Post by: squeeze2drop on June 26, 2010, 11:27:23 PM
Post by: JackOfAllTrades on June 27, 2010, 12:42:07 AM
Buddy left me at lunch time.. We were a few miles in on game trails. He went left, I went right. Should have been about a six mile swing/loop around this range back to camp give or take for each of us. I didn't know it, but about an hour after we left each other he dumps a nice buck about four miles from a road.
Hunting speed, that six mile trek put me at my truck at dusk. I waited near an hour there for him. No show, so I headed back to camp which was still another four miles driving. I get to the camper we pulled off the truck and started some dinner. As I stepped out the door with a slice of pizza in my hand and a beer, I noticed that his truck was gone... Duh! So I start lookin for a note. Duh! Right on the table. I didn't even see it as I tossed my day pack on the table when I climbed in. "The road that the big green military tent is on with the four guys. Two miles down, you'll see my truck. Follow the ribbons west from my truck. Gonna need to pack this one out in pieces."
Hell, I didn't make it to his truck until 10:30pm. I found a ribbon west of his truck, took a compass bearing. Found another ribbon. Adjusted bearing. Never found one more ribbon. It starts pissin rain. Steady on course for a half hour. Pulled out my 44 mag. Bang!.. No return fire. Kept going for another 30 minutes or so and once on top of a rise, Bang!. Nothin. Kept going for a while. Rain stopped. Got on another rise. Blasted a couple from the 44 mag again. 'Pop, pop pop' to my right from his 1911. I headed that way another hundred yards or so over a couple little draws. Biggest bodied buck I've ever seen. I actually said holy crap or something to that affect, as I didn't get good view of the rump and hadn't seen antler yet, I thought he dropped a Cow Elk.
We didn't bone it out. Just quartered and head/hide/backstrap two trips each.
We were exhausted that night. No early hunt in the morning for me. Oh.. then I had to rebuild his Chevy Luv carburator before he could leave camp to head for home.
Worst haul-out yet! I've packed animals out in pieces before, but that one was a pain in the arse!
Oh.. BEST drag out? Dropped a good sized spike blacktail down a ravine right next to a road. Paracute cord on the winch brought him right up to the road edge. We swung him up on the tailgate and went home. We'd already broke camp on the last day of the season.
-Steve
Post by: halflife65 on June 27, 2010, 01:07:22 AM
On the last day of deer season WAY the hell out and gone in the Little Naches unit by myself, I shoot this sort of small buck. This was probably around 96 or 97 - I was just out of school, had no money, wearing my all cotton outfit (I'd highly recommend this if you want to die) and warm from walking down in those steep canyons. It poured rain all day and I was soaking wet. I ended up shooting this buck and wanted to get from the bottom of this canyon I was in to the top, where there was this old abandoned trail. I picked the deer up on my shoulders and made it about 50 feet - not going to work with the whole deer. I had a cheesy backpack you'd use to put school books in, so boning it out and putting it in there was a no go. So I cut the deer in half and started carrying half at a time up this hill - leapfrogging every few hundred yards so that I wouldn't have to go back too far to get the other half.
At some point up the hill, the rain turned to snow - like blizzard conditions. I got cold, even carrying this deer up the hill - I should've been sweating my butt off so I started to get a little worried. I finally got to the top and it got dark with still blizzard conditions. I don't think it was that cold, just barely cold enough to snow and start to stick - I was just soaking wet. I had a flashlight (didn't own a headlamp at the time), so I was carrying the light in one hand, the rifle in the other, balancing half a deer at a time on my back and trying to negotiate an abandoned trail, which was really hard to follow in the dark and snow. I knew the direction back but getting off the trail was really hard walking through blowdown, brush and crap, so I wanted to follow it as best as I could. I was getting really cold at this point.
So, as I walked along, the front lens of my flashlight fell off and the bulb popped out. I mean, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face and I didn't have an extra. So, I ended up crawling around on my hands and knees feeling in the couple inches of snow and actually found the bulb. I never did find the lens but I could use my finger to hold the bulb in place and the light would work.
I ended up stashing the deer and just taking off down the trail - really shaking hard and soaking wet. It was still a couple miles out, but I was almost running trying to get warm. I got to my pickup and had the heat all the way on and just couldn't get warm, so I went down to those cabins in Cliffdell - I got there about 9 or so, I think. I walked into the front office and, mercifully, someone was actually there. I was soaked and covered in blood from the deer on my shoulders and must've looked really bad because the guy behind the counter was concerned about me. I got a cabin and bought a six pack, took a shower, opened a beer, sat back on a pillow and woke up in the morning with the beer in my hand - I didn't even get one drink out of it.
Anyway, I had caulked (cork) boots in the truck, so I put on my dry clothes, my corks and a packboard and went back out, boned out the deer, put it on the packboard and walked out - really uneventful at that point.
Anyway, almost dying taught me all of the lessons that I already knew about going prepared plus one more - It CAN happen to me.
Post by: PolarBear on June 27, 2010, 01:41:57 AM
Post by: jeepasaurusrex on June 27, 2010, 01:44:24 AM
Best damn deer we ever ate. :EAT:
Post by: ICEMAN on June 27, 2010, 06:32:18 AM
Post by: woodman on June 27, 2010, 06:42:36 AM
Post by: BLKBEARKLR on June 27, 2010, 07:36:34 AM
But my worst drag ever on an animal was a caribou. A friend and I were hunting in Alaska around the Tok area. Was in January on a registration hunt. It was about 25 below zero. We drove all up and down the road trying to find some caribou passing through. Well no luck with that. So we found a snow mobile trail heading off on the right side and in we went. About 2 miles in, we could see some caribou in the tree line so we laid down and watched them for about 45 minutes. You could only shoot males and they had no horns so you had to watch for the willies on them. We both got one picked out and at same time shot and dropped two caribou. Got over to them gutted them out. And then tied roopes to one dragged it for about 500 feet came back and got the other one. We kept flipflopping the caribou until I looked over and noticed there was slack in my buddies rope. That is when I figures out his behind was slacking when we were pulling together. So decided the best course of action was to pull them seperately. So we started doing that. A 250-275 pound animal across four feet of snow was no fun. About a mile into the pull is when the wolves started fricken howling. So we kind of knew we were probably not doing the right thing. Anyways kept puling them until I got to the road I was about 500 yards in front of Danny. I was in the ditch getting my breath back when this old time pulled up and jumped out of his truck to make sure I was ok. I was other than sweating my butt off and dehydrated. So he gave me a hand we got the caribou in the truck and then I waited for Danny to get there. He got there got caribou in the truck . And that is when the real adventure began. Hunting in Alaska in never just hunting it is always a survival/adventure but that is another story. So my worst drag ever was a fricken caribou in Alaska at 25 below zero through 4 feet of snow. I told myself from that day on no matter what I kill if I can't see the truck it gets quartered and packed out and I have yet to drag anything to the truck.
Joe
Post by: Wea300mag on June 27, 2010, 08:03:19 AM
My worst was helping a buddy get a deer out in Montana. I already had my deer and was hanging out in camp when he arrived at noon to say he had a deer down. He already had a plan to recover it and it would be easiest to drag it(he said) :bash:. There was a decent trail system in this area but the one he figured we would walk in on ended up being about 4-1/2 miles to get to the deer. We start dragging and after about 2 hours it's starts getting dark and we hit another trail. I was familiar with this trail and figured we had about 2-1/2 miles to get to camp. I was fed up with dragging so I told him were were going to go get the frames and walk this thing out on the trail in quarters. When we got back to camp to retrieve the frames it was about 10pm so we decided to get the deer first thing the next morning and we did just that. The bottom line is we walked about 14 miles total over a full 24 hours when we should have just took the frames in on the "correct" trail the first trip and saved half the walk and half a day.
Post by: boneaddict on June 27, 2010, 08:15:31 AM
Post by: Wanttohuntmore on June 27, 2010, 09:29:20 AM
Post by: coachcw on June 27, 2010, 09:42:31 AM
Post by: STIKNSTRINGBOW on June 27, 2010, 10:45:15 AM
We had hiked in and set up camp about 6 miles in, and hunted from there.
After seeing a bunch of goats up on a ridge, we climbed to the top, only to find beds and tracks.
We decided to get up on top before daylight the next morning, so after a short nights sleep we climbed up on top, and sat down watching both sides of the ridge as the sun came up.
Next thing I know, I hear him shoot !
As I cleared the top of the ridge to see his side, I see a goat flopping over and over on its way down a steep shale slope, so without thinking, I slid down and grabbed onto a leg to stop it's descent.
After sliding down further, I was able to grab onto a small tree to stop us both from sliding further, and saw that we were about to go over a VERY long drop ! :yike:
My partner was standing on top looking down, and I yelled at him to get a rope out of my pack, tie it to a tree and throw it down.
After he did that, I tied the rope to the goat, and used it to climb up to top.
We tried to pull the goat up, but it was too heavy for us, and kept hanging up on rocks.
I used the rope to get down to it, and gutted it to "lighten the load", but it still was to cumbersome to pull up off of the damn slide.
So I got the game-bags out and boned it right were it was, with both of us tied to the side of that hill.
I lost the heart/liver with the rest of the entrails, as I wasn't quick (or smart) enough to grab them before they slid down and off into space...
after getting the meat and hide in a more manageable condition, we pulled it off of there to top of ridge, got a long piece of wood and suspended the load between us to carry to camp.
About half way to camp, he suggested taking a "short-cut" :bdid: so we could make camp before dark (where did the day go ?)
Unfortunately this turned into another "scramble" down a steep rocky cliff area, and we had to lower the meat/hide by rope, and climb down.
We eventually made it back to camp, and had tenderloins over the fire for dinner before sleep.
The pack out to the trailhead was relatively uneventful, other than my trip, stumble, run, fall, due to the extra weight in my pack, but that is a different story.....
Post by: steen on June 27, 2010, 01:10:31 PM
Post by: DOUBLELUNG on June 27, 2010, 01:25:17 PM
Post by: JackOfAllTrades on June 27, 2010, 08:37:45 PM
Post by: DOUBLELUNG on June 28, 2010, 06:08:45 AM
Something significant about Nov. 15th 2007.Yep. Worked a full day Nov.14 until 4:00pm, drove 1,050 miles overnight, arrived at my Wyoming trailhead at 10:00am. Grabbed pack and rifle, hiked in 4 miles. Shot a raghorn bull around 1:00pm, was following up when the heart attack and TIA (mini stroke) hit. Left elk for the coyotes :(, 8 hours/3 miles later finally got a cell signal on about the 5th high knob I tried. Could barely speak due to TIA, but finally got through to WYG&F where I was and that I was having a medical emergency. Finally made it to the nearest vehicle access (still over a mile from my truck), had nothing left so I lay down in the road. Two wardens arrived soon after, drove me an hour to the ambulance, and another 1/2 hr to hospital. Around 1:00am I got the word from the ER doc what the diagnosis was. The rigor of my hunting activity has been toned down ever since.
Post by: halflife65 on June 28, 2010, 09:32:30 AM
Post by: DOUBLELUNG on June 28, 2010, 09:47:41 AM
Wow. I'm glad that you made it out.Thanks! I figure every day since is a bonus!
Post by: whacker1 on June 28, 2010, 10:02:29 AM
Post by: Curly on June 28, 2010, 10:13:29 AM
Post by: NRA4LIFE on June 28, 2010, 10:15:12 AM
Post by: bobcat on June 28, 2010, 10:43:55 AM
I don't drag anymore unless it's 100 yards from the truck and down hill.
:yeah:
I prefer to partially bone out deer. I like to leave the hind quarters intact. The rest of it I like to bone out, so that I don't have to carry out any ribs, back bone, head, legs, etc.
I absolutely HATE dragging deer out. I see no reason for it, because when I get home I will have to skin the deer and cut it up anyway. I figure I might as well do a good part of that work while I am still in the woods.
Post by: Sorefeet on June 28, 2010, 11:11:17 AM
Happy trails!
Post by: squeeze2drop on June 28, 2010, 11:43:59 AM
Post by: Sorefeet on June 28, 2010, 11:47:21 AM
Taught me a big lesson.
Post by: 1morebuck on June 28, 2010, 12:23:20 PM
First year of archery elk. Hunting buddy Barny and I follow a herd of 12 cows and one 4x4 raghorn for three miles. It was actually just a big loop that ended near a large hay field. I sent the arrow and hit heart/lung gold and the bull walked 15 yards and dropped. We waited 30 minutes and headed over. I had nailed a bull my first year out archery Roosie hunting. Pulling out my Kershaw, I began the gutting process. Just as I pulled the two pieces of heart that my muzzy had split in two we hear a kid from the top of the hay field yelling at us. I stood up to talk with him and he was excited that we had knocked this bull down. Then out of no where he offered to get his backhoe and drive it to his farm a mile away! We hiked back to my 1970 International "cornbinder" and drove ten miles out of the back roads to get to the farm. The kid and his grandpa pulled up to my truck and we slid the bull, whole, in my truck. To top it off they gave us a beer and invited us back to hunt the property! :IBCOOL:
Post by: dreamingbig on June 28, 2010, 12:38:50 PM
Post by: coachcw on June 28, 2010, 12:49:52 PM
Post by: halflife65 on June 28, 2010, 01:05:06 PM
double lung U win
Agreed. Even if the pack out was just yourself.
Post by: JackOfAllTrades on June 28, 2010, 01:58:01 PM
Quote
Thanks! I figure every day since is a bonus!
It wasn't your time to go! Just a warning?
Thanks for sharing that, because each of us needs to know our limits, and just reading through other people's experiences teaches those that pay attention. Most of my hunting partners over the years are overweight, out of shape, (except for Wally), and smoke. I'm no saint and not in the best of shape, but better than most that don't run five miles a day. Yet, I know that at any time any one of us could have an annurism, clot, heart attack in the field. Your perseveriance that night saved your life. Some people would just give up and die out there. Which is OK too, I guess. I hope to die doing something I enjoy. But pushing one's self to absolute extremes, being sleep deprived, not eating healthy, drinkin and smokin, is certain to put ya on the fast track to meeting our maker.
That said... Dragging an animal out whole is for the birds. Deer carts are relatively cheap -and useful in a lot of situations. Mine stays back at camp until I need it. I still always have an empty frame pack, (packboard) buried in my gear back at base camp.
-Steve
Post by: squeeze2drop on June 28, 2010, 02:40:34 PM
Post by: Elkpiss on June 28, 2010, 04:01:04 PM
Great topic! I've had some whopper drag/pack outs, but here is the easiest one I have ever had:
First year of archery elk. Hunting buddy Barny and I follow a herd of 12 cows and one 4x4 raghorn for three miles. It was actually just a big loop that ended near a large hay field. I sent the arrow and hit heart/lung gold and the bull walked 15 yards and dropped. We waited 30 minutes and headed over. I had nailed a bull my first year out archery Roosie hunting. Pulling out my Kershaw, I began the gutting process. Just as I pulled the two pieces of heart that my muzzy had split in two we hear a kid from the top of the hay field yelling at us. I stood up to talk with him and he was excited that we had knocked this bull down. Then out of no where he offered to get his backhoe and drive it to his farm a mile away! We hiked back to my 1970 International "cornbinder" and drove ten miles out of the back roads to get to the farm. The kid and his grandpa pulled up to my truck and we slid the bull, whole, in my truck. To top it off they gave us a beer and invited us back to hunt the property! :IBCOOL:
Thats a good story dude.. It dont get no better then that, suprised they didnt give you a hoggie sandwich too!! :chuckle:
Post by: Sorefeet on June 28, 2010, 09:58:41 PM
Post by: bear on June 28, 2010, 10:26:51 PM
Post by: halflife65 on June 28, 2010, 11:22:57 PM
Worst drag ever was when my brother shot a spike deer..... in the head. The antlers were completely loose. It's no fun to try and drag them uphill without anything good to hang on to. Bear
I drew a doe tag one year and shot one outside of Morton in this really thick brush in a STEEP clearcut. This was before I had a packboard. I found it impossible to drag, so I went back to my truck and dumped my extra clothes out of my gym bag, went back to the deer, boned it out and brought it up in the bag. No kidding, there was a game warden standing on the landing when I got to the top. I'm carrying this bag full of meat with blood dripping out of the bottom. "Whatchya got in the bag, son?" All legal with the old time tag (before the yellow sticker they had for a few years) tied in its ear, so he just kind of smiled and shook his head. I was probably 18 or so. That's definitely NOT my hardest pack out but it was kind of funny. Come to think of it, that's the only doe I've ever shot, too.
Post by: Buschingc on June 29, 2010, 12:51:14 AM
Post by: STIKNSTRINGBOW on June 29, 2010, 01:29:47 AM
Due to the steep upward angle, the arrow hit thhrough one lung into the spine and the deer just rolled over and over until it lay in the road in front of the truck !
We turned the truck around, gutted it and threw it on top of the firewood and drove back to camp.
He still swears that deer are attracted to the sound of chainsaws.
Post by: JackOfAllTrades on June 29, 2010, 12:53:49 PM
Quote
He still swears that deer are attracted to the sound of chainsaws.
There's more than one person that'll back that statement up!
-Steve
Post by: littlemac on June 29, 2010, 12:58:16 PM
QuoteHe still swears that deer are attracted to the sound of chainsaws.
There's more than one person that'll back that statement up!
-Steve
Great place to hunt is a logging operation (if there are any left).
The deer love the downed tree bows I guess. I have talked with loggers that kept a 30-30 handy (like in the cab of a skidder) and got their deer every year while at work.
Go figure. :yike:
Post by: runamuk on June 29, 2010, 12:59:35 PM
QuoteHe still swears that deer are attracted to the sound of chainsaws.
There's more than one person that'll back that statement up!
-Steve
I find the recently logged areas in the forest usually full of deer not sure if they like sniffing diesel or are just nosey :dunno: :dunno:
Post by: Pathfinder101 on June 29, 2010, 04:45:54 PM
CoryTDF in his younger years...
Post by: bow4elk on June 29, 2010, 04:53:53 PM
Post by: Rob on June 29, 2010, 05:54:49 PM
He was in Africa on a safari, and there was a gimped up giraffe (survived a lion attack I guess) hanging out near camp. My dad’s friend asked the Professional hunter (PH) if he could shoot the gimped up giraffe for half price. The PH said no. Days pass, and every night around the fire the PH and my dad’s buddy go through the same routine:
Dads Buddy: Can I shoot the the gimpy giraffe for half Price?
PH: No
Finally, on about day 12 of a 15 day hunt (gotta love safaris) the PH gives in. The y go out and find the injured giraffe right on the road! He shoots it and it drops to the ground in a crumpled heap dead as a doornail. Giraffe can be 14 feet tall and weigh in at 2600 pounds. So having it fall by the road was a windfall.
Dads buddy walks over to get a photo of him standing on the neck. (the readers are all yelling at the top of their lungs “don’t open that door! Just turn around and walk away and everything will be OK!!”
Well there is a saying in Africa that goes like this “It is the dead ones that kill you”.
About this time, the Giraffe “came to” and imagine it’s surprise when it discovered a guy standing on its neck! It flung itself up, shot my dads buddy off its neck like he was standing on a catapult, and proceeded to run about t200 yards into the thickest, nastiest brush Africa had to offer. And died (for real this time).
It took them a good 4-5 hours to cut a path inot where the giraffe lay, and another full day and a half to skin it, and pack it out piece by piece. And this was the PH, hunter and 2-3 trackers all working together.
He had the hide tanned and on the floor in his hunting lodge in Texas… He can now stand on the neck with no danger to himself or others.
Post by: brew on June 29, 2010, 08:03:38 PM
Post by: Tony 270 on June 29, 2010, 08:18:23 PM
Post by: yelp on June 29, 2010, 08:32:47 PM
Post by: bow4elk on June 29, 2010, 08:59:56 PM
Post by: yelp on June 29, 2010, 09:26:43 PM
yelp, don't tell me that thing gets use in turkey camp too :chuckle: I love it!
Almost as good as a badlands pack..LOL Only the turkeys I shoot..I usually have to quarter mine! LOL
Post by: strutnrut1984 on June 29, 2010, 09:57:14 PM
Post by: Pathfinder101 on June 30, 2010, 11:38:55 AM
Uphill we went.
First we tried to drag him whole (gutted). Made it about 50 yards and we could see that wasn't going to happen. So, he hiked back to his house to get his 3 wheeler (this was back in the 80's when everyone had 3 wheelers instead of quads). We piled the deer on the back seat and tried driving up the hill, but it was so steep we flipped it over. Tried sidehilling, but just tipped over sideways. We finally flipped it over so many times that we flooded it, and it wouldn't start. So, we cut the buck in half. He took the front half, I took the back half (he wanted to leave the cape intact, so we didn't remove the head) and carried that beast out of there. It took us the rest of the day. Of course, looking back on it now, we should have quartered it and humped it out that way, but we were both 16, it was the first deer either of us had shot "on our own", and we had no clue what we were doing. He shot that buck at first light, and we didn't have it hung in the barn until well after dark.
Post by: Pathfinder101 on June 30, 2010, 11:43:35 AM
Post by: Skyvalhunter on June 30, 2010, 12:09:34 PM
Post by: Pathfinder101 on June 30, 2010, 12:14:08 PM
Won't work in the areas I hunt. :dunno:
Wouldn't have worked in the area where my buddy shot his buck in my story either. But it sure is nice in open country, or if you can find a horse trail in the mountains. That picture was from last fall in Montana. We figured we put 12 miles on that deer cart by the time the season was over...
Post by: Woodchuck on June 30, 2010, 12:44:26 PM
in 08 elk hunting with my nephew, sitting on a fairly steep hillside watching two meadows, a lone spike comes wandering toward me, as he turns to head down hill i let him have it, as soon as he piled, i grabbed my radio and yelled that we had a spike down, as the words are coming out my mouth, here comes his spike brother, so my nephew steps out from behind me and lets him have it, the second was standing on very steep ground and he went tumbling....ALOT. so we start to move toward my elk as it was closer, he decides that it was a good time to go into his death thrash, and a tumbling he goes....ALOT. so we wander on down to the edge of hell where two dead elk lay within 50 yds of each other and i begin the task of field dressing one elk, it is at this point i tell my tell my nephew to hand me the bone saw i told him him to put in his pack before we left camp...i get the oops blank stare from him :bash:, so with my trusty lock back knife and a rock i begin. this task could not have been done any better by circus performers, my poor nephew trying to stop it fom sliding, me trying to prevent my self from being drug to death by a renegade dead elk. after finishing that one we moved to the next and it is at this point i decided it was gonna be a better idea to try to drag them whole down to a 4-wheeler trail :bdid: so i begin the task of shale wrestling with the second elk by his time my trusty knife was becoming not so trusty and nearly had to use the rock to bash the blade through his hide :bash:, i look up and see the other guys in the party standing above me, them still being on the upside of hell, shaking their heads at me, now looking like charlie manson had kicked me out of the family for being too violent :yike:. we begin to drag one down the hill and then crawling back to the other because in my wisdom i had convinced them it was a good idea to only make one trip down, the part about making lots of little ups balancing out to be about the same as one long up somehow slipped my mind :dunno: . as we slide these elk down every so often they would have a little more steam than us, so we let em slide, of couse every time they stop, it is tangled up brush etc, one dropped into an unseen 4ft deep little gully :bdid:. at this point i overhear the rest of the guys plotting my early demise. only took us about 5 hours to drag those two little spikes the approx 700 yards to the trail where one of the grandpas met us with the 4-wheeler and the truck and away we go. we shot those elk at about 8:30 in the morning, had em hung just shy of 8 that night, what a great day. i kinda shy away from that spot these days :dunno:
Post by: BLUEBULLS on June 30, 2010, 02:51:01 PM
Post by: Austrian Hunter on June 30, 2010, 03:59:55 PM
Never drug a deer, have always packed them out.
But my worst drag ever on an animal was a caribou. A friend and I were hunting in Alaska around the Tok area. Was in January on a registration hunt. It was about 25 below zero. We drove all up and down the road trying to find some caribou passing through. Well no luck with that. So we found a snow mobile trail heading off on the right side and in we went. About 2 miles in, we could see some caribou in the tree line so we laid down and watched them for about 45 minutes. You could only shoot males and they had no horns so you had to watch for the willies on them. We both got one picked out and at same time shot and dropped two caribou. Got over to them gutted them out. And then tied roopes to one dragged it for about 500 feet came back and got the other one. We kept flipflopping the caribou until I looked over and noticed there was slack in my buddies rope. That is when I figures out his behind was slacking when we were pulling together. So decided the best course of action was to pull them seperately. So we started doing that. A 250-275 pound animal across four feet of snow was no fun. About a mile into the pull is when the wolves started fricken howling. So we kind of knew we were probably not doing the right thing. Anyways kept puling them until I got to the road I was about 500 yards in front of Danny. I was in the ditch getting my breath back when this old time pulled up and jumped out of his truck to make sure I was ok. I was other than sweating my butt off and dehydrated. So he gave me a hand we got the caribou in the truck and then I waited for Danny to get there. He got there got caribou in the truck . And that is when the real adventure began. Hunting in Alaska in never just hunting it is always a survival/adventure but that is another story. So my worst drag ever was a fricken caribou in Alaska at 25 below zero through 4 feet of snow. I told myself from that day on no matter what I kill if I can't see the truck it gets quartered and packed out and I have yet to drag anything to the truck.
Joe
Cool story, would love to hear the other adventure when you went into the truck!
Post by: vandeman17 on June 30, 2010, 04:05:13 PM
Post by: Pathfinder101 on June 30, 2010, 05:31:01 PM
Post by: Alchase on July 01, 2010, 12:43:32 PM
Anyway, I got about 1/3 the way a crossed and all heck broke loose. I lost my footing when I stepped into a deep whole at the same time the buck decided to head downstream at a fast rate of speed and over backwards I went. After the intitail cold shock I could not stop laughing at my stupidity long enough to get my feet back under me. It seemed like a forever long distance floating downstream head first on my back, in reality it was only about 30 feet. When I was finally able to get my feet under me, the bank was to high for me to climb out of the creek bed. I had to push and pull the deer downstream to a low spot. Both the buck and I were soaked to the bone. The only smart thing I did was leave my rifle and pack leaning against a tree before I crossed the creak. By the time I dragged it back to my truck, I was to tired and cold to lift it in the bed of my truck. I had to climb in the cab took off most of my wet clothes and cranked up the heat. Luckily I had another coat and sweatshirt in the truck. It took me about 30 min. before I was warm enough to stop shivering and get the buck in the bed.
I guess you could say the buck dragged me, lol
Post by: huntindoc on July 02, 2010, 12:06:02 AM
Post by: Pathfinder101 on July 02, 2010, 08:05:53 AM
After pictures, I realized I was about 3 miles as the crow flies from camp...
How many times has that happened to everyone....? :chuckle: :chuckle: THat's about the time you stop grinning and start looking around, in every direction, as if you were trying to suddenly discover an unknown road construction project that will make it to your location by the time you get done gutting him... :chuckle: :chuckle: