The only way to load an elk into a truck!

[king4wd]

I made this video on my buddy's unit 9 bull hunt. He's got his truck set up just for loading elk into it. It's a pretty sweet rig.

 

 

 

[billrquimby]

My slow dial-up modem here in Tucson doesn't allow me to view videos, but I am assuming he has rigged up a winch to load an elk.

 

A wildlife manager loaded (with no help from me or anyone else) an injured 6x6 bull he had to shoot in my yard in Greer a couple of years ago. He used an electric winch mounted high up on a roll bar in the front of his truck's bed, and winched the bull into the bed on a piece of 3/4-inch plywood.

 

It took him less than five minutes to attach the winch, drag out the plywood, load the bull and plywood and drive away.

 

We never learned what was wrong with that bull, but it had laid down near where I park my truck and couldn't get up. The Game and Fish Department guy said it would be tested for chronic wasting disease.

 

CWD has never been found in an Arizona elk, or so they say, so we can only assume the bull had been hit by a vehicle on the road through North Woods above us and managed to stumble downhill to our place. (A small herd crosses that road and walks through our yard every evening to reach a meadow across from us.)

 

You really don't need a winch if you can back your truck up to an elk and have two guys to help you.

 

Here's how we used to do it:

 

1. Remove your truck's tailgate. Most will allow you to take it off without tools.

 

2. All three of you need to "sit" the elk on its rump as best as you can, with its head and neck in the bed and its shoulder resting against the bumper.

 

3. When you get the elk balanced, one of you quickly climbs into the truck and and pulls on the antlers while the other two men lift and push. If the truck is pointed slightly downhill the elk will slide right in.

 

Years ago, I helped load five elk on the Jicarilla reservation in New Mexico this way, and we've done it with all of our elk our group has killed since then.

 

The trick is to remove the tailgate. We tried keeping the gate attached to load a small spike bull once, but had to remove it to get the job done.

 

In Africa, our trackers backed the truck into a trench they'd dug and winched my Cape buffalo -- whole -- into it. The trench was deep enough that the bull and the truck's bed were at approximately the same height. I always wanted to try that with an elk, but never did.

 

Bill Quimby

[Blade53]

I watched 2 guys tryuing to load a elk into the back of a brand new truck once and they had taken the tail gate off alright, but were using it as the ramp, after they bent the tailgate in two, me and a buddy went over and loaded it in for them, the old fashioned way. seen lots a guys up here on the mountain with a small winch attached to the head ache rack on their truck for loading elk, seems to work really well. Last year I took a 6x7 in the archery hunt and the wife and I loaded it in the truck, had to cut it in half, left about 10 feet of my intestine and other body parts on the ground doin it, but we got it loaded. the set up in the video is defianantly cool...Dan

[Coach]

Cool vid, I love the way it was put together. Nice.

[billrquimby]

Cool vid, I love the way it was put together. Nice.

 

Please describe what it is. I'm curious and my modem is too slow to play a video.

 

Bill Quimby

 

[More D]

My work does not allow youtube so..

 

My uncle, my hunting mentor/partner, has put put a lot of work into loading elk up. Once a good 5x5 ended down in a steep small canyon some 40-50ft of near vertical sides. The type you got up on all fours. My uncle ran back to camp and got a 8000lb winch on a home make cradle with heavy quick connect terminals, a battery and lots of rope. The winch is secured to a good tree. The rope to the antlers on one end and the end of the cable to the other. The winch does most of the work. We only have to steer/guide the elk around and over rocks etc. It really does a number on the battery but as my uncle says "thats a small price to pay" He is determined to get the elk out whole cause of not "you loose to much meat"

 

When we can drive up to and elk on the quads an sutible tree is found and one of us climbs up and ties a small pully (3 inch) to the tree. The rope is feed through the pully and to the quad one end and the base of the antlers to the other. When lucky you have too put 2-3 people on the quad cause the elk can weight as much as the quad. The quad is backed up and the elk is pulled right up with out much trouble at all. It can be dressed right away or put on another quad/ranger/truck.

 

 

 

 

[AZLance]

Who in their right mind puts a whole elk in the back of their truck...

[azslim]

Have done the same thing with a come-along, used to load beef cattle when my relatives wanted to butcher one.

 

Bill, back up to the bull, lay down 3 planks, hook a winch cable around the head and drag the bull onto the bed.

[king4wd]

Bill,

 

He had a flatbed custom made for his Toyota Tacoma. On the headache rack, he had a 2" receiver put in so he can put the winch up there. He also had a 6' long steel ramp made that slips right in the back of the bed.

 

Slide the ramp out and winch that sucker right up onto the bed. Nice thing is that little toyota can fit A LOT more places than most of these full size F-350's you see all over elk country. He helps out a lot of other guys too and has never had an elk he couldn't get his truck to. Pretty nice to leave the pack frame at camp.

 

Jeff

[cmc]

Bill try this photo of what he used. Very simular to how that WM loaded that bull in your yard.

 

cmc

[cmc]

He guides a lot too and has never had an elk he couldn't get his truck to.

 

 

He obviously doesn't guide in GMU 27.

[shooterpar]

hahaha awesome video jeff!!!!!!!

[sjvcon]

My slow dial-up modem here in Tucson doesn't allow me to view videos, but I am assuming he has rigged up a winch to load an elk.

 

A wildlife manager loaded (with no help from me or anyone else) an injured 6x6 bull he had to shoot in my yard in Greer a couple of years ago. He used an electric winch mounted high up on a roll bar in the front of his truck's bed, and winched the bull into the bed on a piece of 3/4-inch plywood.

 

It took him less than five minutes to attach the winch, drag out the plywood, load the bull and plywood and drive away.

 

We never learned what was wrong with that bull, but it had laid down near where I park my truck and couldn't get up. The Game and Fish Department guy said it would be tested for chronic wasting disease.

 

CWD has never been found in an Arizona elk, or so they say, so we can only assume the bull had been hit by a vehicle on the road through North Woods above us and managed to stumble downhill to our place. (A small herd crosses that road and walks through our yard every evening to reach a meadow across from us.)

 

You really don't need a winch if you can back your truck up to an elk and have two guys to help you.

 

Here's how we used to do it:

 

1. Remove your truck's tailgate. Most will allow you to take it off without tools.

 

2. All three of you need to "sit" the elk on its rump as best as you can, with its head and neck in the bed and its shoulder resting against the bumper.

 

3. When you get the elk balanced, one of you quickly climbs into the truck and and pulls on the antlers while the other two men lift and push. If the truck is pointed slightly downhill the elk will slide right in.

 

Years ago, I helped load five elk on the Jicarilla reservation in New Mexico this way, and we've done it with all of our elk our group has killed since then.

 

The trick is to remove the tailgate. We tried keeping the gate attached to load a small spike bull once, but had to remove it to get the job done.

 

In Africa, our trackers backed the truck into a trench they'd dug and winched my Cape buffalo -- whole -- into it. The trench was deep enough that the bull and the truck's bed were at approximately the same height. I always wanted to try that with an elk, but never did.

 

Bill Quimby

 

I always love to get the perspective of hunters who have been doing it longer than I have. That is some GREAT insight on "How To" Bill ... I am going to print that out and put it in my hunt pack for the next time I'm elk hunting.

[billrquimby]

Those planks seem a better idea than the WM's sheet of plywood. After an elk is loaded, they take up much less space. Incidentally, he also had a socket on his roll bar that he fit his electric winch into.

 

Azlance: My friends and I are in our right minds and we've hauled out a lot of elk without cutting them up. We've also cut various cow elk in two pieces when there were only two of us to load them. One guy got in the truck (usually me) and lifted using a rope collar we tied on the cows' necks. The other helped by boosting. We did the same with the rear halves. Never had the opportunity to do this with a really big bull, though.

 

On my second elk hunt, in about 1960 more or less, three of us shot two spike bulls behind Mexican Hay Lake. We used my 1947 CJ2A Jeep to drag them to a tree where we ran a rope through a pulley we had tied to a limb and used the Jeep's electric winch to load them onto that little Jeep.

 

There was just enough room left for me to squeeze into the seat and drive. The other two guys sat on the elk, with elk legs and heads hanging off the Jeep, pointing in every direction. Our camp was at the bridge above Eagar, so we didn't have to go far, but we must have presented quite a sight to anyone who saw us coming off that mountain.

 

Over the last few years, I've seen four different trucks in Springerville with big bulls -- whole -- on TOP of two quads in the beds of those trucks. That must take some good ol' Arizona ingenuity to get that job done.

 

Bill Quimby

[AZLance]

"My friends and I are in our right minds"

 

Says Who??