Kill Kits & Field Processing: Field-Tested Systems for Western Big Game Hunts

Foreign to the Hunt west podcast, here's your host, Jaden Bales. What is up, everybody? This is Jaden Bales, your host of the Hunt west podcast. And I am freshly back from Alaska hunting blacktails with my brother and my good friend Jeff Lund. We had a successful trip, like to say the least. My brother and I both got nice bucks, you know, standard fork and horns for the cut for the area. We had a couple relaxed, you know, kind of hunt from the truck days. We had two backpacking trips and really enjoyed our time up there. Really wanted to thank Jeff Lund. He hosts the On Step Alaska podcast. He's a great writer and we're going to tell a bunch more of the stories of the Alaska hunt on his podcast. So if you wanted to go get the the nitty gritty on the Alaska Blacktail hunt, you can go over there. But today we're going to be talking about things that are pertinent to our standard western big game hunting. In particular, I want to talk about kill kits and getting ready to process your animal in the field. It's the best practices. A few things that I've tried out over the years and things that I've just kind of stuck to after, you know, doing things right, doing things wrong, testing out a lot of different things, and now putting together a kill kit that we used this last week twice and really enjoyed. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about all things gear around field processing animals, specifically the type of processing where you put it on your back and carry it out. We had this conversation in Alaska actually, where I had talked about, you know, man, even when we're hunting from the truck, even when, you know, I'm on a ranch that we have access to, I just end up processing things by the quartering method just 99% of the time. I think the last time that I gutted something was a whitetail that I shot and dragged. The vast majority of the time I'm out here doing a lot of quartering and I just find that even if you're not that far from the truck, but it's a decent sized animal, it just makes life way easier. I don't have to deal with disposing of a carcass and I get all the meat off of it that I'm going to use anyway. You know, maybe there's an argument to be made that you'll get more off of like an elk or bigger species if you're taking it to the truck. But for the most part, ma', am, I'M just deer, antelope, elk, bears. We're quartering them up and we're putting them on our back using a kill kit that we have in our backpack every single time. Now, a lot of people will talk about having, you know, solid, solid preferences on the knives, making sure you have a bone saw, all these things that I just really don't think you need. Most of the time. I would carry a bone saw, I would carry extra knives, I would carry just like a bunch of junk that you would get, you know, basically something you would get in the mail from a promotion to sign up for a new conservation or which I appreciate. And I have a bunch of those. But I realized quickly, like, there's not a whole lot of excess things that you need that's not already in your pack. And so we're going to go over that today. I'm also going to talk about how I'm processing. There's not exactly one perfect way to do everything when you're processing. I think whenever you figure out a system that works for you, you got to stick with it and be really good at that system. However, the system I have, you know, basically has made it so that we can get in and out with, you know, a deer sized animal basically cut up, loaded onto packs and ready to hike out in about an hour. That includes taking the head off, not using any saws, and being ready to pack out, whether it's on a backpack hunt or a truck hunt where you're just hiking a, you know, few minutes to the truck. So we're going to cover that today. If you've ever wanted to know kind of the, the details, the nitty gritty of a well developed system, a system has taken a lot of years to get honed into. The final point of being like, okay, I think I've got it dialed then this episode is for you. Okay, so when I look at my kill kit, I, you know, really only have like three, three or four things in the kill kit. But that's also because I realized that there's a whole bunch of other things that play into processing that I have in my pack anyways. So I'm going to talk about all of the things that are in my kill kit specifically. And then I'm going to talk about the things that are not in my kill kit that are influencing field processing and being a vital part of getting your game broke down and making sure you get the meat back to the truck as clean and as quickly as possible. So the other day I had two kill kits That I had packed one for my brother, one for myself and they were loaded up in the Argali high country kill kit bags. Inside of those bags are five game bags. Those game bags are their ultralight ones. I've come to really appreciate those ultralight game bags. I also use a lot of their guide series game bags. I really like just this type of fabric that's it's come to be pretty popular. I use the Argali ones. I love working with Brad at our Golly. He has hooked it up in the past and wanted me to test out his guide ones as they came out. I've been using the high country pack since, let's see, first time I used those high country packs was 2019. So they're just kind of my go to. But I've also used a lot of the caribou bags, tag bags, kafaru bags, graxo bags and then there's a whole bunch of others that I've, I've learned from the hard way not to use. So like I said, my preference is in these little high country packs from Argali. I think they've got all of the bags you need whether it's a boned out elk or a deer or an antelope. That's usually my go to. And I really like their, their system. So they're really light. They're 9 ounces per set. I've got it. I've got a cheat sheet pulled up here and they're 75 bucks for the high country pack. So they're pretty well priced. You know you can go higher and lower in the, in the pricing tier. Like you've got caribou bags are over a hundred bucks for some tag bags are about $100. Your Kafaru bags are more like 85. It doesn't matter to me as much which one you're using as long as they're one of these high quality brands right off of the, right off the get go. It actually was 2014 when I shot this, I shot a black bear and I didn't know how to quarter. So we had these game bags with us thinking that we were going to do something with the game bags. And we put this bear like we gutted it, we put it in one of the cheesecloth game bags like hole and started dragging it out. I quickly realized the cheesecloth game bags which you can find at like Walmart or you know, some sort of, you know, janky store out in the, in the back country, basically those cheesecloth bags do not do what you want them to do. And I'm, I'm really not a big fan of them. I would much rather have someone who's. If you're trying to save money, use a pillowcase and realize that you got to get some more airflow to it later than going with the cheesecloth bags that don't prevent any debris from getting to the meat or that don't prevent any bugs from getting to the meat. Just go with like a pillowcase. If you're really on the budget, the budget train. The other thing of that is people will sometimes use just a contractor bag. And man, if you're using a contractor bag, as soon as you put the meat in the contractor bags, your, your clock is ticking to get that meat cooled down. So if you're basically shooting something and it's going to take 30 minutes to get to the truck, put it on ice. Sure, maybe a contractor bag will work. You won't have any issues with the meat. But for the most part, I really do like a bag that allows some blood to seep through and allows that meat to, you know, especially if it's all bloodshot on a front quarter or whatever, allow some of that to get out of the meat and, you know, kind of find its way out of the, the, the goodies, the good stuff that you're going to eat. I'm not very technical when it comes to, you know, the meat dynamics, but for the most part, this is just based on field testing and trial and error. What I found. So, you know, from that bear experience, we found cheesecloth bags, not, not what we're looking for. I'd rather have a pillowcase. If you don't have a readily available pillowcase that you can throw in for cheap, contractor bags are fine, but you got to get things on ice quickly and ideally you get it hung up even outside of the contractor bag on a cool night or something. So that's been, that's been my experience. But for the rest of us who are using, you know, the standard high country game bags out of, from our goli or the heck there, it seems like every company has one. Now find your favorite company, see if they make game bags and, and use them. You know, the Kafaru ones have been good to me too. They're a little bit more durable and definitely heavier, heavier weight. But like I said, the Kafaru, the Galis, those are the two that I keep going back to. I've used GRA in the past and they're not too bad. And then you want to look at like the shape of them, make sure that they can fit the quarters that you're looking for. If you're just an elk hunter or if you're just going on an elk hunt, you need games game bags for that. Having a meat on bone game bag for elk hunting is a pretty good idea if you're not backpacking. But if you're backpacking in to kill an elk, I would just go with the high country bags. Expect to debone in the field and use the smaller bags for that. Largely one of, one of the biggest differences I've noticed when you're using the meat on bone versus the high country or like a skinnier bag is that when you're packing your bag up at the end of it all, you end up with a lot of meat splooging out the sides and getting everything gross. When you're using the meat on bone game bags, that could be remedied by putting inside the bag. But then if you're inside your backpack with a meat on bone game bag and you don't have another protective barrier, then you're also going to end up with a bunch of just meat and grossness inside your bag. So we'll talk about how we end up packing things a little bit later on. But this is basically just giving you the breakdown between the different types of game bags and what you should use. So the high country game bag, like I keep talking about that it's a pretty standard set and it's the one I'm using as my. Is the one I'm using as my example here because it seems to be the combination that most, most people have. So there's one bag for each quarter, and then there's one spare meat parts bag. Depending on, you know, the way that you're cutting up your animal will depend on how many of these bags you need. So if I'm doing a deer, for example, in the backcountry, I might put two quarters in a single game bag and then I'll do. I'll split up loose meat between the two. This is like a scenario where there's nothing that's really bloodshot. There's no gnarly guts all over something. And I don't need to separate the meat. Everything's pretty clean. I will put, like I said, basically half the deer in one pack, half the deer in the other bag. And then I can do two trips or just stack them on top of each other for one trip. That's really common and that's what we did in Alaska. Now, black Tailed deer, they're quite a bit smaller. We ended up with, let's say we had 60 pounds of meat that we were packing out on the average. You know, that's, that's a pretty easy one to throw on one person's pack, but even then we just separated it out. However, one of the deer in particular, it was my deer, unfortunately, I shot it, quartered away and a bunch of the intestines and intestines material ended up in that front shoulder on the opposite side. Um, so what we ended up with was really dirty front shoulder on one, on one side. And as a result, I used one of the spare bags to basically try to separate out the gross meat, the meat that it's going to take a lot of more work to, to clean up. And to make sure that it's edible, I took one extra of those bags and made it its own set. So, like, okay, this is my dirty bag and I'm going to. I still packed it all out. You know, half of it was with me, half of it was with my friend Jeff. But basically what we did there is had two bags in one so that we could try to keep meat clean, but still just had a nice tight package for loading on our backpacks. We were backpacking when I shot that deer, so we ended up having camp and the meat on our back at the same time. So keeping everything nice and tight together was, was critical. So when it comes to the bags, again, I think I've kind of belabored this point. It doesn't really matter which brand you go with. I like our Golis a lot. I like the Kafaru's a lot. But think about, you know, what's really important to you on your hunt. A bag like the Kafaru, they're heavier, they're a little bit more durable on the average than the standard, lightest weight bags like the GR or the Argalis. However, Argali came out with their guide bags and I used those all last fall and I didn't have any durability issues with their guide bags. They're a little bit heavier. Obviously you're sacrificing a little bit to get them better durability. But I really like them. I tend to just say, man, I'll take a couple ounce hit to make sure that my bags are durable enough to be, you know, used hunt after hunt after hunt just because of the way that my schedule works out. But it's going to be person to person dependent as to how many hunts you have going on, how often you think you're going to be using these things? Just the other day though, I used a Graxo bag in 2019 and it finally gave up the ghost on this, this blacktail hunt. So, you know, if you're taking care of your bags, you're washing them well every time that you use them you can get quite a few years out of them. It helps to have a nice rotation. But luckily for you all, I am pretty hard on stuff. I've torn bags out of kind of user error a lot. I have lost bags, you know, just done stupid stuff and have ended up trying a bunch of different things. So again, find what works for you and your hunt specifically situation and, and just roll with it. Okay. So in that little game bag kit, doesn't matter what company you're going with, they'll have like a little stuff sack for it. That's great. There's usually quite a bit of space left in that stuff sack and I used to, I love filling that up with the other necessities for my hunt, for butchering on the hunt. One of those things that I'll have in there is a havalon with extra blades. I've used the Gerber Vital system with extra blades. It doesn't really matter. I really love the replaceable blade systems. It's very much a smoothest. What's that say? Slow as smooth, smooth as fast system. So you can't just hack away at things you're going to break blades off, especially if you're in joints. And if you haven't taken a head off with just a havalon before, you're probably going to break a blade the first time you try it. But you can get through all the ball joints, you can get through all of the processing and taking the head off with just a havalon. Usually if it's a deer sized animal, deer antelope, you can get through with one blade. Most of the time I'll swap to a different blade for the second side of an elk and I'll definitely swap to a different blade for the second side of a bear. The bear isn't because it's so big that it dulls your blade. But what happens is it gets so gunked up with, with fat that it just isn't working as good as it should. So like I said, for a deer antelope I'm using basically a Havalon or a gerber and I am using one blade that is, what is it, a 60 blades. And then for an elk I'm having usually two blades to get it all processed and that's like what I like to use. The main reason for that is because the fixed blades that I've used in the past, when I'm doing, you know, ten hunts a year, we. I have a hard time keeping a good fixed blade sharp throughout the fall. And it takes a lot of extra effort to get that thing as sharp as I want it to make the processing go quickly. Now I do have a fixed blade that I carry with me at all times. It's like a camp knife. It's a knife that is in my pocket or around my neck the whole time that I'm hunting. I was given, actually thanks to a really kind client of mine, I was given an iron wheel knife that has, it's got west like logo on it. It's really cool and I like that iron wheel knife. I've also used the Argali knives and I've used a bunch of different like high quality knives that are, you know, fixed blades, shorter, made for being in the field. The Argali knife is a K1 ultra night knife, ultra light night hunting knife. It's 165 bucks. So this is kind of that, that step up in quality than your just standard pocket knife. And I like them because once you do get them sharp, they can help you out quite a bit when you're processing. But once they lose their edge, usually they're made of that. The more tough steel, more rugged steel and the steel is harder to get honed back up to shape in the field. That said, like right now I, I used my iron wheel knife on this hunt. So now I need to go back and really put a good edge on it while I'm at home. The other piece of this kill kit that I have, that kind of supplementary is I use the Argali belt and it has a stone on one side as well as like a leather strop on the, on the belt. So the couple times I was using the fixed blade knife to assist, basically it was when I was taking the head off or just like two people were working on the head. Someone had my, my Gerber or two people working on the animal. Someone had my Gerber. I had my iron wheel knife and I could keep working on stuff. In particular when it was round bones and kind of the, the more brute force type things. One thing that I really like about having the fixed blade knife handy, it's not super necessary for the kill kit, but we used it to split wood and get kindling and do all sorts of other stuff. So I think just out of field craft reasoning, like you should probably have a good fixed blade on you somewhere because you're not splitting wood or making kindling or you know, cut and paracord very often with your havalon. I like to just save that just for the processing. And they're so light, it just makes sense. Like I'll just keep those in there with their spare blades in that little kill kit bag that, that is accompanying the system. So the other thing I like to keep within the little kill kit bag is some paracord. I usually have enough paracord to at least hang. So it's basically two 30 foot stretches. I have enough paracord to hang two bags 15ft off the ground, especially in grizzly bear country. I'll probably have two more of those just in case we need to hang all four bags in grizzly bear country. But you know, even if we're just doing multiple trips on a day hunt, what we'll do is like if it's an elk for instance, uh, you'll have all four bags loaded with meat and you'll run two of them up a tree and it takes you a couple hours to get the other two bags out. You and a buddy get it back out to the truck. Then you come back in and those other bags have cooled off and had a good chance to get some of the blood dripped off of them. And then you can load those up, that second load up. So at the bottom of that little tiny kill kit thing, like I said, I have paracord. I really like using the reflective orange paracord that you can get off of Amazon. See, see how much that is? Orange paracord Amazon. That stuff is like 1750 from the Paracord store. You got some lighter weight stuff that I don't necessarily like to use as much that is a little bit cheaper. It's basically like the, it's, it's, it's basically like the weight of a shoelace, but obviously just a lot longer. I like having it just in general because you can use it for guylines, which we did. We used some of my paracord for guylines on the tent. My brother used them in the past, like on the other hunts. He's used them as shoelaces for his shoes. And you can make a belt out of them. You can do all sorts of stuff with this, like a little bit heavier paracord. If you're going with just the skinniest paracord. That's like really good for guidelines. I just don't think you get quite a bit of as much versatility out of it when you're using it to do other camp fieldcraft related things in the woods. So I like, like I said, a little bit heavier paracord for running up a tree just because it has so many other uses with it. And that's at the bottom of this little, this little kill kit bag as well. So inside the kill kit bag we've talked about, we've got obviously the bags that the game bags we're using. We've got havalon and replaceable blades. I've got paracord in there. And then oftentimes I will throw in little gloves. I like using the mechanics rubber gloves because they're a little bit more durable, heavier weight and oftentimes they'll withstand a butchering a little bit better than if you just got like your standard medical grade, you know, flimsy plastic gloves that you throw on. Rubber gloves that you throw on. I've come to really like those mechanics gloves for processing because they, like I said, they don't break down. But then at the end of the day you can still, they're disposable. You can just like pull them off and throw them in a bag so you don't get. Your hands aren't all nasty and especially if you're in the backcountry and water is a premium even if you're in the front country and you just don't want to have to clean up as much. It's. It's really nice to have those gloves. Oftentimes I'm not as worried about the, you know, diseases or parasites or whatever that you could get. I probably should be better about it because I always get home and I wash my hands really well. But for the most part, again, having those little gloves in your backpack in your kill kit is really important to me and it has made it into my system. Like on one of the deer, I put one glove on while I'm holding my knife in my bare hand on the other side just to kind of help provide another, you know, point of basically one hand gets really muddy, bloody and gross, covered in guts and whatever else. And that hand, I'm trying to just use the glove on that one while my hand that is more dexterous using the knife is on the other side. So you can throw up to, you know, four extra gloves in those kill kits, the little tiny bags with them. And I like doing that. Lastly, should be in your kill kit or accompanying it somewhere. Accompanying your backpack somewhere are usually Wet wipes and a snack. I like having tape somewhere as well, but as well as a pen or a Sharpie for your, your hunting license or tags. Those things are going to be, you can, you can put those in various places, right. The important thing is to have a really good system. So for instance, I'll have a pen or a Sharpie, usually a sharpie in my medical kit and then I'll also have like a band aid, extra band aids in my medical kit because just inevitably I think it's probably one in every three animals. I'll nick myself pretty good and I need to put a band aid on it, stop and get it all cleaned up in that medical kit. I'll also have wet wipes or some sort of alcohol wipe to clean up a thing. And I know that this isn't, this is not medical advice to be cleaning with alcohol wipes on top of an open wound, but that's just kind of what I have to try to get things clean quickly. But making sure you have some sort of wet wipes of some kind, if you do cut yourself or even if you, you know, do get blood all over your hands, you can clean up afterwards. I really like doing that. What is it? The dude wipes? Dude wipes have always made it into my pack the last two years. I like having a little set of those. Usually what happens is I have like a little ziplock of dude wipes or I'll have like, you know, mostly gone travel pack. So I'm not carrying a whole bunch of extra weight of wet wipes but I'll have a few of them floating around my pack, usually somewhere around my, my kill kit or in my medical kit. And then lastly, you know, I always have snacks and right before we pack our bags and get ready to haul out, I'll hammer a snack real quick. I've been really into the like little individually wrapped trail mix packs. You can get them at like Safeway or Walmart or wherever where you just get a good hit of both fruit and probably some chocolate and a bunch of nuts. So you're getting a good complex, you know, hit of things you could do. Obviously granola bar for the same idea, but something like that. Meat sticks are all. I'll make it into my snack kit right before we pack out as well. Something that is easy to digest and pretty small because we're going to go straight from packing up our bags to then hiking out. So usually if it's like I said, if it's a small but like high energy snack, I will have that kind of at the forefront of my mind as I'm getting ready to pack out after I've. After I butchered up an animal and we're getting ready to get it back to the truck. One thing that should be somewhere in your pack, especially if you like to pack your backpack or you like to put your meat inside your backpack, is going to be like a contractor bag. Or as we found out in Alaska, a rainfly works good. I also used my rain jacket in Alaska, but basically I like to put especially on these multi animal huts. I don't want my bag to just be gnarly, gross with blood and guts and whatever else that seeped out of game bags. So oftentimes I'll put my meat in contractor bags. But I gotta admit, man, I forgot my contractor bags on my Alaska trip. So for Tyler's deer, after we butchered it up, I was kind of looking around like, ah, I want to put this in my bag, but we're going to hunt tomorrow morning. Like, I don't want it to be gnarly. So I'm looking around and I'm like, oh, I got a rainfly. So I put the quarters after they've been setting out to cool for a while, I put the quarters inside my rain fly and then put that inside my backpack to reduce the amount of bloodied up, gross stuff that gets on my pack. So we were ready to die, have to clean it or didn't have a smelly, stinky pack the next day while we're hunting. The other thing I used, and this was for my deer, was I was like, oh, where's my rainfly? Crap. We didn't, I didn't bring a rainfly because it's drying, because I cleaned it. After we packed out Tyler's buck, I was looking around, looking around. I was like, well, I'm going to sacrifice my rain jacket. So basically I zipped up my rain jacket and put the arms around the hood and tied it up so it has one kind of solid end to it. And then I dropped the game bags into the opening of the torso of my rain jacket and then put that inside my backpack to pack it out for the that day. So I got a little bit, got a little bit creative with it because I had forgot my contractor bags. It's why I like having contractor bags around. And the other thing that's nice about having an actual contractor bag is you can use it to set loose meat on as you're processing and keep it off the, out of the dirt, out of the, you know, pine needles or sagebrush, whatever, wherever you're working on an animal. So again, when you have enough stuff in your kill kit, there's probably going to be something you forget every time. And I hope that it's just not important that you've forgotten. Like I never, I'll never forget my knife. I always make sure that's in there. But you know, something like a contractor bag that's, that's kind of on the edge of super necessary. Sometimes I forget it. So I'm a fallible human. That is for very. That is for dang sure. Okay, so just to run through this whole kit list for you, things that you should make sure you have ready to field process inside one bag. Like in the kill kit bag, I have my game bags, usually five of them. There's four quarter bags and a loose meat bag. And then I like to have Havalon with blades. You could also have a Gerber with blades. Doesn't really matter. One of these is replaceable blade dives. I like having those in the bag so I know exactly where it's at. Then I'll also have paracord in there and I might have a band aid and a snack also tucked away in there, as well as the latex gloves so that I have something to work with while, while trying to stay. Keep the, keep the bloodiness and keep the grossness to a minimum. Now outside of that, I also have a fixed blade knife that I'm carrying on me. I've got a knife sharpener, I've got a pen or a sharpie to use for the signing of licenses. I've got my tags of my licenses in a specific spot. I've got tape somewhere just in case I need that. I've also got wet wipes and definitely got a snack somewhere so that I'm energized up, ready to hike out with this animal. Okay, so let's talk about the specifics of how I'm processing. Like we already talked about, I'm almost always quartering, if not always quartering animals on my standard western big game hunts. So I'm basically starting up at the, the base of the head and I'm running all the way down to the butt to basically zip the back open right at the top of the back strap. So once I've zipped the back open, I'll start on the front quarter and I kind of lean it on my leg and I reach down on the inside and I run that line from the inside where that height is a little thinner. All the way up to the cut that I've already made. So I basically got one quarter panel cut off of the front. And then I. You can use your hands, and you could kind of punch that hide off of the meat from there. Cut around at the joint at the shank, and you'll have all of that hide that just, like, slides off of that front quarter. Then you hold that front quarter up with one arm. Once you've got all the height off, and you can, with one hand, kind of cut that front quarter away, have your buddy holding the bag for you. Drop it in the bag. Good to go. Then I use usually move to the back. And again, it's the same thing. I'm kind of setting the back quarter on my hip, and I'm running the knife down along the inside of the animal's thigh. And then I come up and connect with my line that's on the back strap. And then I've got this quarter that I'm peeling back cut around the. The joint at the. Basically where like, an animal's Achilles would be. But cut around that joint right there. Don't. I like to leave that Achilles tendon, For lack of a better term, I like to leave that tendon attached so I have something I can hold on to. So you're just getting the hide off of there. You're not cutting through that. That thick tendon. That is such a good handle. And then you're peeling all that off. And then I'm lifting it up. I'm cutting around the hip joints, getting down to the ball joint. I'm not splitting the pelvis like everyone who likes to gut animals does. I'm leaving the pelvis intact. And then I'm coming into the ball socket. You know, separating that ball socket. You kind of have to wiggle the leg around to make sure you're getting all the cartilage and all of the tendons cut that you need to. And then I take that back quarter all the way back up to where I want the back strap to start, and I hack it off there, put it in the bag with the front quarter. Then we move to the back strap. Most oftentimes, I will usually go from the front to the back. Usually somewhere you'll find out where it's not so thick that you can make a stake out of it again. And that's where at the base of the neck. I start there. I started an incision. And then I'll run along the very spine, free that up. And then I'll start working from the Bottom along the ribs, and then cutting along the ribs to connect to the first cut. And I'm kind of lifting as I go from the front. So in my left hand I've got the. The back strap as I'm pulling up and cutting with my right. And I cut that all the way back, Cut around that little hip joint at the back, and you've got a full back strap there in your hands. Make sure that you're paying attention to what the state requires wherever you're hunting, to make sure you get all the meat that you need to, not only to meet wanting waste laws, but also, like, there's a lot of good meat there that a lot of people don't always bring out, even if it is legal. So I like to just have a good system to do the same thing every time. And for instance, like the neck roll, some states don't require you take out the neck, but I always take out the neck. I basically start cutting on the top just like it's the back strap, and I start rolling it and I cut along the neck bones and just roll it off. One big roast and then I end up with one hunk of meat. Ideally, especially if it's a bigger mule deer or an elk or a bear, you can get that nice big roast all together. If it's a pronghorn or a small deer, like our blacktail deer or a whitetail doe or something, Sometimes you have to end up with a couple different strips, and that just goes to the grind pile. Um, but I like doing that. So once I've got the two quarters backstrap neck, I will usually try to get some flake meat off of the ribs. If I want to add that to the grind pile, Obviously that's kind of the go to. If it's an elk, you can make a steak out of it. Kind of like a carne asada style or four fajitas. And I like adding all those. You can add those into a loose meat bag, or you can just add them all into the same side bag. If you've got plenty of airflow, you got plenty of time. It's cool outside and things are cooling off. Yeah, I'll put it all in the same bag. If it's hot out, though, and you're dealing with an elk, it's September. Maybe add a different game bag for those and then you can combine them to pack out later on. One thing to keep in mind is that Alaska requires you take out the rib meat on all the animals. So in Alaska, we cut out all the rib meat using the havalon blade at the end of it as well. But I think Alaska might be the only one that requires you cut out the rib meat. And for bigger boned animals, like, let's say a moose in Alaska, I think a lot of people do prefer having a little saw to cut those out, but that's pretty specific Use case again, make sure that you're following the laws and regulations wherever you're hunting to make sure that you get all the meat that you need to get out. And even though there's not a lot of meat on the ribs on blacktail in Alaska, we had to take those out and. And those went to the grind pile for making into burger or sausage later on. So I've gotten the neck meat off now I've got the back strap. I've gotten some of the loose meat that is on the brisket and those kinds of places. And then I'll reach in and I will cut out the tenderloin. Basically, I'm separating the stomach lining from the back of the back where the back strap sits on top, the tenderloin sits underneath. And I'm. I'm holding down with my left hand while I'm slowly cutting that stomach lining back so I don't puncture the stomach. And then once I've got that, I run that knife basically parallel to those ribs to try to get underneath that tenderloin. And I'm running that knife back and forth there to try to make sure it's smooth in a perfect world. And then I'll find the end of it. Because once you've gotten the line cut at the top and you can get your fingers back in there behind on the backside of the tenderloin. And then you can kind of hold onto it and find out where each ends of it are and cut the ends off. And then you've got a tenderloin in your hand without having gutted the animal. So then you flip it over, do the same thing on the other side. And at the end of all of this, I also like to then basically draw slits down the ribs in the front. And I will cut at the cartilage at the bottom, pop a couple ribs up, and reach in and grab the heart. I'm a big heart fan. It's like my favorite thing to eat. It's my family's tradition to eat the heart right when you get back to camp or get back to the house. So I always reach in there and I just split the. I split the ribs apart so that I don't have to gut it in order to get that out. Obviously, if you're someone who loves liver or some of those other organs that I don't know much about, um, you would probably just gut it. That would make life way easier. But in this case, I'm trying to keep it as clean and as. As gutless as possible. Um, so again, I'm just splitting ribs to get in there and get the heart out. Then when it comes to, after all that's been said and done, I go back up to the head and I will start basically right at the base of where the head attaches to the spine. And the first step I do, and this has taken me a lot of years to figure out to do this right, but the first step I do is I cut away a bunch of meat and cartilage away from the bones as I can that way. And I'm doing this like you can do this with a havalon pretty easily cut it away so you see what you're working with, so you know where your joints are. And then once you can kind of see, once you've cleared off the meat and the cartilage that is in the way of seeing where the spine meets the head, then you can kind of move, articulate the head around on that joint and get your knife in there. And the knife actually, in order to get to the cartilage and to get that thing separated, well, the knife is going to be cutting towards the head because it's at a V shape in each of those in the spinal column, right where it meets the head. So you're cutting up towards the head and you'll hear it goes click. And you're like, oh, got that one. Then you go to the other side and it goes click. You're like, oh, got that one. And then you can kind of pull the head forward, like rotate it forward away from the body and. And it'll start opening up. And then you can just keep cutting away at the cartilage and all of the extra material that's. That's holding the head together still. And before long you'll see it's barely hanging on. And I usually give it one little twist and cut through the rest of the. The cartilage and different meat stuff that's holding that head on and it's off. And that's how we do it with. Obviously we're doing it just over audio, so it's kind of difficult to visualize, but that's how we do it without having to get out any saws. And without having to get out any high powered or big ass, you know, knives, we're just doing it with a havalon, just taking our time, cleaning off the meat and then just finding those joints and just popping it off. So then to wrap it all up, you know, basically we talked about, you know, as we're butchering, we're making sure the meat's cooling and especially if it's hot out, just try to get some airflow to it. That's why we have that pea cord to make sure things get hung, if it needs to get hung, even if it just gets set on top of branches once it's in the bag and it's not going to get dirty, I like doing that to make sure there's some airflow. But then we're ready to pack it up. So if you haven't been able to tell already, I'm a big meat in bag kind of guy. I just think it holds together really nicely and rides a lot better when you have the meat in the bag. So if you're backpack hunting though, that's not always going to be possible. The way that my kafaru is laid out is I have two pouches on the outside, like kind of bat wings looking things on the outside that I can put gear in. And then I put the meat in the bag, I cinch up the very bottom so it doesn't ride all the way down on my butt, but it's like more of the middle in my backpack. And then I will zip it up and oftentimes we'll then maybe add something that's in a dry bag on top of it, something that won't get gnarly from, from the blood or if I've got the contractor bag then it's not a problem, but I'll put gear on top of that. So I've got it. I've got my gear and the meat riding basically the upper 2/3 of my backpack. I don't really have anything at the very bottom because heavy weight doesn't ride at the bottom very well. And then I'll put whatever remaining gear I need to on either strap it on the outside or put it in the outside pockets. And then when I strap it all down tight, I'm basically doing like left side, right side, left side, right side. And I'm basically trying to keep it as cinched down straight as possible. That way it doesn't, you know, two miles down your pack, pack out. It doesn't feel like it's just dragging you down to one side that can be such a pain in the butt. And I've done that before where it's just like, oh my God, I need to re situate this. And re situating after you've already gotten your pack and your gear and you're hiking down the trail, that sucks. It's not what you want to do, so just do it right the first time. As you're getting ready to hike out, take the extra time to make sure it's really cinched tight and the load is riding centered in your back in that upper two thirds. You'll be a lot happier for it. Okay, so when we're talking about having a full backpack load of gear and then also packing meat in the, on the frame, this is where like the removable frame packs are really handy. Stone Glacier XO Kufaru Mr. Ranch. God, there's a bunch of them out there now. But, but when you have that meat shelf that you can use, you'll actually pay attention to this. They, they set that meat shelf usually somewhere around that upper 2/3 because they don't want to pack and meat all the way down to your butt. So once you figure out how your backpack comes apart, you separate the bag off from the top. There's usually a meat shelf that you can set your bag in on, and this one is even more critical to make sure that you cinch it down the right way. This is where the high country bags or some of the other thinner shaped bags, the skinnier ones, are really nice. I'd rather have two bags that are like thinner and a little bit tight, more tightly packed than the meat on bone elk bags. For example, whenever we've packed out elk with a meat on bone elk bag between the bag and the frame, inevitably you get one side that's like splooging way out one and, and you get one side that's like way sucked in under and you're like, how did we end up like this? But largely it's just because that meat will find its cracks between the, between the straps. Most of the time there's only two or three straps that go along the sides anyway. And that meat will just slip out between the cracks and will get you off center. It's not quite as smooth of a pack out. But again, if you're in a situation where you don't have contractor bags or a rain jacket you're going to sacrifice or dry bag of some kind that you're going to put the meat in, you want to keep your bag as clean as possible or you've got backpacking gear that's in your bag. So this is your only other option. It's a good way to go. Just again, make sure that you have it cinched down so that it's centered really nicely and you're not going to end up with splooging or anti sploogers around here because splooging sucks and it makes your, you know, one side, your hip will start hurting halfway down the hike, et cetera, et cetera. So we oftentimes talk about or you hear people talk about how heavy is your pack? You can load it as heavy as you want, but I've actually come back to going a little lighter. My friend Kenneth at Kafaru, he is an animal. He can load up, you know, basically a whole elk and third of it or half of it on his back and then carry half of it out of his hands. And he's in his late 20s and already has knee problems. So I just have decided that, you know, despite guys like Kenneth being absolute beasts and making me want to do one trips on big loads, I'm going to do two trips or three trips if I have to, just to make sure that everything, you know, that you, you, you have better longevity out of your knees, out of your joints, out of your back and that you also don't fall and hurt yourself when you're on a packout. A few years ago, my friend Matt Cubanish and I, he and I were packing a bear out and as we were going, we. We had this. It was pretty good sized bear and I had a half of it. He had half of it. We were struggling under the weight of these packs and as we're packing out, he went to step over a downfall and his shoelace caught or his gator got caught or whatever and he went down. And luckily he didn't try to stop his fall with his hands. I think he'd ended up with a broken wrist or a broken arm. He just held his arms in and just went poof right onto his chest. Like, kind of knocked the wind out of him for a sec. It broke his backpack, but he was okay. But I think we're pushing the end the boundaries of what we probably should have had. And maybe we should have just made another trip for that one because it broke his backpack when he fell. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, clearly when we're loading them up this heavy, maybe we ought to be a little bit more careful about where we. We choose to be hiking because we've gone a shorter route back to the truck that was through deadfall and maybe we should have just gone the longer route that was through less deadfall because it was a situation where luckily nobody got hurt but the backpack broke and I was like, oh, like where we could be weekly could have been in a real pickle had that fall ended up differently. So all I have to say about packing meat weights, you know, doing things, you know, getting meat back to the truck, try to do it smart. If you know what your limits are like that helps you already. But also you're probably not listening to this back podcast if you're know what your limits are already for the most part. If this is your first, you know, time packing meat out. If you're using doing a deer, just expect to do two loads and make those loads easy on you. Like start there. If you find out like you've got that one load out and you're like okay, next, the next year we shoot, I'm gonna just one trip it. That's fine. A one trip to mule deer is pretty dang heavy. It's, you know, with gear and everything, you're probably over 100 pounds. But if you're doing a one trip deer with just super light pack, maybe you're in that 80 pound, 90 pound mark. When it comes to elk though elk when you're, when you're packing it up, you'll see guys who are in good shape usually do three trips. So if you're in pretty good physical condition, you prepared for this hunt, you've, you've done some heavy pack rucking, three trips. Basically you'll do front and loose meat. Well, okay, there's a couple different ways you could slice this by I, you could do rear quarter by itself. It's in that 60, 70 pound range. You could do front and loose meat, which is probably in that 60, 70 pound range. Or you could do if you're really. Again, if you're listening to this podcast, maybe you've already tried this and you can tell me if I'm wrong or not. But you could do a front and rear and then do a front and rear and then come back for the head and loose at the very last. Just depends on how far you are. The front and rear combo is pretty burly. Like it is definitely a heavy pack and you better have good footing and have have really be in good shape. Know what you're doing before you just go throwing on basically two quarters of an elk on your back. But like when we're guiding, that's oftentimes what we try to do is do front and rear as we pack it back to the truck. And usually it's not a huge, car crazy hike to get back to the truck. And it ends up being either, you know, three trips for one guy, or you can get three guys and do one trip out. That's pretty easy to do. The big thing with elk in particular is whoever is carrying the antlers has a whole other set of challenges as they're hiking out. You. You've got to twist and turn and, and contort your body as you're going through the terrain to make those elk antlers fit as you're. As you're packing out. So having a little bit lighter pack with the head, basically, if you just go loose meat and head, that is usually a pretty good combination to make sure that you're helpful in getting the meat out, but also that you have enough flexibility literally in your body to get that head out without it snagging on branches or sage brush or whatever. Now, I am all ears. If somebody has a different system, some people will say, well, just do front quarter and loose me and then do front quarter and loose me, and then a back quarter and a back quarter. That's four trips. I think that's a really good expectation if you are getting started. And that's what you want to do to make sure that you have kind of the. The. The best options for making sure you stay safe. Right. That's basically just saying, like, if you blow a knee out on your first trip and you're out there by yourself, you got to get help to get the rest of that elk out. And you've also got a medical bill coming your way, whether it's PT or a trip to the er. Like, God forbid you blow an ACL or something on a hunt, and you got to figure out how to get out. So again, just at the end of all of this, I know I'm kind of talking in circles here, but at the end of all this, you know, be conservative. Don't try to overload yourself if you haven't carried heavy, heavy weight before. Do two trips on a deer as a good starting standard, do four trips on an elk as a good starting standard, and four trips on an elk, you're still going to be pretty dang overloaded. So. But keep that in mind as you're getting ready to pack out on your fall hunts this year. All right, that's going to do it for this episode. All about kill kits and how I like to butcher in the field. If you have questions again, I'M happy to help. I'm back from Alaska so if you have hunts that you want help planned, I'm around and you can get a hold of me. Jaden Huntwest.net is my email. You can also check out the website huntwest planning.com we've got the AI hunt buddy up there. If you have quick questions that you think that it could help with whether it's going to be kill kit things, pack out advice where you could be looking on the map. When I say that it's like what kind of terrains you should be looking for. Those are all going to be on huntwestplanning.com so go check out the website and peruse around. If you have any questions, obviously shoot me a DM either on social media or reach out via email and I'll be happy to help. Okay, thank you everybody. We've got only a couple days left until Archery Antelope season start opening up. By the time this comes out, Nevada Archery Deer will have started. I obviously just came back from my first hunt. The fall is knocking on the door right now and so we are here and I hope that this helps you get prepared for the last final steps of getting ready for the fall hunting season. Good luck out there and thank you again for listening to the Hunt West Podcast. Thank you for listening to the Hunt west podcast. If you like what you heard today, the best compliment you can give is to share the show with a friend. We will see you on the next episode and we hope one day to see you Hunt West West.