With the aid of extra headlamps (I always carry two, sometimes three) and a small folding saw Marcus carries, we were able to light up the area we had cleared for the huge task at hand. It was only 6 pm and darkness owned the sky. Between us, we have been on well over 50 elk dis-assemblies, but this one had us both scratching our heads. It was going to take some ingenuity.
I decided we would leave him on his side. I would take the top front shoulder off first. I figured the less weight, the lower the risk of him breaking the P-cord and surfing down the slope. The P-cord could have been tuned to play dueling banjos, given how taught it was. With the front shoulder off I did the backstraps, T-loins, and all trim meat I could carve away. I then moved to the hind quarter and decided I best keep the proof of sex attached to the top quarter in the event things when downhill. With considerable effort, we somehow got that hind removed from the carcass. Now what?
We tried to roll him. No dice. The weight was pulling the P-cord so tight we could not roll his head. We only had one choice. Re-tie the P-cord to the bottom side front leg and remove the head as he lay. Talk about a task. That was harder than any part of this job and surely a greater effort than any head I've ever removed.
With the head removed, we had to try roll him over. Still no luck. We had one choice; untie the front leg and let him slide. Wherever he came to rest, hopefully we could access the underside. And with that we let him go. He only made it about five yards before some more oaks claimed him as their own. He was on his back and pointing slightly downhill. That gave us the opportunity to roll him on to the side we had just processed, tie him off, and pull his hind further down the hill.
Again, the P-cord was fiddle-tight. The weight being reduced by our work on the first side did make him easier to handle. I first took off the remaining hind. I then skinned him up the back to where the front quarter protected the backstrap. I carved out the back end of that backstrap, taking me up to shoulders. That backstrap had no choice but to come out in two pieces. With the front leg still tied, I somehow was able to carve around the brisket and remove the front quarter, and in doing so, the now quarterless carcass slid a few feet further down the hill. I was able to get the remainder of the backstrap, trim, and other goodies.
We were spent. This had taken the better part of three hours. We now had decisions of what to take, what to leave, and what route to try navigate. It is here where I made a call for the sake of safety. In our daily packs, we carry pretty heavy loads. I knew it meant an extra trip, but I did not feel comfortable navigating these rocks and ledges, in the dark, in a place I'd never been, with heavy loads of meat added to the weight we carry. We would have our hands full trying to pull ourselves through this brush with what we had.
It took over any hour to gain the saddle from where we did our shooting. With no time to lose we hustled down the rim trail another mile to the launch point where we had to bushwack up another 600' of vertical brush. At 11:15 pm, we arrived at the Yamaha, completely spent. Now, we had an 1:45 minute drive back to camp. It was long, chilly, and hard to stay awake.
When we got to camp I told Marcus my liver was about to crash and we would sleep in. Whatever the plan for extraction, it would come to us the next morning. And it did. While eating a 9 am breakfast we decided we would haul a spike camp over to the place we left the road, as we fully expected it would take two days to get this bull out. Slamming down some raisin bran and a bagel, we drove the two hours around the loop, this time in my Titan. It was slower, but allowed us to carry some creature comforts for the night at this spot.
When we arrived, a group of six ATVs and twelve hunters were parked near where we dropped off the mesa. They had cow tags, expressing no interest in doing what we did. They laughed and commented about me being some sort of tough guy to shoot a bull there. I lectured them to not confuse "stupid" with being "tough."
Our plan was to get as much as we could out of the canyon and up to the saddle. Our last loads of the day we would take all the way with us and up to the truck that night. By 4:30 pm we had boned it all and hauled both hinds, one front, and all the trim/T-Loin/backstraps to the saddle where we hung it in grove of spruce, exposed to a thermal breeze that would blow on them all night. The only casualty of the trip being a stick in my right eye that gave me double vision and is causing me to doctor with an ophthalmologist here at home. It is the most painful eye injury I've had, thankfully having had very few. Trees have a lot of fungus, so if you jab a stick in your eye, get it checked. Odds are, you will be given a dose of antibiotic to kill any fungus that can cause lasting eye damage.
Knowing darkness would be upon us before we got up the last grade, I grabbed a boned out hind and Marcus grabbed the bag of trim/Loins/Straps. We hustled down the rim trail to the spot where we would have to labor up another 600' of vertical brush to where we had parked. By a little after 6 pm, and in complete dark, we stumbled to the truck, worn and tired. Even worse, knowing we had two more bad trips ahead of us in the morning.
Camping here was far better than driving the round trip back to our main camp. The view was pretty damn nice. Photo credit to Marcus Hockett.
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