Canoe float trip for elk, Tip's, tricks, and experiences welcome.

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bsmitty27

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I'm doing a canoe float trip for elk in northern BC in a couple weeks, we have pre floated the river, water volume looks good, lots of sign around. 3 guys, 3 boats, 30km of slow moving river in 10 days.
Plan is to float, stop and call every mile or so. When we find a good area set up camp till we want to move on. Take it nice and slow. We could be out in a day if we needed to be. Plan on packaging meat quarted in game bags, in bottom of canoe to keep cool. We are going fairly light for canoe camping. Individual tents, sill tarp kitchen set up. Looking for tips and tricks, things to bring.
Thanks for the advice.
 
I've got nothing I can help you with but I'm commenting to help me keep track of this thread.
Keep us informed how it went when you get back, trip sounds awesome.
 
A question and then a couple of comments. What type of game bags are you using?

We used Caribou Gear bags last year for a couple of moose and they are great. Take the bags off of the quarters at night and rinse them and hang to dry overnight. Repack in the morning and you are good to go.

Tie milk jugs or some other buoyant device to the quarters on a fairly long lead (depends on water depth) so if you do go over then it is easier to find and retrieve the quarters.
 
I have done many canoe trips for moose, handling elk is very similar. My advice would be to never quarter game in the field. Spitting backbones full length and then cutting the carcass crossways is fine for commercial butchers, but not so good in the field. Too difficult, and the pieces that result are too big to handle conveniently.

Here's what i do:

After field dressing and cutting off the lower legs, skin out the carcass one side at a time on the hide. Remove the "up side" front and hind legs using a knife ( legs are not properly called "quarters" even though so many hunters name them that ), and cut off the head. The shoulders are easy to separate, and the hind legs can be separated from the pelvis by the hip ball joint or sacroiliac joint. I just started doing the second method - Learned it in Namibia last year and it is a superior way if you can find the sacroiliac joint with your knife. You have to remove the tenderloins and bag them separately if you use the sacroiliac cut. You can discard the bit of pelvic girdle and tail stub that remains.

You then have the long back piece, containing the neck and rib steaks, loins and ribs. Remove each rib slab using a saw, not an axe. Fewer sharp bone shards to cut your hands. Cut the backbone crossways between the stubs of second and third ribs.

That's eight pieces of meat, bone in. Each meat bag can be smaller, easier to handle than quarters. The bones stay in to make ageing the meat more effective and more tender without shortening and toughness, and less meat exposed to contamination than if you used the " gutless" method or complete deboning.

Tight weave cotton cloth such as that used in sheets and pillow cases is far superior to cheesecloth or most commercial meat bags for meat protection. You can sew your own if you have access to a sewing machine. Six bags is enough. One for the two rib slabs, one for both front legs, one for the loins, one for the rib steaks/neck, and one for each of the hind legs.

And don't forget a pack frame and para cord! Happy hunting.
 

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