Bone it Out – Pack it Out

Full packs, ready to go.

My First Time!

I dumped that cow elk at about 1:30 pm on a mid-October afternoon. My dad and I had been hiking since before sunrise and we were spent. Add those two things together and you may or may not have an issue. Compound it with being about 1.5 miles from the truck, uphill from us, and we did have a problem.

This was my first cow elk, and damn was she big up close. I was a little panicked, but all we could do was hatch a plan. I had a small day-pack with me, so the plan formed around it. My dad and I started boning the elk until we could fill the pack and I headed back to the truck. He stayed and kept boning, while I took the first load out and retrieved another pack.

When I got to the truck I was really spent. I stayed and slept/babysat our kids, while my wife took the two packs back to the elk. She then returned an hour or so later with a full pack which I took back to the elk empty. My dad filled the day pack and brought it out. I met him on the trail, him full and me empty. He had finished the boning so all I had to do was load my pack and go. When it was all done, the sun had set and we all decided we were too tired for deer season’s opener the following day!

My Experience

Growing up, we were always taught not to kill an animal you couldn’t drive to or drag back to the truck. The rule of thumb was two men, four hours. If you didn’t think that could be accomplished, you didn’t shoot. I passed on a once-in-a-lifetime mule deer employing that mantra. Never again. We also always hung our kill for a week or so of aging to improve the meat.

Losing my elk-packing maidenhood on that cow was a game-changer for our family. Quickly, we realized that as a team we could get almost anything off the mountain. We’ve since packed pronghorn, cow elk, mule deer, and a couple of bull elk out on our backs. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy doing that. What I do enjoy is being able to hunt in places most people don’t. I now hunt places I wouldn’t have in the past. This radically drives up the odds of success and has resulted in two B&C animals and one nearly so.

My son’s 89 inch pronghorn, my 238 inch mule deer, and my 356 inch bull all came out in boneless chunks slung across our hips and backs.

Boning vs. Quartering

Meat just tastes better and is more tender if we dry-age it by hanging in a cool space. The ideal situation is to hang a whole animal. Next best is aged quarters. The least-attractive option for aging is to age individual chunks of meat in a refrigerator. With that in mind, we always first attempt to recover our animal as whole as possible.

Unfortunately, it gets harder and harder to harvest game in locations that make for easy retrieval. When it comes to packing an animal out on my back, I prefer boneless, thank you. When it comes to bull elk, most people aren’t able to pack out a full hindquarter. Maybe a haunch, but even then you might want to remove as much bone as possible. Because mostly the bones go to the trash anyway, I generally do not like adding weight to my pack with bones. The trick becomes careful care of the meat, and choosing some of the cuts that will not be aged.

Boning in the Field

Now you have an animal down and expired and you are too far away to drag it or pack out quarters. Where to start depends on the animal, time of day, and your resources. For bull elk at nightfall, you may want to remove and hang haunches in a tree, then take loin and tenderloin back to camp. At a minimum, you need to remove the meat from the hindquarters, inside and outside of shoulders, loins, tenderloins, and bigger chunks of neck meat. Some folks will dig around and get the heart and liver, and even take flank and rib meat. This is up to you.

With most big game, I tend to start with an incision tight along the backbone from just in front of the shoulder, all the way a few inches past the point of the hip. I then continue to filet the entire “tube” of loin from each side of the backbone. This is your backstrap and it comes out in two long pieces. Then I proceed to carve the big rounds away from each hind leg and take all of the hip and back meat. You feel your way around the bones, and keep your cuts as near to the bone as possible to keep the meat in big chunks.

Details

Keep a backpack or game bag handy and throw these pieces out on a clean surface like that until it is time to load packs. If you have flies, put it directly in the pack or packs or at least cover it with another game bag. Next I peel all the meat I can from the inside and outside of the shoulder, lower and upper neck, and anything else I can get.

The final and somewhat difficult step is to retrieve the tenderloins. Don’t skip this as the meat is so worth it. In some states, not taking it will earn you a ticket. If you haven’t gutted your animal (I don’t), you carefully cut through the connective membrane just behind the last rib near the spine. You will want to roll the animal onto its stomach and then opposite side as you work to keep gut pressure away from your supporting hand. You can feel the tenderloin as a tube of meat against the backbone. Take some time to feel for the beginning, end, and limits of the tube. Some of that tube you can separate from the backbone with pressure from your fingertips. Some will require a knife. Go slow and be careful. Cut off as far to each end as you can and there you have it!

Some Final Ideas

Aging the meat can be difficult. My suggestion is to not bother with aging the tenderloins or any of the meat that will go toward processing. This includes cuts for stew meat, jerky, hamburger, and sausage. This will leave you with the bigger cuts of meat and the loins. I’ve been experimenting with using shrink wrap to keep oxygen out while the loins age in the refrigerator. I got this idea from a friend who dry-ages store-bought beef. It seems to work pretty well, and reduce the amount of waste.

The upside to boning the meat is you are pretty much done processing when you leave the field. All that is left is aging and butchering days later. Because there is more potential for waste when boning, be careful to save everything you can. Consider that very small pieces won’t be salvageable after they age, so just toss them in with the jerky or hamburger pile.

To reiterate, I always try not to bone out the animal so it is easier to age and you get less waste. I also don’t ever pack bones out on my back because I don’t eat the bones. Might as well pack a rock with me while I’m at it…. Boning the kill is just one tool that helps me pack deeper off the beaten trail. Being willing to pack your game out will give you a lot more opportunities to harvest game.