Once the rifle shot echoes down through the valley, the fun tends to be over and the pain begins. It's often flat-out torture.
This past fall, it took Dad and I 5 1/2 hours to pack out my elk, one brutal trip through the deadfall. The word 'brutal' doesn't even come close to the suffering that day had in store for us. It rained for an hour or two during that pack out, and we ran out of water around the time the day warmed up enough to be hot when you're laboring hard, made one wrong turn which added to our hike right when we were just about spent, got sunburnt, and on and on.
He's what, 66-years old? Rugged old man, Dad. His hip almost gave out. No, scratch that; his hip
DID give out where he could only take 10 or 12 steps at a time before having to stop and rest it up. But he made it out, just walked it off.
We were both hurting bad that day. Worst pack out ever for either of us. Worse by far, even worse than 2013 when I shot two elk and we got them both out whole in ~8" of snow. I thought one of us was going to go into cardiac arrest that day. Come to think of it, packing out elk, on foot, in the roughest country ever to be hunted, can be a real drag. You start flirting with the idea of finding a place to cover up the kill and just leaving it out there.
He called me yesterday morning and asked, "So, are we going to apply for muzzleloader this year or just do rifle?"