Anyone that hunts in an area where there are big ravines have any advice (or system they've come up with) on how to recover deer that decide that's where they want to go to die? One of my favorite stands is close to a big ravine and every now and then they end up down there. Kind of getting old driving around the other side and walking(dragging) miles out of the way for a deer behind you at the bottom of the ravine. The rope/ tug a war thing isn't much fun either lol. Recovered a deer from there........again. It got hung up half way down. As I was sliding and tumbling past her I almost grabbed onto her legs to stop me. But alas ended up cracking my head and cutting myself above the eye. Nice little bump and shiner too. After packing my head in snow we finally got her out. Just curious if there is a better engineer out there than me. Thanks.
Hunting most of my life on the side of a mountain, I usually kicked them to the bottom and brought the truck around, but there are a few spots that we can't do that. These days I cheat and use the fourwheeler with winch. If I didn't have access to that, I'd buy 50 feet of rope and a small pulley. Cut off a few feet of rope, tie the pulley to a tree up the hill and then run the other 47 feet through it. Attach one end to the deer and the other to you. Use your weight and gravity to pull on rope, once she is to the tree up the hill, look for another up the hill to repeat process. Repeat until you are at the top.
Have you given any thought to quartering your deer? Perhaps making a few trips up with manageable weight is better than busting your hump/skull doing the mother load all at once?
When I used to hunt the mountains a buddy would hunt the steepest side. We would tell him if you shoot something your on your own but we always helped. It would take all day and we would do something simulair to Ben/Pa but we would just drag it up a few yrds go back and retrieve our geer and move it a few yrds further up past the deer go back and drag the deer a few yrds past the geer and just repeat. That side of the mountain was slate all the way up, real pain in the arse. He would get a deer everytime but he would shoot a spike in a heartbeat. I would not give that spot up because of the drag though.
Learn how to bone your deer out and load them into a pack. A good sized deer only weighs about 80 lbs including the head once they are boned.
How about this idea? http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/nor...rieval-system-i-made-opening-day-wv-buck.html
Being a wimp, this is something that I've wondered about too. I've thought about putting a battery on a deer cart and then attaching an electric winch to the cart. Hook the cart to a tree or something solid... run a line down to the deer and start winching it up. :D Here in Illinois it's illegal to quarter up or debone a deer and remove it from the field in pieces*. Because that certainly was my first thought. * You can quarter a deer in the field... but the pieces have to be transported together which obviously defeats the purpose. A CPO told me I could probably get away with tagging a deer with the head tag, and the leg tag... calling it in and then cutting it in half. (front half, back half) and then dragging one piece 50 yards and then the other piece 50 yards and so on. So that neither piece was more than 50 yards apart. Right now, I'm thankful I have people who will help me.
That's pretty interesting. What if the deer weighs more than you though? Cause mine are generally pushing around 325lbs. give or take a few pounds either way
I saw a show one time wher they were training army soldiers. They purposely got a Humvee stuck. They did a similar thing as they did in that post, except they used several more pulleys. Then the soldiers pulled on the rope with their hands and got the vehicle unstuck. Something about physics and leverage. I have a similar thing on a grambel when I hang a deer to butcher. I can easily lift the deer off the ground with this pulley/leverage thing. You could always experiment with a few buddies and see how it works trying to drag one of them up a hill.
I was thinking about this on the way home ... and I have come up with an ingenious idea!! Use your carp fishing set-up on deer ... just reel them in when they go down the cliff :D
This year I had a similar situation with my mule deer and we cut it in half and carried it out. It was a long and tough hike out, but me and a buddy had my deer out in 2 hours. That pulley idea looks great but where I got my deer is a badlands area with no trees on the hill we were going up.
