For the past day and a half I've been backpacking meat out of the Indian Peaks Wilderness. I don't think many people hear much about this side of hunting. There's an expression that after the shot the real work begins. I guess that's so but it's a pleasant enough work.
This is the story of bringing out the meat of a moose on Friday and Saturday.
There were bits of rain and bits of blue, hard to tell what the weather will do.
On Friday a friend called to ask assistance in packing out a moose. I was half expecting to hear from him and I'd made sure to keep my day pack with a headlamp and so forth with me at work.
Moose are big, real big. Bigger than an elk or a caribou, quite a bit bigger. For anyone who has cut up a moose before you're just going to have to excuse my superlatives.
My friend whom I'll call Bob has shot a lot of elk, maybe 20 or 30, this was a much bigger animal and in a more difficult place to get than he was used to. My other friend who lived closer was already there.
We were just below treeline at about 10,000 feet, and there had been a light rain. Bob and the other guy whom I'll call Tom had already skinned and disattached the two hind legs and put them in canvas game bags. Each leg with foot on and bone in they'd moved away from the carcass and tied to a tree.
The hope was that any covetous bears or coyotes at night would content themselves with the guts and exposed meat on the skeleton and leave the not so smelly legs alone. A rope was strung between two trees at eight feet but I hadn't heard any suggestion to lift those huge legs up to it. It was obvious that it was going to take a long long time to get all this meat out to the road and into coolers. The weights were a lot more than we'd been used to dealing with.
If you look you can see that Bob above is cutting into two layers of brisket or flank steak before working on disattaching the last quarter. Besides the legally required four quarters and back straps we took all of the easily usable meat. The heart and liver was sitting in a muddy pool with the broken contents of the lower intestines so those got left. The neck had massive musculature to hold up the fairly large antlers and head. The neck meat by itself weighed quite a bit more than the meat you would get from an average deer. Until all four quarters were off, and the hide on the ground, it was hard to even move the carcass around. It's good the animal fell in ankle deep water rather than waist deep.
The loose meat included the meat along both sides of the vertebrate inside and out, often called rib eyes or tenderloin and such, also all the briskets and flank steaks as well as the neck meat, and any muscle that we could find. Altogether it was in four bags totalling over 250lbs. The legs we cut the tendons attaching the meat to the bones and let the meat fall into the bags whole removing just the feet and bones. Front legs weighed at probably 60 or 70 lbs and the rear ones were probably just shy of 100 or a little over. Moose have more muscle in the front across the ribs and up the neck than I'm used to.
It hailed and rained hard with lightning striking close many times. The flies went away with the drop in temperature and the coming night. Of course we spent an extra hour wandering around the wrong side of one of the ponds looking for the trail. Out to the truck by 8. We left and hoped the critters wouldn't find the meat we'd left behind by morning.
Above the last patch of snow still visible up by the divide. This is just south of the Arapahoe Peaks, soon it will be winter. Spring and early summer were wet enough to make it a good year, later summer was hot and dry. These fall rains are welcome.
The next day was a Saturday with a parking lot full of hikers out to see the leaves. Moving the whole animal took 8 loads all total. The last trip was for the horns and head, they are the least vulnerable part. Meat until it's cooled on ice is changing. Bob is certainly more of a meat hunter than a head hunter but he was happy with the antlers. Probably 40" spread on them. He wasn't holding off for a trophy, that moose just happened to be the first one he saw that was legal. In Colorado you can only shoot one bull moose per lifetime, and many wait a lifetime without drawing a license for one.
Above an old Kelty frame pack I bought at Salvy Army for $10. 100 lbs just fills main pocket, stacked higher you can get more.
I'm not sure what it is that drives one to cut up a big animal while standing in ankle deep swamp for hours and then toting spine breaking loads. The three of us hardly slept Friday night, not from the excitement or worry about bears. Not the huge mountains of meat nor the large trophy, but more like the sheer momentousness of what had happened.
Update: Just wanted to say thanks for the rescue. Finest compliment possible on DK. And also thanks for the comments. I've been working to process a front leg. Took 3 1/2 hours for my wife and I nonstop. Also I changed 11,000 feet to 10,000 feet after checking my GPS. (9930ft at N40 00.665 W105 35.068 if anyone wants to look )