Time Frame

[Hoshua1]

How long will an Elk last after its all butchered and packed. I'm looking to start smaller but still with the intention of retrieving food. Any good small and medium game that are good eats? If you figure you can walk with 350 lbs. of meat sometimes thats about a lb a day! Thats a lot.
THNX

 

[sumpnz]

When properly wrapped and frozen in a 0 degF freezer game meat will easily last a year. The colder the freezer the longer it'll last.

Except for something like a moose, you're not likely to get 350# of boned out meat from many game animals. If you did get an elk that yielded that much it's probably from a monster bull which means the quality of the meat will be low. As in you'll pretty much be wanting to grind it all, or use it for stew meat. The steaks from such a large elk will be about as tender as shoe leather. To get that much you're talking about a 1000# live weight beast. Most elk top out around 800# live weight for bulls, and 600# for cows (and incidentally the cows are generally regarded as having higher quality meat) though certainly there examples of larger elk than that.

If you want 350# of good quality game meat, plan on needing to take at least 1 cow elk, 2 deer, and probably a couple fereal hogs. You'll likely have to plan on hunting in multiple states to accomplish that due to limitations on tag and species availability.

 

[Hoshua1]

Point of Refference

I don't intend to keep 350 lbs of meat for myself i just wanted to establish a few facts to further conseptualize the different types of hunting. I will take some older female deer when they no longer lactate or really effect the herd directly. I'll stick to pigs and rabbits for now.

1.Is it tru that hunting season overlaps rutting seasons for deer and elk? If tru its no wonder bulls are said to be tough and lesser quality. They're all hyped up on hormones, Lord! They probablysmell too! T or F?

 

[sumpnz]

I will take some older female deer when they no longer lactate or really effect the herd directly.

Pretty hard to tell that from a distance. You can make an educated guess, but that's about it.

Is it tru that hunting season overlaps rutting seasons for deer and elk?

Sometimes. The trophy hunts are usually scheduled to coincide with the rut since that's typically the only time the big, trophy size bucks/bulls are easilly found. However, getting a very large male will still result in lower quality meat even outside of the rut. But all of that extra testosterone during the rut doesn't help matters.

In AZ there are several deer seasons in each unit. Typically there's a late October and an early/mid November season. Both of those are before the rut. There are, in some units, trophy seasons designed to overlap with the rut in December, but those are hellish hard to draw for unless you are an archery hunter. For elk, the rut is usually in September-early Oct. There's usually at least some rifle, but mostly archer/muzzel-loader seasons during that time frame. Most elk seasons are actually scheduled after the rut.

They probablysmell too!

They all do, regardless of gender or time of year. Especially when gut shot.

 

[Hoshua1]

I hiked into the forest...

(A scenario)...So its probably smart to shoot at game that i can carry back to my camp/truck. Smaller game promotes variety in our diet/more species options, keeps me in the field, and very importly less long term freezer time means fresher meat and less over flow.

Is that a good state of mind?

 

[sumpnz]

It's not a bad state of mind. However, it's not that hard to get even a large elk out of the woods. As long as you have one or more of a) a group of friends to go with you, b) the skill to the quarter the animal, and c) access to a quad or horse you can get almost any animal out of the woods after downing it. Obviously the warmer the weather the more time critical the extraction becomes, and the more advatageous items a) and c) become.

For example, I shot a large cow elk back in October. It was a good mile or so to the nearest place we could get a truck. After field dressing we (my hunting partner and his dad) tied a rope around her neck and to the quad. I and my partner held the legs while his dad drove the quad. That dragging pretty much ruined the hide, but it got us to the truck with relatively little effort. Once there we loaded her into the trailer and then repeated the process to retreive my partner's elk (he got a yearling bull). We then drove them back to the camp where we skinned both and hung them in a tree overnight (mine was so big it had to be quartered before hanging). Only thing I wish we'd done differently would have been to have a sled or something similar to roll the elk onto in order to protect the hide while dragging.

Once the meat is frozen, assuming it's been properly wrapped and kept in a deep freeze, there's not much difference in the quality of 1 month old vs 9 month old meat. But, having the variety is also a good thing as is spending more time afield.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

There is a difference between elk and deer. With a deer, you can field dress it and that's enough to cool the carcass. You can also drag a whole deer by yourself (I've done it many a time.)

With an elk, field dressing is not enough -- especially in warm weather (and I've seen it above 60 degrees at 11,000 feet during the third rifle season in Colorado.) An elk is so big, and so well-insulated that its body heat cannot migrate to the surface and dissipate before the meat spoils. And, of course, you cannot drag a whole elk by yourself (to say nothing of the terrain in which you usually find elk.)

The solution for elk is to bone out the meat on the spot. Under very warm conditions, I make a cut down the backbone, peel off the hide, and bone out the meat on that side, putting the meat in plastic trash bags. Then I roll the carcass over, skin and bone the other side. Put some spruce branches on the ground, put the bagged meat on it, and cover with more spruce branches. It helps to leave a garment with it -- the scent will tend to discourage scavengers.

Take as much as you can reasonably carry -- perhaps the antlers and loins -- on your trip out. Mark the spot as a way-point with your GPS and put flagging tape around the spot, and leave a trail of flags as you hike out.

When you return for the next load, leave everything you don't need -- rifle, binoculars, ammo, etc. -- in camp. It helps if you can get a vehicle somewhere near the carcass. Even better, arrange beforehand for a horse or mule to pack out the carcass.