight won't spoil it at that temperature but you'll need to get it skinned right away in the morning.

It should be fine. You might have a little meat loss next to the bone, but get it skinned, get the quarters off and get the bones out.

Good luck.

Ignore this mentally sick poster, rockinbbar, while he displays his extreme mental sickness and cyber stalks me with his pathological lying.

He's following my posting history to cyber stalk me, and made his post above only 7 minutes after mine.

You'll notice he offered nothing on the topic, like all mentally sick cyber stalkers feeding their narcissism.

I have had to leave a few elk out overnight in temps warmer than that and they generally have been the best eating elk I have had, assuming I found it early in the day and got to work on it. If you find it at noon and it died in a sunny spot then that is a different situation.

I really think the body heat slowly leaving the body overnight helps break down the collagen better than hanging quarters for a week at 35F.

As for posters saying to keep after it….holy hell. A liver or gut shot critter doesn’t need to be pushed. All you’ll do is push it into a hellhole or onto private especially if you jump them at night. Letting it bed down and not pushing it is almost always the best option.

Overnight, even in cold weather, is long enough to lose meat in the neck and top of the shoulders. Their hide is thick and there is a lot of meat mass that holds heat.

Regardless of the temperature, overnight will still probably sour the neck and shoulders…

Agree.

Also, might miss a good opportunity for a coup de grace in the dark.

Some years ago I shot a cow near dark. I found her ok but she'd rolled down into a real mess of rocks and brush. I wasn't able to do any more than open the gut and cut some hide off the quarters. I couldn't get to the neck at all. It was in the mid-30's that night and raining a bit. The next morning I came back with help (and my llamas). We cut 6 or 8 quakies to get her pulled around and get at her. All the meat was fine, including the neck. It was still quite warm but no spoilage. It was very good meat. She'd cooled slowly and that's what makes the most tender meat.

I once hit a spike bull in CO a little far back with a muzzleloader (this was before the 4 pt rule) and didn't find him until the next morning. As others have advised I used the gutless method and didn't open the chest cavity until I had all the meat off the carcass and then went in for the tenderloins. A 54 caliber buffalo bullet weighing 435 grs went through the tenderloins and they weren't salvageable and that was all I lost on that bull.

Care to share the details of the shot? Cartridge, range, etc?

That was my point about "especially at night", but I didn't express it very well.

Who said it was gut shot? No details of shot, how much blood, color of blood , where he thinks he hit it, how the animal reacted to the shot. Awful easy to just say "Just ran out of light." Maybe I didn't express myself very well either.