I have an old rusted up wheelbarrow (1 wheel stye), but the frame underneath it is not in too bad of shape and the wheel is good too. Was thinking of taking the whole undercarriage of it with the wheel and use it as a game cart to pack out meat. I would basically just take the rusted up bucket part off of it... Was wondering if anyone had ever tried fashioning one into a game cart to pack out meat and if it worked out? The wheel that is on it is one of the inflatable ones, not solid rubber. The frame underneath it is pretty solid square tubing...

Since your lugging out lots of weight, over uneven and perhaps rocky ground, I would recommend the TWO wheel variety....

IMHO - YMMV.

I tried the 2 wheel style game cart before. Borrowed one from my brother that was kind of like a dolly with smallish bicycle type tires on it. It really sucked going up a steep incline with an elk quarter on it...Snagged on every rock and stick, had to lift it over deadfalls, didn't seem like it was better than just packing it out on my back...It was great on level ground though...

I was thinking the advantage of the one wheel style is that it might be easier to maneuver through the brush and around the rocks...But, not sure if their is any advantage as I have never used one.

The taller the wheel, the easier it pushes and goes over stuff.....

think Packwheel or Honey Badger carts....

That makes sense. I could see where the wheelbarrow style/ size wheel could be a drawback...

I been using a wheel barrow as a game cart for years.

I take the "stand" part off the back that holds it up while you load it and just use the front wheel with the tub.

If you have any kind of path at all it just sails down the trail and in the weeds I pull it backward some times. The tub just parts head high weeds and lets it all go through kind a like a "weed boat".

If you have to cross a tree just back up to it handles first and use that to set it while you climb over. Then pull the handles over and down to "cam" the load right over and slides off. Down the road again.

I have one of those two wheel cart things. I found it out in the woods, left from the year before. Used it a couple times just in case I was doing it wrong the first time. I HATE that thing.

LOL! I could definitely see where someone could get pissed at one of them and leave it in the woods...I think I would only use one again if I could run it on mostly level ground or a decent trail...Fighting that thing going uphill made it more work than just using a meat frame pack...

I've done more than make a cart from a wheelbarrow...or maybe you'd call it less. My partner and I used a wheelbarrow to pack an elk 4 miles on a logging road and it worked great. Granted, it was 90% downhill. Going uphill would have been an entirely different beast. For the short uphill sections of the road, we tied a rope on the front for the other guy to pull.

Someone said you need 2 wheels. That's fine if you're on the flat on a road or wide trail. In the mountains it'll get you in trouble. You'll be too wide for many trails. You can't get between rocks and sidehills will roll you. The only way you can use 2 wheels in the mountains is to have them in single file and that creates problems of it's own.

Don't use a Walmart wheelbarrow. Get a good one. It'll be strained a lot more than when you use it at home and the cheap ones can't take it. I can tell where you can find a pile of old wheelbarrow parts about 2 miles from a trailhead.

One year I killed an elk about a mile behind a Forest Service locked gate and used a wheelbarrow to pack him out, 1/2 at a time. The road was pretty much all downhill so it worked pretty well.

Years later I built a one wheel cart with an old bicycle wheel at one end, then a 2'x4' basket in the middle and two handlebars at the other end. I've used it many years in eastern Montana to carry out antelope, and with only one wheel it gets through the sagebrush well. I used it once to pack a 3x3 mule deer about a half mile uphill to a road, and because 1/2 of the weight is held up by the handlebars, it was a tough pull.

I also bought a two side by side wheel game cart from Cabela's and have used it to carry out a number of deer and antelope. Like Rock Chuck mentioned, it's tippy on sidehillls, and both wheels won't fit on narrow trails.

Then a few years ago I built an inline two wheel cart with the wheels under the basket. It has handlebars on each end, but I've only used it by myself. It worked good in eastern Montana packing antelope out, except one time when I tried to cross a wet alkaline wet area. The wheels sunk in and it was a royal pain getting across. I also made it with square steel tubing that was too thick which made it very heavy.

Last year I re-made it by taking off one wheel and moving the single wheel to the center, under the basket. Its a little lighter, but when it's loaded, the weight is high and is a little tippy for one person to use. I've seen advertisements of a similar commercial one with two guys packing out whole elk on it. By myself, I don't think I could get it upright with a whole elk on it.

Made this about 20 years ago, used it several times.

Seems like none of the designs for game carts, 1 wheel or 2 wheel, are perfect for every scenario...It would be nice if someone could build an affordable 1 wheel one with an electric motor to assist with the uphill, but it would probably have drawbacks too like being to heavy or short battery life...

Do you find that to be too heavy on the handles? You're carrying nearly 1/2 the weight of the deer with your hands. I'd rework it to get the weight more over the tire.

That's exactly how I was thinking of using it. Thanks for the pic kenster99, and yes, seeing that pic, it does look like it would be to much weight up by the handles...

Shot this deer about 3 miles from my parked truck. Got him right before sunset,then gutted, so by the time I got back to truck to fetch cart and then return, total darkness. Had a flashlight, but only two hands! If I had some duct tape, would have taped light to his head. Took a few tumbles as the bar in front hit some high rocks! All in all, made pretty good time considering.
Balance isn't that bad.Was younger then, and had some addrenalin helping out!!

They do. Check out Packwheel and Honey Badger carts. Both make an electric assist model. Packwheel is way better'n my Honey Badger....

The electric packwheel is nearly 2,000 dollars...I already spend too much on hunting trips and equipment...:)....Would never hear the end of it from my wife...

I used one several times.
Had a game warden actually help me push it up the hill with a young buck in it. He was curious why my vehicle was still in the hunting area (wildlife management area) so long after legal hours. Had to drag the deer about 500 yards through the swamp to get it to the fire lane, walk 500 yards uphill to the station wagon (we called it the “Brown Bomb”) and take the wheel barrow back to the deer. The warden was a good sport about it but he was probably laughing his butt off inside.
He had a good one to share with his buddy LEO’s. “You’ll never believe what happened the other night” 😁.

We have two game carts, both 2-wheel, one an older (but very light) model with side-by-side wheels. It weighs less than 20 pounds, so is pretty convenient there, and the frame is long enough that a deer or antelope or elk quarter/half can be easily loaded. But even though the the wheels are only 16" apart, and the center of gravity is relatively low, it doesn't work well on even relatively gentle mountain trails--except for closed logging roads.

It also came with bicycle type tires, and when they eventually wore out (partly due to lots of trundling antelope across prickly pear), found the same size could NOT be found anywhere. So found some solid-tire wheels of about the same size, which required some machining by gunsmith John McLaughlin to fit the axle. (John is a hunter, along with being a great machinist/gunsmith: www.mclaughlincustomfirearms.com)

Seven years ago bought a neetkart (www.neetkart.com), which has two in-line wheels, a much heavier frame, and bicycle-type brakes. It can also be equipped with another set of handles on the front end. Unless the animal is under 100 pounds it only works well with two people, one at each end--but then it works really well, both on flats and on narrow mountain trails. Have hauled out stuff from two pronghorns to a halved cow elk with no problem. (In fact, it has now been adopted by a number of search-and-rescue crews to get hurt humans out of the hills.) You could do far worse than look at its design.

Ain't priced horses lately either, have ya?

From a friend who has a side-by-side two wheel cart... His area is flat, which should make it simpler, but he also has thick blueberries and other low brush. The problem is that the wheels are spoked and brush along the sides pokes thru the spokes and jams the whole thing to a halt.

here's a short vid from last fall. My kid wheeling out a whole cow elk on the Honey Badger. A bone-in hind, bone-in shoulder, backstrap and tender in the panniers on either side.


coming off the mountain with all our chit.....

THAT is pretty slick 😀

This is what I use. It is Great!

https://307mfg.com/atvbackpackercart.php

A wheel barrow has worked much better than the light weight two wheeled carts on narrow trails and cross country. I think if you could fit a bugger wheel on one it would work pretty well. I keep thinking about chopping up a mountain bike or just removing the front forks but leaving the handles for a DIY game cart.

The larger tires are a plus, solid tires a plus, and spoke less tires are a big plus. The self healing inner tubes and green slime help a lot for cactus.

I started out with a spoke wheel Cabela's Super Mag Hauler two wheel cart and it was anything but super. The spokes in those wheels came apart in the brush. I kept the frame and substituted 21" aluminum motocross wheels and tires. There are brake drums in those wheels, so brakes could be used, but I've never needed them. That worked well enough on flat ground, but a sled in snow has worked even better. The trouble with those two is that they are back in the truck. Now what I've done is taken the front smaller wheel off an old wheel chair and mounted it under my pack frame. A nice light weight addition and when I get tired of carrying a heavy load on my back, I can wheel it. We can cut our deer up here now and rope and pulleys to get a deer up in a tree makes getting them out in pieces pretty easy.

If I was rebuilding that two wheel cart again, I would use the Nylon spoke wheel chair wheels. Much lighter than those motorcycle wheels and the outboard hand assists might come in handy getting over an obstacle.

No, but I used a wheelbarrow to get a deer out before. Works pretty good too.

There are a couple problems with using wheels larger than a wheelbarrows. A larger one will roll over stuff better, true. However, to get the most benefit from the cart, the weight needs to be over the wheel, not behind it where much of load is carried by the user's arms. To get a deer over the large wheel, it's going to have to be considerably higher and that really screws with the balance. A top heavy cart is miserable to use.

hence the low-hanging panniers....

It's impressive how he is going up the inclines in the first video with not much of a struggle with that much of a load...The 2 wheel cart I used once wouldn't go uphill that easily with 1 elk quarter on it, granted I was going up a steeper incline than that for a longer distance...The wheels were a help, but you could really feel the weight increase dramatically pulling the 2 wheel cart as soon as it started uphill.. Looks like your cart works great to distribute the weight and take a lot of the work off the user...

I built a lot of things, but not that. It seems like that be best if it has two wheels.

I would think that a Mt. or BMX bicycle frame might be a better way to go, it could have one or two inline wheels. An aluminum "wheel-less" trailer basket could be attached and front and rear handles welded on or attached where the handle bars are somehow.

I have used wheel barrows to retrieve game and the hitting the front end or the wheel on rocks and the jabs of the handle bars to the groin did not enamor me to the device. Worked better when I towed it in reverse. The commercial two wheeled carts are great if not too rocky or too much vegetation and on roads they are great. Get solid spoke-less tires/wheels and go as large as you can.

The hand brakes really help.