I spied a lone bull on the ridgeline, basking in first shooting light, and my intentions for an abbreviated morning hunt evaporated like the soft flakes touching dry ground. I settled into prone, steadied my nerves and concentrated on the application of consistent pressure on a familiar, yet stout, factory trigger. The shot felt good, but the bull didn’t react for several long seconds while I chambered another round. Before I could shoot again he did an about-face and dove into a dense north-facing canyon. I couldn’t tell if I’d hit him or not. Fortunately, the climate was cooler on that north side, allowing a dusting of snow to betray his condition and escape route. He was barely ambulatory when I caught up to him shortly afterward and applied the kill shot, when I experienced his last breaths; deep, mournful sighs that bounced around the canyon and into a hunter’s heart. The hard part was over and the work was about to begin. At 9:00 AM, I had a mature elk on the ground several miles from the rig in the same mountains where William Clark complained, "I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life." I was hoping for a different experience.
My truck was parked at the trailhead only 20 minutes from home, but it might as well have been on the other side of Montana. The best-case scenario had me home by dark. If need be, I could overnight a quarter high in a pine tree worry-free in wolf country and return tomorrow to a nicely chilled hunk of meat, but I had looming work and parental obligations. I needed to enlist some help.
I could see town from the kill sight and had plenty of cell service, so I sent out an exploratory text to see if my self-employed friends had anything better to do on a Thursday morning than get some solid exercise. Two of my buddies signed up and agreed to meet me early afternoon for the return trip. I had two fine blades, game bags, and plenty of food and water. Things were looking up.
While I was in the process of reducing the elk into manageable pieces, my buddy called me with a proposal “Hey man, I know you don’t like boning out your elk, but we could get all that meat out of there in one trip with the three of us,” he offered.
As far as I was concerned he said all that I needed to hear in those first few lines. “No, I don’t like boning out my elk, ain’t gonna’ happen cap’n. Come prepared to haul a full rear quarter or don’t come at all, your call bud, we’ll deal with it either way.”
Though my well-intentioned friend has killed lots of elk and has a strong back, he’s a boner and I’m a packer. I don’t bone for several reasons. Foremost, I’m very meticulous when it comes to my hard-earned game meat, and I insist on getting the rear quarters home intact, so I can put them on the butcher table and cleanly separate and label individual cuts. Further, my dog needs the thighbones for clean teeth and a positive attitude heading into the heart of bird season and I need the shanks to serve up a holiday dish of Osso Bucco. This is the one time of year that I get to be stubborn, unchallenged, and I have the rest of the year to recover from the physical exertion of hauling rear quarters.
It’s a frequent argument in elk camp, To Bone or Not to Bone? For many hunters it comes down to circumstance; distance from camp/vehicle, weather conditions/temperature, health/conditioning of the hunter(s) and time of day being the deciding factors on whether or not a hunter decides to haul quarters or loose meat. But all those things being equal, it comes down to the amount of effort that one is willing to exert. I understand that leaving the bones behind reduces the weight of the pack, but at what cost?
I’ve boned out several elk in the field. One of my childhood hunting mentors was a big proponent of the method and it made sense to me then in the downright nasty canyons of eastern Oregon where I cut my ivories. In one case, many years ago, we boned a bull out that I shot during a backcountry summer bowhunt in high heat because that was the only way we were going to salvage the meat and avoid the dreaded bone spoil (in hindsight, I shouldn’t have been elk hunting in those temperatures in the first place.) I’ve assisted other boners with the process, rather begrudgingly on one occasion when the elk was so close to the truck that I could have hit it with a limp 5-iron (and I’m not a golfer).
The fact is that boning exposes more meat to air and in most cases; all sides of cuts have to be trimmed and cleaned while processing. Under ideal conditions, 30-40 degrees works for me, I like to age my quarters for about a week. Try this with boned out cuts and you’ll have to cut thick rind off of all sides, a wasteful process.
During most of my rifle hunts the temperature is conducive to leaving the hide on for the pack-out, which protects the meat from dirt and air exposure. As long as the temperature holds, I hang my quarters with the hide on until I’m ready to butcher.
In less than ideal conditions, which often occur during archery and early rifle, I will skin the quarter and bag it, taking the other necessary and obvious precautions in the field to keep the meat cool, such as dipping in a creek, hanging in the shade, and transporting in a cooler. Then I’ll butcher it as soon as I get it home.
Quarters are very pack-friendly with the bone in, the foreleg acts as a perfect lever that can be wrenched to relieve pressure on the lower back and shoulder straps of your backpack/pack frame; as if this is how nature intended them to be hauled on the human back. To my mind, the extra weight is negligible. The femur and tibia of a cow elk weighs about 6 ½ pounds, a bull maybe 8? Granted, I’m only 40 and still in my packing-prime, and when I’m not, I’ll hunt closer to the truck, and still keep my meat on the bone.
When I returned to the truck with the first load, one of my friends was right where he said he would be. On the initial move I’d hauled a game bag with backstraps, tenderloins, sweetbreads, all the loose neck and rib meat, and the top of the skull, which harbored my tag and proof of sex. We returned to the kill site and packed a rear quarter to the nearest closed logging road, then went back and grabbed the other quarter and the shoulders and aimed for the truck. I was on the verge of leg cramps when a headlamp came up the trailhead; my bone-happy buddy finally arrived, four hours late. I was glad to see him, he had water and a pack and I directed him to the other quarter, which was easy to find in country familiar to him.
Long story short, I finally went in search of him and when he materialized from the woods, he had my quarter all right, boned out and covered in dirt and hair. He certainly taught me a thing or two that night, don’t bother a boner when I kill an elk, call a packer!
