right... dunno about the numbers, not really a concern, but the rest of your post strongly supports that different things work differently, maybe not better or worse, just different. just because something may seem dumb to you in your locale does not mean it cannot work w/ brilliant effectiveness somewhere else.
the original poster lives 'above ground' and was asking, in effect, how i get my deer out... and that is generally how i do it (carry it out). far, far easier to carry one out than it is to drag it out. first several hunts i did the dragging method, but after about the 2nd mile, the hide was rubbed off the deer in several spots. by the time the deer made it back to the truck, many times the hide was either gone, or in really poor condition (can you say rocks in the backstrap?? dirt in the tenderloins?? ...). i used to think that maybe a wheeled carrier of some sort would work pretty well, then i watched some poor feller try to wrestle his two-wheeled deer cart up and down the draws and river breaks and over the 'quicksand' and decided there was an even better way yet (for me, where i hunt)... the backpack method was discussed at 24 hour campfire, i tried it, and wow - it really works (incidentally, the originating poster wasn't called dumb for his idea, nor was he drilled on safety).
never hunted the eastern states, and really don't have a desire to - everything i hear about it makes it seems so small and congested (my favorite mule deer hunting area is around 30 square miles, and my two favoritest whitetail areas are huge (the entire black hills, and another area near my mulie spot that runs around 25 sq. mi.), and it is rugged terrain...
another factor that might be used... we don't have trees here... (well, we do have some, but they are mostly in the black hills)...