Elk hunting trip...pics

soberups · Nov 6, 2008

Here is a picture of me and my fellow UPS'er Randy after he bagged a 5 point bull elk on our trip to the Starkey unit in NE Oregon about 30 miles from Lagrande. He shot it and I helped him track it. I'm the guy on the left. We are both still smiling because we havent yet begun the ordeal of cutting it up and packing it out.

soberups · Nov 6, 2008

This is me hauling the head and rack out on a packframe. We were a 1/4 mile down in a steep canyon off of a closed road, and about 8 miles from the locked gate that we parked behind and hiked in from. The elk probably weighed 600 lbs on the hoof, so to get it out we had to gut it, skin it, cut it into 6 pieces and climb out of the canyon with the pieces on our backs.

soberups · Nov 6, 2008

This pic is kind of bloody, so dont click on it if that is a problem for you. The ribcage was too big to fit on a packframe, and it would have taken forever to cut it in half. It also would have meant one more climb out of that damn canyon. With typical UPS ingenuity, we cut the neck off so that my head would fit thru the hole, and I wore the entire ribcage on my back and shoulders as if it was an "elk suit". Since it happened to be Halloween evening, it was certainly appropriate. The ribcage weighed almost 100 pounds, so I practically had to crawl out of the canyon with it on my hands and knees. I had a "headlamp" to see with, which freed up my hands from having to hold a flashlight. The three of us didnt get it back to the truck until 2:30 AM---22 hours after we had hiked in the previous morning. It weighed in at almost 300 lbs at the butcher shop.