Idaho Backpack Bulls

[dstark]

I had an unbelievable hunt this year. A great friend of over 20 years and I drew an October rifle tag in central Idaho. We decided we had better take it seriously and backpack into the backcountry for a week.

After several frustrating scouting trips we found our best bet and went for it. We had a few days of bad weather before the sky cleared and it all came together. The elk started bugling almost constantly which helped us out immensely. We were able to bring out 2 great six point bulls on our backs and have memories to last a lifetime! Nothing better than a great adventure with a great friend.

I got my bull at about 35 yards in the timber, my buddy took his at about 75 yards in a stand of aspens. Both bulls were taken with a Sako A7 300 win mag and Vortex optics at about 9000ft elevation. I feel 2 inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter after that pack out!

 

[Stonegoat]

Beauty bulls!!

 

[StrutNut]

Fantastic. I am trying to convince my wife into moving to McCall.

 

[marioq]

That's awesome!!!! Congrats!!

 

[dmj]

WOW. Great bulls. Congradulations

 

[Scot E]

Great bulls! Great pics! Nice job boys!

 

[ShtrRdy]

Congrats on the great hunt! Those are some awesome looking bulls. Thanks for sharing!

 

[sambo3006]

That is too cool! Way to go guys, great looking bulls.

 

[Scot E]

Dang! Looked at those pics again! Those thirds are really nice for Idaho bulls!

 

[Olaf]

Nice Bulls, my son and I packed one 6x6 bull 2 miles up the mountain then 7 more miles out on bikes. My 14 year old son later told his grandpa that if he knew at 4:20am that morning all the work he would have to do until 11pm that night he may not have gotten out of his sleeping bag! But as the pain fades and the meat is being enjoyed plans are made to repeat the adventure again! Great work!

 

[JARHEAD1371]

They are two great looking elk! One of these days I'll be able to do the same type of hunt. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Timber338]

Two very nice bulls, congrats! Great to see you guys packed them out on foot the hard way. Nothing against horses, but I think more gratifying at the end of the day when you do it yourself. And I'm assuming those bulls had bodies to match the size of their racks... well done.

Out of curiousity, how did you split up all the loads with quarters? Did you do a trip for a each quarter and carry a backstrap with each front? That's how I did the big bull I shot a few years back. Smaller bulls I'll do in less trips, but there is a big difference in size when you compare a young bull to a big mature herd bull.

 

[dstark]

On these bulls we decided to bone them out to save weight since we weren't exactly looking forward to the hike out.
My bull had a very large body so we split them up like this:
each rear quarter was a load,
1 front shoulder, one backstrap, & 1/2 of the brisket was a load each,
head, antlers & cape plus neck meat and tenderloins was one load.
so 5 loads total for the bigger bull.

My buddy's bull was smaller bodied and lost a large portion of one shoulder from bullet damage. We boned him out as well. He also didn't plan on mounting it so we left the cape and skinned out the head. We got him out a little easier,
the skull/antlers and a rear quarter was a load,
the other rear quarter plus both backstraps was a load,
the good front shoulder plus all other boned out meat we split between us and carried out with our camp.

All of these loads felt awfully heavy and I wouldn't have wanted to push it much harder that that as I feel like it would risk injury. I'm a big buy and made sure I got into pretty decent shape before the hunt so I felt confident under a heavy load but I was a little concerned for my buddy as he's a smaller guy with occasional knee problems and didn't train as hard as he had hoped leading up to the hunt. He toughed it out though with no complaining. Man it felt good to finally drop those packs at the truck on the last load!

 

[swanbird58]

Great Bulls