Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting "The gutless method"

It all depends on how you have to pack it out. Regardless, skinning first will get the meat cool much faster than just gutting. If you look at a gutted elk, you'll see that most of the meat still isn't exposed to the air.
If you're going to pack out whole quarters, bone in, then gutless won't save you anything.

"If you're going to pack out whole quarters, bone in, then gutless won't save you anything."

Not true, you won't be hauling spine, neck, or ribs. In addition,if you are in a CWD area, there is little chance of severing the spine and coming into contact with CWD bearing areas

...bet this guy wishes he went gutless;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0E8DcNm1Fs

I'm referring to WHOLE quarters, where the guy splits the spine and leaves the entire neck on a front quarter. I don't think too many hunters do it that way any more but when I was a kid, we'd see it all the time. In those days, though, a lot more hunters had horses.

The biggest push to do gutless in Colorado was brought on by the CWD conditions.I pack with mules,but still use the gutless method. Not bringing out the rib cage makes packing front quarters so much easier. Cows and smaller bulls may be packed out on one animal.

I have split a lot of elk with two hand axes or a saw and beleive me, that is alot of work compared to filleting meat off the spine.

Ours usually come out on our backs. Less is better.

So far, CWD hasn't been found in Idaho that I've heard of...subject to change.

That and a bunch of others are available as downloads.

Here:
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=multimedia.main

I've used gutless on moose many times and would never want to try it any other way.

About 10 years ago, my partner shot a bull moose that went down on it's belly between 2 big boulders. There was no way he and his son could move it in any way. We'd been experimenting with the best ways to gutless dress at that time. We'd done 2 moose and a couple elk before that so he knew the general game plan. He started at the spine and skinned & boned his way down. He had to sit on it's back as he worked because it was wedged so tight between the rocks he couldn't get his feet on the ground. It took him about 6 hrs altogether. It was about as nasty a job as I've heard of.

Then I read an article by Jim Zumbo. He shot an elk in really nasty brush. He said it took him 3 hrs just to turn it over to start dressing it. What a waste of time. If he'd done it gutless, he'd have been done before he even started.

Zumbo might be a decent cook... Not to sure about his real world hunting ablities? He seems to go on a lot of decent hunts and doesn't do much better than a fair number of public land hunters here.

our grandfathers i bet never did this " gutless" method. probably because they weren't " gutless " people who do this are urban wusses who don't want blood and guts on there fancy 500 $ hunting outfits. real men roll up there sleaves and get bloody. my 2 pennies

Oh boy...

i get bloody !
but when it comes to getting an elk off a mountain side quite aways from a road, chocked with oak brush.

it comes out in pieces, and now we're gonna go boned out to boot !

we usta just quarter it and haul out whole legs with bones, and as much meat as we could cut off the rest of it.

getting too heavy now as the years go by and the age sets in.


but i guess i am just an old wusse !

brains over brawn......

Keep your pennies. They have no value.

getting tired of finding elk carcasses with 15-50 pounds of edible meat left to rot ! this year i will have my gps with me and will report to fish and game. if you arent man enough to take the whole animal home than don't hunt. also sick of people boning out muleys and bringing out a little kid backpack full of meat and not even having the head or evidence of sex. ( idaho ) my pennies may have no value but i am a sportsman and use ALL of the animal i harvest.

I guess you crack the bones and get the marrow out too.
With the high incidence of CWD in certain areas of Colorado, the DOW reccomends the gutless method. Besides the spine,brain matter, neck lymph nodes needs to be avoided also. If you care to come to Colorado and eat these have at it.
Ignorance is not excuse for being stupid.The wussies just might know tad more than you.

I leave a lot of bones in the woods. I don't leave much for the coyotes, crows, or yellowjackets except the guts and blood.

I don't like the gutless method, and yes I do know how to do it. I can filet anything, including an elk, which is all the gutless method is.

The reasons I don't use it are:

Elk are heavy and no matter which method you use you have to move them around. Removing guts drops their weight by 35% or more.

Guts come in handy for an attractant. In an area with lots of yellowjackets rolling the guts away from the beast keeps most of them well fed, happy, and not around you to sting you.

Rolling the guts out of an elk takes a few minutes tops so any time or effort savings you think you're getting are small in proportion to the extra effort leaving them in will cause you. Clearly your milage will vary as it seems like there is almost a cult like following behind this "new" method of dismemberment...:)

I've taken elk apart alone more than a few times. It's a two hour process and I end up with bags of clean meat with very few bones in it.

I dunno, that's pretty cheap, for a trolling motor.

Until now we've had a pretty good discussion here about the pros and cons of gutless dressing. We don't need this kind of crap. Boning in the field says nothing about wasting meat. You can waste just as much at home.