Hanging elk quarters while hunting

[Johnksully]

What is your preferred way of meat care while still out hunting (in Colorado). Say someone fills a tag and the weather is cool enough to hang quarters but there are others in the group still hunting...Do you find a spot in the woods and hang quarters in the shade? Or put meat in a cooler? Do you leave the tag with the quarters?

 

[Geewhiz]

Follow the local regs for tagging and make sure the meat stays cool. Simple as that.

 

[Tmac]

As long as there is no chance of rain, we hang them for at least a few days, sometimes 4-6 days if cold and dry with no chance of freezing solid. If it is wet and rainy, or real cold, we try to shelter the meat under a tarp and either get it to a processor or boned out in a cooler on day two.

 

[Poser]

I wouldn't leave it unattended and hanging in a way that a bear could get to it, but I would try to hang it as much as possible. Maybe that's just at night and it goes in the cooler during the day. Lots of factors to consider. Regardless, if you're out in September and its not unusually cold, you need to game bags that are impenetrable to flies if the meat will be out hanging in the day.

 

[Indian Summer]

Personally I’d make a trip to town for some dry ice after cleaning them up and hanging them until they cooled.

 

[Soj51hopeful]

I killed an elk opening morning one year and kept hunting with friends for the next 4 days. I built a rack of sticks in the back of my truck that has a shell top. Layed the quarters on the sticks, closed the back and everything was great.

 

[Brooks]

I would start hauling it out or pay someone with horses to come and pack it out . Not sure about Colorado but in NM a tag stays with the meat !!

 

[Dave_]

Depends on how cold it is. It's usually pretty warm during the day where I hunt. If its going to be more than a day or two I try to find a processor that can cold store the meat. If I use ice I try to cool it down overnight and then put meat on top of ice. You don't want your meat swiming.. dry ice is better

In CO you tag the carcass ( quarter with proof of sex attached). The tag stays with carcass. Head/antlers have to stay with carcass/tag while in camp or transport. Read the regs to make sure you know the rules

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[Idaboy]

If night temps below 50, then just have in bags and hang in shade, and you're good. Use a creek drainage with cooler air. Big factor is to decide to debone vs leave on. If marginal temps be very wary of bone sour on the big hind Qs. At minimum make a cut down to bone along a muscle group plane the length of hind Q bone to open it up. (Obviously hide off all meat) We've gone to deboning all the time mostly because it's going to take us 1-2 days to pack out regardless, and we want it cooled down. Just have plenty of bags so that large chunks of meat aren't balled up on each other. Remember it's not gonna cool down on your back while packing, so first 12 hrs after kill probably better to get hangin unless you're quick trip to truck and coolers

 

[Weldor]

If you hung it where I'm at right now, no worries it would get smoked and taste like juniper. LOL.

 

[buffybr]

In my almost 50 years of hunting here in Montana most of my hunts except some deer and antelope have been in grizzly country. Most of those hunts were either backpacked in or I/we used my horses to pack a camp in.

Only one of those hunts had a bear incident. Three of us were camped at the end of a Forest Service road near West Yellowstone. We had the quarters of two bull elk and a bull moose hanging in the stock rack in the back of my pickup.

One night a black bear tried to steal one of the backstraps from one on the elk. We heard the commotion and ran him off without the meat.

The next night I went outside our tent camper to check my horses, and a grizzly woofed at me from the top of the road cutbank next to our camp. He was woofing and clicking his teeth at me, so I fired one shot from my Ruger .44 mag over his head. It didn't phase him. So I fired another shot into the tree next to him. Again it didn't phase him.

So I holstered my pistol, picked up a golf ball size rock and threw it and hit him. He then ran off into the night.

There was another hunting camp about 1/4 mile down the road from ours that also had an elk hanging. He apparently went to their camp as we heard 5 or 6 quick pistol shots from their direction. Forty five minutes later we saw their headlights as they left.

The next morning I saddled one of my horses and followed the bear's tracks from our camp. They went straight to the other camp, then from that camp there was an occasional drop of blood in the snow. He went to the far end of a timber clearcut, then headed back toward our camp.

We then gave up on a third elk and broke camp and went home.

The grizzly had a radio collar and an ear tag, and when we reproted the incident to FWP, we learned that he had been a problem bear near Cooke City, had been trapped and release in the area that we were hunting.

I later found out that the Grizzly Study team had tracked him to his winter den, then the following spring they found his collar.