Epic pack outs?

Seeing the transporting heavy game thread made me think of some of my most "epic" pack outs.

I've got multiple but I'll start with one of my better ones. It was about 15 years ago, my buddy Tim and I were hunting up in the Maroon Belles of Colorado. We started off on a high ridge right at tree line and had spotted some elk far below meandering through the dark timber in a deep and steep bowl. We decided to go for it. Long story shortened, several hours later and just at sunset we found ourselves among a huge herd of bachelor bull elk with a few wandering cows about. I was thinking that we needed to limit ourselves to one bull in this area because the pack out was going to be a as tough as it gets with a 1500' vertical climb in steep and rugged terrain.

We both had two elk tags in our pockets, one either sex and one bull tag. I was just going to have a little pow wow with Tim but he'd disappeared, as usual before we could have that conversation. It was at this time that it all "happened" I am standing there and all of a sudden hear the clanking of antlers. Out of the timber a little rag horn 4 and a 5x5 appear at about 60 yards. I raise my rifle and shoot the 5x5 as I'm coming out of recoil I hear Tim shoot just about 100 yards further down the bowl.

I am now hoping that maybe I missed my bull. At the shot my bull had taken off up the hill into some thick timber. I listened to him crashing through the brush. Then I heard him stop, fall over and start sliding down the hill. I hadn't missed. It was just about now that I heard another shot from Tim. I immediately thought "geeze I hope that was a finisher and not another elk!"

I got busy skinning and quartering my bull. It's a little after dark when Tim found me and tells me his story. He'd shot a cow and had her all quartered up and hanging. I asked about the second shot, Tim says he shot at a little rag 4 that came running by but thinks he missed him. I have him take me over to where the little bull went running by. I find hair, lots of hair but no blood. Tim who was new at hunting back then had not been on the right set of tracks. We tracked the bull it is now pitch black outside and we are using head lamps. We go about 50 yards and there it is in the snow, a crimson drop of blood. Then a splash, then a bigger splash, then a bigger splash, it's a classic heart shot and we find the bull,our third elk down about 100 yards further on in a nasty tangle of blown down cross fallen pines.

We get number three cut and hung for the night and haul our own sorry carcasses up to the ridge line and back to the quads. We get into camp at about midnight and crash out in our tent. The next morning we found an old fire cut road that allowed us to get closer and cut our vertical distance to about 1000'. We strapped on our pack boards and headed down into the bowl. We boned out the meat to reduce the weight and were each able to carry about half an elk worth of meat per load. That worked out to roughly 150 lbs per load. Three round trips and multiple thousands of vertical feet later we had all the meat loaded onto the four Wheelers. It is now about midnight and it had started snowing heavily several hours prior to getting the last load up to the road. The snow fall had turned into a massive blizzard and has dumped about a foot of fresh snow. The accumulation rate was getting heavier by the moment. It was time to go. We've got two severely over loaded quads on a steep and nasty fire cut with a massive drop off on the down hill side.

Everything was going well until I got on to a part of the trail that was angled, my machine started to slide in the snow, it hit the edge of the trail and flipped. I was able to jump free and watch my quad go tumbling down the steep slope. My pack, my rifle and my binos went sailing into space as the machine picked up velocity rolling down hill. The elk meat miraculously all stayed attached. The quad went about 200 feet down before it hung up on a pine tree and stopped. I found my pack, after a long search I found my rifle. The binos and range finder are still up there as far as I know. I never did find them.

We were able hook up Tim's winch line to my winch line and and pull the now bent and beaten quad back up to the trail. Fortunately it was still running. As we got up to the last part of the trail it got real steep and the snow was 2 to 3 three feet deep in areas. We were forced to hook a winch line up to an available tree and winch up for a 100 feet or so at a time. We did this for most of a mile until we got back onto a portion of the trail that was shielded by the timber and allowed us to once again drive the quads with out high centering in the deep snow.

We pulled into camp at about 3 AM, severely dehydrated, bone sore, tired and happy to be in camp. We built a huge fire to warm our hands and feet and pulled out a bottle of rock gut whiskey, Canadian Mist I think it was, I remember taking a couple deep swigs and then waking up at some time late the next morning, every bone and muscle in my body was stiff and my head was pounding from the mix of dehydration and the shots of whiskey.

We spent the day pulling down camp and headed home that night with a truck full of elk meat and a head full of memories. That was one of my most epic pack outs, but not the most epic.

Shanghai McCoy said:

OK, if that is not your "most epic" pack out I'll be standing by to hear "the rest of the story"...

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Your wish is my command!

Drawing a coveted Mt Goat tag in Colorado came sooner for me than most. It "only" took 12 years for me to draw the tag, I opted for a nanny tag to increase my chances of drawing and it worked. I spent that entire summer getting in shape, hiking at high altitude and scouting for goats. When September finally rolled along I was lean, in shape and mentally prepared for a long solo goat hunt above tree line.

Well almost a solo goat hunt, my wife who had spent a good amount of time scouting and hiking with me all summer helped me pack in my base camp which was located at 11,800', well above tree line and in a small depression that kept my tent out of the worst of the winds which tended to roar by at odd intervals several times during the night and throughout the day. Unfortunately on the 5 hour hike into base camp I developed a full depth blister on my right heel which made the rest of the hunt an excruciatingly painful affair. I taped up my heel and hunted anyway.

As Ive already written an extensive hunt report on this site about my goat hunt I'll skip forward to the kill and the pack out. I spotted a herd of goats at about noon on the second day of the hunt. They were on a mountain about 2 miles from my camp. I loaded a day pack and headed of in hot pursuit. At about 4:00 Pm I found my self in range and shot a goat at 71 yards with my super long rage set up M-70 Winchester custom rifle chambered in .270 Weatherby. All that long range practice came down to a quick shot with my scope on the lowest setting. That's hunting for you. In any case I shot the goat through the shoulders and anchored her on the spot as she was standing on a very precarious spot over a near vertical drop off. She indeed dropped to the shot. I worked my way down to her as I bent down to admire her and stroke her luxurious coat she shifted and went straight off the cliff face! I had to let her go or she would have taken me with her. She wound up tumbling well over 1000' almost vertical feet down a rock and dirt chute before coning to a rest above a hanging lake. I took a few selfies with my now beaten and battered trophy and then quickly got her skinned and quartered.

I had no way of carrying her out with only my day pack so I built a rock shelter and placed the quartered meat on a tarp then placed a heavy flat rock over the top of it. After making sure the meat was secure and cooling properly I set off up a steep and jumbled boulder field several thousand feet and several miles back to my base camp.

After about 45 minutes of climbing on those treacherous loose and slippery rocks the wind started to blow and then the storm clouds moved in and it started snowing hard. It was blowing and the snow was driven with such a force that it was stinging into my face and eyes and blinding me. Then the snow started to stick to the rocks making them impossible to travel on. I dropped down out of the snow into a deep crease and inventoried my situation. I could try and spend the night, but only had minimal equipment and nothing to burn for a fire. I could wait out the storm and try to make it to base camp later but the rocks were still going to be ice covered and deadly to try and climb on. Option three, the highway was about a ten mile hike and all down hill I could try and get a hold of my wife and meet me along side the highway and we could regroup and come back in the next day for the retrieve. I turned on my phone and had one bar. I quickly sent out a text, she got it and agreed to make the three hour drive to meet me.

It took several hours of slow, steady and careful bouldering on ice covered covered rocks to get down to softer ground. The snow had turned to driving rain at lower altitude. I picked up the pace and several hours later met my beautiful wife along side the highway. I was wet, cold and on an a mission. A heated car never felt so good!

On the way down the road I called my buddy Tim and told him my situation and asked if he would be able to help me pack out the next day. He agreed, we now needed to pack out my base camp, and a full goat. We drove home and made a plan. Early the next morning after several hours of sleep we loaded two horses into the trailer and jumped in the truck, picking up Tim along the way. My wife and I rode the horses up to base camp. Tim hiked straight over the top of the mountain to the kill sight. Once the Mrs and I got to base camp I helped her load base camp onto the now riderless horse with set of saddle panniers. She rode her horse out and and lead the loaded horse back down the trail to the truck. I headed over to the kill site where I met a now relaxed and resting Tim. He'd already loaded his pack with half the meat. I loaded the other half and the head and the cape into my pack and we began the steep hike back to the truck.

I mentioned that I'd blown a hole in my heel on day one. I can tell you that the miles and miles and thousands of feet of vertical climbing and descending had not made it any better. In fact every step was an excruciatingly painful shot of fire through my heel. One step at a time at a nice slow mountaineering pace got me through the day. Tim on the other hand was moving at his normal high speed take no prisoners pace. Tim is a true outdoorsman and in particular a high altitude climber who is in outrageously good shape. He has climbed all 50+ 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado mostly solo and he does it it at a pace that would literally kill most mere mortals. He's also an outdoor survival expert, wilderness rescue, ETC ETC. He's a great guy to have on your side in any and all mountain scenarios. But it's demoralizing as heck to try and keep up with Timmy at high altitude with a heavy pack on. Especially when you've got a bum foot! I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and hauled my nearly 100 Lb load all day long. Up and down, and down and up until just after dark when all of a sudden I was at the truck where Tim and my lovely bride were kicking back in the horse trailer sipping on water and talking trash about the old man and his slow pace. That was one of the happiest sights I could possibly imagine.



This photo was taken about a half mile above my base camp.
The green line is my path to intercept the goats.
The blue line is the path of the goats.
The red dot is where I shot the goat.
The yellow line is where the goat tumble down the hill.
the is picture is attempting to give some perspective but it's hard to to tell without scale just how big this country is, from where I am standing to where the goat was shot is just a little over two miles.

Patocazador said:

Good story.
Did the nanny's horn break during the fall?

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She did not. Luckily!

Captcurt said:

I was about 2 miles from my truck in the middle of the Ozark National Forest when I black powdered a 6 pt. After field dressing I hooked my trusty harness to him and started the drag out. One hillside was so steep that the buck passed me twice. When I finally got the buck down to what used to be a road, I left the deer and went to get my ATV. It was off limits to take a 4-wheeler in there, but I still fudged and took in. Even with the Yamaha it took me 2 1/2 hours to get him out. I don't hunt there anymore.

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Last year my wife shot a huge bodied mule deer buck. It was about a mile and a half across two farm fields to get back to the truck. We tied a rope to his antlers and started to drag him out. I’d just got out of surgery for a separated bicep tendon about 6 days prior. I was out of energy by about the halfway mark were we stopped to rest on a road. I also “might” have driven the truck into the no motor vehicle area to retrieve that buck.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do! As Kingcreek mentioned, that field dressed deer was weighing about 4 metric tons by the time I gave up and got the truck!