For you elk hunters;
can yall give me a quick run down on how to skin and quarter an elk with out hanging it?

Many Thanks
Perry

This is the system I use:

With the ungutted elk on it's side, cut off the lower legs at the joints and skin one side of the animal to the spine. Lay the still attached skin flesh side up to keep it clean and spread it out on the ground. Take the front shoulder off, no bones to cut, just slice it off and put it in a clean game bag. Take the rear leg off by cutting along the inside seam of the pelvis to the hip socket. Cut through the socket and sever the tendon inside it. Continue taking the leg off and place it in the game bag with the shoulder. Remove the backstrap and place it in the game bag. Now you can remove the meat on the neck, flank and ribcage by fileting it off and bagging it.

When you get done with this part, half of the elk is now in a game bag. Get another game bag out and roll the elk over onto the skin layed on the ground. Repeat the process and you will have boned out everything except the 4 legs. I usually take a few minutes to bone them as well sine I only take meat out of the field. I hate packing bones. The guts are sill inside the animal and you are not stumbling over them.

After taking care of the major parts of the carcass, you can reach inside the ribcage and get both tenderloins, the heart and liver. You can hang the game bags off a tree limb and the meat will cool very quickly.

This system works very well and you don't get all bloody dressing the animal first. All the meat is kept clean and is bagged as soon as it comes off the carcass. One man can take an elk apart in about an hour by himself when he is familiar with the process. Practice with something smaller like a deer and you will see how easy this system is.

One word of warning, in some states you need to leave evidence of sex attached to a piece of the carcass. If it is a cow, you can leave a set of tits on a rear leg. If it is a bull, you can leave a nut. I fill out the carcass tag and attach it to whatever piece of meat has the evidence of sex. That way if I get checked I usually only have to open one bag to show the warden.

After I'm dome with the carcass and get the meat back to camp, I take a few minutes to trim away any bloodshot or damaged meat and then I place the meat in large ziplock bags and put it in a cooler on ice. The meat is clean, chilled and out of sight so nobody knows you are getting game and they don't crowd you out.

Cheers

Mac

Mac's method is good and my brother and I have used it on Moose as they can be hard to roll around and gut in the conventional method. There are a couple other ways to do an elk and it is good to be familiar with a few as they all have an advantage in different situations. A lot of your methods depend on where you get the animal down and what method of transport you will be using. For me it has always been "the elk is down on the steep side of the mountain 5 miles from the truck in the blowdowns and dark timber and I will be carrying the quarters out on packframe by my self, bushwhacking, as there is no trail" pretty normal situation for a few of us.
If you are lucky enough to have horse about you can gut it on the ground, split the carcass end to end and again across just above the hips and throw the elk quarters in panniers on the horse and be gone leaving the hide on to help keep it clean. This method means you must be in cold weather and have horses. Another method is to gut him there on the ground (usually its so damn steep you have to tie the elk to a tree so it won't slide down the hill and once the guts are out they roll 10' away from you un assisted) skin him on his back rolling him from side to side to get under him, knock the legs off at the knee joint, seperate / lift the shoulders and neck from the carcass by cutting the rib meat to go with the shoulders, on the rear hams cut to the ball joint and take the ham, remove back strap and tenderloins and bag, there you have it 5 pieces and a head if you need to take it. In Colorado as Mac stated evidence of sex must remain naturally attached at all times. In Alaska the only thing legally you could leave behind was the spine, ribs had to come out with the meat so you could use Macs method but in a modified sense.
Good luck and make sure you are hunting only as far "in" as you want to carry one "out".

Try the gutless method, if you are near a vehicle do as Mac says, but if you are packing it out and the law allows it, just remove the four quarters, roll the carcass onto the belly remove the back straps, go in from the sides at the groin to get to the inner loins. I can do it with barely getting any blood even on my hands. You don't even have to open the paunch.

I do it MACs way I do moose that way all the time.I get the ribs last so the guts onlt touch them.I have dressed some nasty road kill moose that will turn your stomach if you git them and ruin your meat.I did the first moose by myself this year.It was hard but not too bad.I was lucky 6 soldiers help me load it.They wanted the heart,liver and inside back straps and tongue .The trade off was worth the help.I skinned it all and cut it up by myself.I do like to tie off legs if your by yourself.You would not believe how many cant cut up a moose.A moose is a hudge job better done by two instead of one.I use a comealong to pull the legs up tight.If there are no trees I take rebar to stake the rops to pull the legs up.You should clean a moose at night with a flash light and grizzleys snapping their jaws in the bushes.A friend who is a little tougher thanm me cleaned 3 road kill buffalo at -60 in the dark by himself.I have gone on alot of road kills with him.Some people use a chainsaw with wesson oil in it to cut up the moose.I do like it to cut off the ribs and head.In Alaska you have to get all the meat.In wonder unit 13 you have to pack out the head ,hide,heart and liver.That adds a bunch of meat .I do like to debone the meat as quick as I can.I also but the meat in coolers with gallon ice jugs to age it.You have never cleaned anything till you do a moose.I did 3 in one week once for myself and friends I was worn out.Once we tired to hang a moose my friends idea not mine.The garage we tired it in almost fell in.I told him to let it down after the center beam bent about 2 foot.Yep you have to leave the sex organs attached to a quater which is a pain in the butt.

I pack them out on horseback and do it this way:

After gutting, cut off the head and lower legs. Cut the carcass in half between the 3rd and 4th rib. Once you've cut to the backbone either use your saw or axe to cut the rest of the way through. Two axes work the best, one on the bone and the other one to strike the back of the one against bone. Work your way up, a vertabrae at a time. This will make a very clean cut and not mess up your back straps.

Once in half, use the double axe technique down the center of the back bone. If you have a pack horse and panniers or a saddle horse with saddle panniers, go ahead and completely seperate the quarters and your ready to go.

If you only have a saddle horse, cut the back bone in half, but leave the hide attached. Sling the half elk across your saddle horse, a quarter on each side, hair down and legs back, and the hide will keep them together but balanced. Cut a slit in the hide at the saddle horn, just enough for the horn to poke through, and your pretty much set to walk out. I always throw a basket hitch on in addition, it just holds things together better.

Thanks for the info...hopefully it will be used this week. A rancher who bought a ranch in TX with elk on it wants the herd "thinned". They are eating everything and draining the troughs on a daily basis.

Perry

MAC:

I had heard about the gutless method, but never seen it described. Thanks for the excellent and concise description. With luck, my son and I will also try it this weekend if we can find the cow elk herd around my folks place near Oak Creek.

Dave

quote:

Originally posted by kudu56:
Try the gutless method, if you are near a vehicle do as Mac says, but if you are packing it out and the law allows it, just remove the four quarters, roll the carcass onto the belly remove the back straps, go in from the sides at the groin to get to the inner loins. I can do it with barely getting any blood even on my hands. You don't even have to open the paunch.

Isn't that what he described ??? Sounds like it to me and I use the "gutless" method on elk.

Mac has got it.
Only thing I can add is that I have found that a cheap,plasctic tobaggon can be a BACKSAVER if the terrain will allow it (be careful: it'll run you down on the downhills)

Oh, and one more thing. The closer you can get the truck to a moose, the better!

Here's what I did on my cow during archery, and I do it for most of my whitetails here east of the Mississippi:

split the hide right along the backbone from the base of the neck down to the hips, pull the hide back to expose the backstraps and remove them. With the backstrap removed, reach just under the last rib along the inside of the backbone and you'll feel the tenderloin. Carefully using a knife, detach it from the top and bottom and pull it out. If you do it right, you can remove the tenderloins without ever coming close to the guts.

Next, I cut the hide on the inside of the quarters and peel it off. I then cut along the femur (leg bone) and remove all the ham muscles. Same general process for the shoulders.

I did the elk in around 30 minutes. Whitetails usually in 15 minutes, but I leave the bone in the hams.

quote:

Isn't that what he described ??? Sounds like it to me and I use the "gutless" method on elk.

Yes, I just worded it wrong. And was agreeing with him.

MAC,

I pretty much used your method on the one and only elk that I have killed earlier in the year. It worked fine until I went to flip him over.

I wanted to salvage the cape for a shoulder mount, so I never could figure out how to remove the head before flipping him over so I had a heck of a time flipping him with his head attached. Those darn antlers kept digging in the ground and I almost gave myself a hernia trying to get him flipped.

I'm not very good at explaining things, but do you understand why I was having trouble? If I didn't need to salvage the cape, I could have removed the head and skinned the neck on both sides.

Any advice?

Thanks!

The best thing to do if you want to salvage a cape and are using the gutless method is the skin the animal from mid-chest to the base of the skull by cutting the cape on the spine side. Rough cape it and cut the head off where the head and neck come together. After that you have to work a tarp or space blanket under the animal to keep dirt off the meat.

Then carry on as usual. I normally only hunt cows, but when doing a bull it helps to get the antlers out of thew way first.

Mac

One extra suggestion to those mentioned here: buy yourself a $2 plastic painter's about 10'x10'. Get the thinnest plastic possible, since this takes up less space in your pack. Weighs about 1 ounce. If there is snow on the ground, you won't need it. If not, spread the plastic out before quartering, thin place quarters on the plastic to keep the meat clean. This is very helpful with neck meat, brisket, tenderloin, etc. (parts without hair).