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What was your most difficult big game recovery effort? Stories please...pics if you have them.

My most difficult was a Ontario Moose recovery. My wife's boss owned a lake cabin south of Ignace, Ont. and my brother-in-law and I used it as a base camp for several years. Access to the cabin was with a runabout boat and we towed a 17' canoe.

In 1971 we paddled the canoe for about 4 hours into some backwaters and setup a tent camp.



Couple of days into the hunt we beached the canoe on the big lake and walked inland to hunt a series of small lakes. Late in the afternoon we stalked to within 125 yards of a bull and two cows. I was first up to bat and put a 165gr NPT into the boiler room of the bull with my pre-64 M70 30-06. He made a humped-up lurch into the lake and died about 50 yards out.

Moose is at 4:00 from the the branch-less tree that is left of center in the picture.


We built a fire on shore and stripped down to underwear, swam out to the bull and pulled and shoved him back to shore. Quartered him up and packed him out to the canoe on the big lake.



Back at the cabin - rack and M70



An added bonus was over the course of three days we killed two black bear off the guts and carcass.

moose for sure. alone. uphill about 3/4 mile.



I *think* I've gotten smarter since then, as the last two moose have been pretty easy, comparatively speaking, but I'm sure it'll happen to me again someday!

One of my hunting friends had to do exactly the same thing, and in water that was starting to freeze. Hey -- if I had shot it, he would have made me swim for it!)

Anyway, we have a lot of small lakes were I hunt so a moose that is still mobile can often get into the water and swim away from shore before expiring. Moose are evidently vengeful critters who like to take revenge on those who kill them.

Nowadays (and mostly just because I like the rifle's stock and handling), I use a .375 H&H and Barnes X bullets. If near water, shooting for bone with this combo should stop the critter from getting to the water -- I hope!

John

PS: I used to hunt moose around Ignace too. Small world.

Lefty, tell us about the double gun in the pic...please!

My toughest recovery was actually no recovery. About 30 years ago, I was hunting moose/caribou on the Alaska peninsula and happened upon a very big bull caribou. When I shot him he spun around and fell into the creek in 18 inches of water. Being alone, I had to butcher him in the water and stack the quarters on the creek bank. Nearing completion, I looked up and saw a big brown bear helping himself to the meat and only 20-30 feet away. My 375 was leaning against a willow by the bear.

I eased out of the creek on the opposite bank and hiked back to the tent a mile and got my partner's rifle. When I returned, I found tracks of several bears and no sign of my caribou including the antlers....nothing!.....But then I didn't poke around the brush much looking for caribou parts.

jpb - yes it is a small world.

Ah, I have heard that Americans enjoy a constitutional right to arm bears, but this is the first time I have read of somebody trying to do it!

John

Mine wasn't even my tag. Pard shot a mountain goat and after getting it packaged up we headed up the ridge he died on in an effort to walk the top to where we had stashed some stuff. We made to the top and started back only to cliff out! We had to walk back down to where we started and start over...

that's my Heym 470. I try to hunt it at least once a year.

It was a 14 pt. that weighed 270 lbs that went to the bottom of a 140 ft. ravine near the Mississippi river that had more tangle than a vietnamese jungle.

Just shy of vertical. One bud and I got on each side holding the rack using our other hand to hold roots or whatever we could grab. We would count 1,2,3 and push the thing up the embankment about 8", then do it again, and again, and again.

Had another bud on top of the ridge with a long rope that we tied to the deer and he wrapped around a tree to keep tension on while we were throwing up the oatmeal cookies we had eaten earlier.

It took 4 hours to get that buck out of the ravine, then had to drag him another 1/2 mile to an access road.

I wouldn't gut the deer or butcher it there because it was such a good spot. The wisdom of youth....

About 10 years ago a buddy and I killed two bulls (elk) about 10 minutes apart and about 100 yards apart.

We were a little over three miles from the nearest motorized access, and about 2,500 vertical feet below that point. All we had were strong backs, good pack frames, and dull minds.

The temperatures were reaching the 70's, so getting the meat out in a timely fashion was of the utmost importance. We quartered, packed, and suffered in a biblical fashion.

As I recall, we each got about four hours of sleep spread out over the course of three days of pure misery.

I've packed over 30 bulls out on my back to date, and it just plain sucks. Idaho is steep country, and hind quarters in particular are not light. Some trips suck less than others, but they all suck.

Dave

Utahlefty,

Im headed to Zimbabwe in 2013 for a non-trophy elephant hunt... Wanting to use a double rifle... I would be glad to tak yours on an adeventure.

I havent had any really hard pack outs, but the one on my brothers buck this year comes to mind.

About a mile+ from camp, I glass up a little buck that is about a half mile out. We make a stalk on him and dont get him. I set up and glass again and find another little buck about .75- a mile out. We go after him and my brother dumps his ass straight down! Walk over to him, not a big bodied coues deer. Put him in my Dragonfly hole (gutted), Was a long walk rocky washes, steep ridges and a 100+ pound pack.

Certainly not the biggest bull I ever shot, but the shot went low, and I was duty bound to follow. So this pic was taken 8 hours and five miles later...
With the involvement of an aggregate of 11 people, three horses, and three days later we had him in the cooler....
there is more to the story, but suffice it to say he has always been reffered to as " the bull from hell"....

Shot a bull tahr that slide down the mountain and caught a horn that left him dangling over a vertical drop. OK, maybe not my toughest retrieve but my hunting partner was the one that jumped from the helicopter onto the face, worked his way down, and hung on with one hand while chopping off the head. Entire time the tahr was working loose and they would have both fallen about 100 feet into a raging glacieral run off. Helicopter blades hitting the brush, jumping from a helicopter onto a very steep face, retreiving the head, and then having to get back into the copter to get out, wind gusts aborted the first attempt to get back in the copter. Sorry to say I would have stayed in the helicopter and photographed the bull from there.
Got to love New Zealand

This is not a story I've been wanting to tell, but it'll be therapeutic I guess. It happened this past December on an elk hunt.
My friend Bob spotted a herd of about 40 elk probably 3/4 of a mile away through a nasty snowstorm. I had glassed those same scrub oaks and missed the elk, but with his higher power binoculars (15X), it was clear there were elk moving around. We strapped on the snow shoes and watched as the elk moved out of sight.
It didn't look like they could go anywhere because there was a cliff in the way, so we decided to head towards the opening where we last saw them. Then the plan was to slowly track them through the scrub oaks to their beds.
It took about an hour and a half to climb up there through the deep snow. As we were catching our breath, I asked Bob, "How far to that open face?" Bob figured 175, I was thinking maybe 250. He was just about to range it when the elk reappeared and began filing out through that very opening. Since I figured it was 250 max, I just plunked down, tightened up my sling and held dead on the first cow I could find that was separated from the others by enough to make me feel comfortable. I hit her with my .264 Win Mag loaded with 130 Accubonds. It felt like she was mostly broadside, but she may have been quartering away slightly.

It took a while to find blood, but when I found it, there was no shortage. It looked like lung blood to me, a nice bright red on the snow. I found no bone, or flesh, or rumen content or anything else unusual that would tell me this would be anything other than a 100 yard tracking job. And I've been in on the kills of many, many hundreds of big game animals and am pretty experienced with calling my shots, the shots of others and interpreting sign. This looked like an easy job.

Unfortunately that was not the case. The cow at first ran off on her own, then caught back up with the rest of the herd. It wasn't until she caught up with the herd, that I began to worry about recovering her. Still, it was more like worry about how long of a pack out it would be, not IF we would recover her.

This is the blood trail, still going steady, every few steps and being trampled on by other elk over 1500 feet higher and nearly a mile after we started.



This is knee deep snow and I'm not a lilliputian, here I am, not looking like a happy camper.


We followed that blood trail for at least 4 hours and it began to get dark (December 19th I think). The snow was still coming in fits and starts, extremely heavy at times, then little flurries later. As we crested the ridge above the drainage where this whole fiasco began, we saw a small herd of elk across the ridge, on the next mountain:

We watched them for a while, sort of wondering if our elk could be in that group. Turns out she was, but we're talking well over 1,000 yards as the crow flies, and proably closer to two miles as the elk walked there.
This is how deep the snow was up on top of that ridge:

We ran into those sheep up there, and the snow was belly deep for them:


After we bumped those sheep, the elk got up, and we could see a cow in the middle of the group hobbling pretty badly, but still keeping up as the elk went up and over the next mountain! It had to have been her. I was disgusted and in disbelief.
We had way less than an hour of daylight left, and two hours of hiking just to get to where they were last bedded, and God knows how much further they were going to go. We were miles from the truck and it was going to snow at least another 6 inches that night. I was the only one with a pack, as Bob had ditched his before we even began the hike up towards the elk. We were not prepared to stay the night, we were starting to get a little deep in the Wilderness Area, and the elk were going a lot deeper. We couldn't catch them tonight, and the snow that was forecasted was going to wipe out our progress.
We had to call it off. It sucked, I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not. But we couldn't catch up to her when she was still alive. She might die overnight, but then again she might not. The snow might cover our tracks overnight, but then again it might not. We called it off. That night it snowed over a foot and we couldn't even find our tracks. We had nothing to go off of and we lost her.

Like I mentioned before, I have not been excited about telling this story, but I figured it was time.

Oh and edit to add, I later GPS measured the distance of the shot, it was about 380 yards. I don't know what affect if any that had in not recovering the elk as the blood appeared to be lung blood and appeared to be from an exit wound. I'm assuming I somehow only caught one lung, and in my haste, hit her too high, but I'll never know exactly what happened.

Don't beat yourself up too bad. We've all made mistakes and from your story it appears you made a valent effort to recover the animal. I've lost two big game animals and it continues to bother me to this day.

We returned the next day on my partners cow elk and tracked it to the death site only to find a mess as a result of coyotes, ravens, and eagles. They all need to eat.

You did the right thing pulling out. Say you stayed and got snowed 12" on... Could you have survived the night with another foot of snow coming down?

My hardest was this bull moose shot just this last October . I had pack animals, but could not tie up anywhere nearby because of the lack of any tree bigger than a willow. There was also a lot of huge holes hidden by all the willows and other brush. I wasn't going to chance having a bad accident with those holes. It was also getting hot and I needed to get that meat out of there in a hurry. I had to carry each quarter across a descent sized creek than about 30 yards up a very steep bank to the horses. I then had to power walk 7 miles out because I was packing my riding horse as well. I was so tired it took everything I had to unload the meat and unsaddle. Moose hunting should not be a 1 man deal. I really think I shortened my lifespan by a few years that day.

I have had a few doozies, even one on as pronghorn. But like most of the stories here, mine is a moose, a good-sized Alaskan bull.

He was coming down a small river when I saw him. My guide was asleep so I woke him up to get a second opinion on whether the bull was legal. Turned out the bull was, but the guide said, "Don't shoot him in the ------ river!"

So I waited until the bull climbed one of the banks, and as soon as all four hooves were on flat ground I shot him with my .338--and hit him very well. But instead of dying right there, he reared up on his hind legs like a bucking horse and fell over backwards, down the bank into the river. He thrashed around a little bit and died with the tip of one antler showing above the surface.

Well, I waded out there and got a rope around one antler. We tied that to the guide's jet boat and towed the bull downstream to shallower water, where with a lot of effort we got his head into about a foot of water. Then we started butchering from the top down. It was early in September and warm, and the mosquitoes were a lot of fun. Each time we got some good chunks of meat cut off, we dragged him a little further out of the water. Five hours after we started the meat was finally all in the shade of a tarp across some nearby brush.

I though I was done with ever getting a moose out of water, but a couple of years ago my wife drew a cow tag here in Montana. We hunted a mile or so from the house, and she hoped to kill a calf. Great, I thought! Well, she shot a calf on the third day of the season, and it ran into a nearby swamp and died in a foot of water. It wasn't too bad but wasn't any fun, and there were mosquitoes on that pack out too....

North face of Ellison mtn. outside Meeker, 5x6 bull did the big slide/roll after takin a hit from my 338/378.
I was done after 1.5 days of packin.

Gunner

No wonder Ingwe is so good at trolling; he was on set with Roy Sheider in the movie "Jaws"