Packing out a critter

[Supercracker]

Curious???, how are you guys who are more concerned with HC packing out your critters after the kill?

 

[Little Wattsy]

Curious???, how are you guys who are more concerned with HC packing out your critters after the kill?

Im NOT HC/PC BUT I can see it as an EASY reproduction....

Hide and guts are unnecessary weight. I always have rope and will hang and skin anf bone-out(or sometimes skin and bone em out on the ground); Either way the hide, guts, and bones stay in the field.

Anyway I can sooo see a canvas or leather pack system that might use a branch or two for support or not (?) to haul out the game.

 

[BrownBear]

Shanks mare for me.

I'm not especially PC, but I bet the methods I've used come close.

In my younger (and stronger) days I'd make a pack out of the gutted deer: Open the hide at the knee on each foreleg, disjoint the bone to make a toggle. Cut the hide through behind each achilles tendon on the hind legs, then stick the toggle from each foreleg through and behind the tendon in each hind leg. Presto. You've turned right and left pairs of legs into "pack straps." Mount it up and pull the head over one of your shoulders, and you're good to go if you don't leave your own guts on the ground somewhere along the way.

When I've been far back without a pack, I've done approximately the same thing with the hide after boning out a deer. Leave the lower forelegs as toggles and poke them through holes in the hide from the hind legs. Use a cord (or I suppose a strap of deer hide) to sew things between into a pack "bag."

Drag em out with a rope if I have time, and these days if it's mostly downhill.

On horseback we split out skinned elk down the middle, cut a hole between the last two ribs and hang that on the saddle horn with a quarter down each side. No prob for two horses and one elk if you're willing to walk out. Works pretty good that way on pack horses too, and helps keep the sides from sliding around without too much lashing. Unless it was a really big deer I'd just hole the hide, hang it across the saddle with the horn in the hole, then mount up and ride out.

Here's a variation on the deer dressing we've developed here in serious bear country. You can do it in under a minute (by the clock) and be dragging your deer out before the bears arrive to investigate the shot: Make a minimum cut, about 6" in the hide, then cut the peritoneum beneath that. Reach up and tear the paunch free just below the diaphram and roll the guts out through the hole. They're soft and a 6" hole is no prob. Now stroke the pellets away from the anus for about 8-10" and cut the large intestine at the top end, then knot the intestine to keep any more pellets from coming out into the cavity.

Now get to scooting, cuzz the bears will be here any minute!!! :rotf: Leave the heart, lungs, diaphram, liver, bladder and rectum for a little while later, at least till you get out into open country where you can keep an eye out for bears.

 

[rabjr]

I use 16 horses. :wink:

 

[vern faulkner]

started solving that problem when I first got married. Sired 3 strong, healthy sons. :blah: :blah: Vern

 

[BrownBear]

started solving that problem when I first got married. Sired 3 strong, healthy sons. :blah: :blah: Vern

Now there's a wise man! I made sure my daughter married an athlete, and by himself or with a buddy or two he can move mountains.

A' course, think about the age of the guys we study and idolize. They were "old men" in their 30's or 40's. Heck, by the time they were my age they were warming themselves in a cabin somewhere gumming their food. :rotf:

 

[Supercracker]

Shanks mare for me.

In my younger (and stronger) days I'd make a pack out of the gutted deer:

I've done that exact thing with pigs a lot.

Of course my standing rule for myself is, unless there's a super duper write home to momma class boar, I shoot the smallest one in the group. :wink:

Usually those I can just stick the quarters in my (enormously non HC) shoulder bag. I also have an ALICE pack and frame in the truck just in case I have something I'm willing to make more than one trip for. But it hasn't happened yet.

I still have my sea bags from way back when and I've always had a plan to rip the seams out and use them to make a shoulder bag to carry around, I've just never gotten around to it.

 

[ronrryan]

If you use your seabag you will find your socks are on the bottom. Good smoke, Ron in FL

 

[Bill Hall]

I carry a small folding hacksaw with me that I fitted with a meat blade. If it's a deer, and it's way back there, I'll cut off the hind quarters and keep them together, saw off the lower legs and feet, and carry it on my shoulders. That's one trip. The second trip I'll remove the backstraps and bone out the rest and fill a garbage bag inside a backpack. Then I'll saw off the head and tie it to the top.

If it's an elk way back there, I'll saw and cut it up in parts that are small enough to hoist in trees by myself. Then I"ll walk, or drive, to a spot where I can get a cellphone signal and start making calls for help. One year my nephew and I both had bulls down and called for help. We ended up with a caravan of six people with backpacks, making two trips. I was so glad when that was over.

As far as P/C goes, I think my dad had the right idea when he'd get annoyed about how far away my deer would be. He'd say "You got him where?" "My god son, just hike back up there and eat as much meat as you can, come back to camp and take a cr#p, and keep doing that till you get the whole thing back here!" Bill

 

[deseeb2001]

"You got him where?" "My god son, just hike back up there and eat as much meat as you can, come back to camp and take a cr#p, and keep doing that till you get the whole thing back here!"

Sounds like something my grandpa would have said... I may even end up saying it to my own kid(s) a time or two :haha:

 

[oletymepreacher]

What works for me: Skin one side of critter, remove quarters and backstrap.Repeat for other side. For hanging tenderloins, get through spine and remove meat. This saves having to gut the animal. To get back to camp: Load into backpack, or load onto horse panniers, or build travois to carry meat. Travois works better if you have a buddy with you. This works for any size animal, deer, elk, buffalo, etc. Time to cool meat is of the most important. Pronghorn have be be cooled immediately, or the meat is next to inedible. I'll usually have mine in the camper's freezer within an hour of kill. I hunt at 10,000 feet elevation usually, so cooling out deer or elk means hanging them over night and letting air get to them. Bag them the next day for transporting.

 

[runnin lead]

About the only HC packout was mules that some gentlemen from IA were kind enough to let us use :hatsoff: . Most times packing involves a non HC aluminum packframe & acouple of times a very non HC mountain bike that by the way in the right conditions is SWEET. :thumbsup:

 

[Supercracker]

build travois to carry meat.

What is that. Pics??

 

[BrownBear]

I haven't tracked down any photos, but remember sometimes in movies or paintings of plains Indians they'd have a horse dragging a couple of long poles from their back to the ground, and stuff lashed to the poles? That's a travois. Nice theory and works well on the plains I'm sure, but I don't know how it would work on hillsides, rough terrain or brush.

I've used them in remote settings when I needed to lift something heavy and move it a bit, and they sure do let one man lift some impressive loads by leverage. I used one the other day to move a 450 pound outboard laying on the ground, and it was child's play to pick it up even with my old bod. Good thing I didn't have to move it far though, because as much as leverage helped to pick up the load, plain old friction made it tough to go anywhere dragging it across the ground.

 

[Supercracker]

ohh, ok. I've seen those.

But I'm always in wet swamps and palmetto thickets. So I don't think that would work.

I have some old replacement pack straps. I was thinking I might could make a webbing crisscross or mesh bag or something to attach them to to make a pack that could be folded into a very small block or package. So I could put it in my shoulder bag and just unpack it as needed.

I would like to make a smaller, possibly more HCish bag to carry.

A lot of times when I get to hunt I don't have a lot of notice. It's kind of an "oh, I can get out of here a couple/three hours early. So I head to the lease and snoop around or sit for a while. So I used to keep everything I needed for an afternoons hunt packed in my bag and my bow and quiver in the truck. So if I got the chance I could just go.

I wan't to put the same thing together for the ML.

 

[BrownBear]

I won't match our bogs with your swamps by any means, but our brush gets awful thick. Here's what works for me, and it's sure compact. But PC? Who knows? Why would I want to carry a computer on a hunt? :rotf:

I've got a set of "shoulder straps" made of a length of 2" nylon web belt about 6' long sewed together at the ends to make a long loop. I slid a 1.5" ring over it, and when in the middle it turns the works into kind of a figure 8 arrangement with a loop at each end to work as "shoulder straps." Then I tied a piece of half inch rope to the ring. It's maybe 8' long.

I tie the rope around an animal's neck right up against the skull, then take a couple of half hitches around it's nose to hold the head in line with the direction of pull and keep it from flopping.

Then I go up to the ring and adjust the length of the rope so when I slide my arms through the two "shoulder straps" of nylon web the head and neck of the animal and a little bit of shoulder are lifted off the ground. That seems to be the critical part.

If you get the shoulders slightly off the ground a darned heavy animal will "scoot" across the ground and kinda "hop" over obstacles when it hangs a little and you lean forward into the load.

BTW- I like the half inch rope because it's big enough to get a good grip on if the critter hangs up a little and you want to reach back and give a good yank to free it.

I'd have to hold your shoulder straps in my hand and scratch my head a little I'm sure, but I'm wondering if a rope tied to them wouldn't work better than a bag while being a whole lot more compact. If you get the length right so the head and neck and a little bit of the shoulders are off the ground, it's a downright amazing getup for dragging game.

I can't give you the stowed dimensions on mine, but with the straps folded and the rope wrapped around them, the whole works will probably fit into a Pringles can with room to spare. I've never figured out anything more compact than that, and it sure works in rough terrain.

 

[vern faulkner]

I learned a long time ago to lure them critters REAL close to the truck, and then shoot them. :blah: :blah: Vern

 

[Supercracker]

I'm thinking more of packing out quarters and backstraps. I really don't think I've ever pulled a whole animal out. Other than maybe a little ways to a spot more suitable for dressing out

 

[rabjr]

I learned a long time ago to lure them critters REAL close to the truck, and then shoot them. :blah: :blah: Vern

I had a Biologist friend while growing up, he hunted the State back when only a handful of tags were bought every year as we didn't have much of a deer herd until all the wood cutting that went on in the 70's. Well he used to get way into the thick swamps, had to back then to find deer. One time he hit a button buck across the top of his head with one buckshot pellet and stunned the deer. Realizing the situation he was in, he walked up to it and took off his belt, wrapped it around his neck and walked it out to his car, where he dispatched it. I would not recommend it today but back then when you never saw another hunter, I can see why he did it.

 

[hanshi]

The method I use always depends to an extent on the topography. Example: I went sheep hunting with an uncle once. We had sighted a couple of nice rams on a ledge one peak over. After spending more than an hour descending a treacherous scree slope, my uncle slipped and suffered a compound leg fracture. I knew it would be nigh impossible to get him out alone. But I did get him back to camp in one day. It took two trips but by golly, I packed him out. :rotf: :bull: