TL;DR: An average mature bull elk yields about 218 pounds of boneless meat, and bone-in quarters run 50 to 100 pounds apiece. Solo with a frame pack, plan on four or five trips; with a partner, about two each. Bag every quarter on its own in a breathable game bag, stage the meat in shade and off the ground between trips, and carry loads you can walk downhill with safely, not the most you can lift. Our 5-piece game bag set ($70) covers a full bone-in elk: four 40" x 24" quarter bags, a 17" x 29" bag for tenderloins and trim, and a carrying pouch.
How Much Meat You Are Actually Carrying
Most first-time elk hunters underestimate this, then overestimate how much they can carry per trip. The numbers below come from onX's elk weight guide, which draws on a University of Wyoming carcass study and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation figures.
| Piece | Bull (bone-in) | Cow (bone-in) |
|---|---|---|
| Front shoulder, each | 50 to 90 lb | 38 to 44 lb |
| Hindquarter, each | 60 to 100 lb | About 65 lb |
| Backstraps | 15 to 30 lb | About 16 lb combined |
| Total boneless meat | About 218 lb | About 169 lb |
Add neck meat, rib meat, tenderloins, your own gear, water, and the head or antlers if you are taking them, and a solo bull pack-out is a real logistics problem. It is solvable. It just needs a plan before the shot, not after.
How Many Trips It Takes
The same onX guide points to load-carriage research that recommends staying under about 40% of your body weight per load. For a 180 lb hunter, that is roughly 72 pounds a trip. Their worked example for a solo hunter with a bull that comes to about 290 pounds of total haul (meat plus a 40 lb head):
- 3 trips at about 97 lb each
- 4 trips at about 73 lb each
- 5 trips at about 58 lb each
Three trips looks fastest on paper. In practice, 97 pounds on a steep, wet downhill in the dark is how knees and ankles get hurt miles from the truck. Four trips at a load you can control is usually the faster pack-out once you count the rest stops. Add a partner and the job drops to one or two trips each. Add two more and it can be a single trip.
Distance changes everything. A bull a half mile off a road is an afternoon. A bull four miles in, solo, is two days. Know which hunt you are on before you pull the trigger at last light.
Bone-In or Boned-Out
Boning out in the field takes longer at the kill site and saves real weight on every trip. Leaving the bone in is faster to process and keeps the meat in bigger pieces with less exposed surface. Neither is wrong. We break the trade-off down in bone-in vs boned-out, and the step-by-step cutting sequence is in our elk gutless method guide.
Two rules to check before you start cutting: your state's evidence-of-sex requirement (many states want it to stay naturally attached to a quarter or the carcass) and its meat-salvage rules, which spell out which parts you must bring out. Some states also regulate whether antlers can leave the field before the meat does. Read your regulations at home, not on the mountain.
Game Bag Setup for the Pack-Out
One quarter, one bag. Keeping quarters separate lets air reach each piece, keeps a dirty quarter from contaminating a clean one, and makes each load a known unit you can grab and go.
- Four quarter bags for the front shoulders and hindquarters. Ours are 40" x 24", sized for an elk hindquarter.
- One smaller bag for backstraps, tenderloins, and trim. Ours is 17" x 29". Bone it out, and the neck and rib meat go in here too or ride with a quarter.
- Breathable fabric. A game bag's job is cooling meat. Ours are 40D ripstop nylon so air moves through the bag, which is what keeps meat from souring before you get it out. If you are weighing materials, see synthetic vs cotton game bags.
- Something you can find in the dark. You will be walking back to staged meat at 5 a.m. or after dark more often than not. Our bags carry a reflective strip that catches a headlamp beam.
Not sure how many bags your method needs? How many game bags for an elk runs the count for bone-in and boned-out.
Staging Meat Between Trips
On a multi-trip pack-out, most of the meat spends hours (or a night) waiting for you. Where you leave it decides whether it cools or sours.
- Get it off the ground. Hang bagged quarters from a branch, or lay them across logs or rocks so air moves underneath. Meat sitting on warm dirt holds heat.
- Find shade and stay in it. Pick a spot that stays shaded through the afternoon, not just the morning. North-facing timber is your friend.
- Move away from the carcass. In grizzly country, stage the meat a good distance from the gut pile and somewhere you can see it from a distance on the way back in. Our bear spray and gut piles protocol covers the approach.
- Drop a pin. Mark the meat cache on your GPS or phone app. Timber looks different on the third trip in the dark.
- Keep it dry. Bags shed rain better hanging than sitting in a puddle. Cooling the quarters properly once you are back at camp is its own job; see cooling elk meat and hanging quarters.
What Pack to Use
For bone-in elk quarters over real distance, use a frame pack. A load shelf or a pack that separates from its frame lets a quarter ride between the bag and your back, close to your center of gravity, where 70 pounds is manageable. We cover the line between the two in day pack vs frame pack for hunting.
We make the SB1 25L Hunting Backpack ($90), and we are not going to tell you a 25L day pack is a bull hauler. What it does have is a drop-down load shelf that folds out from the back of the pack: drop a bagged quarter onto it, buckle it in, and keep the main compartment for your gear. That is useful for a deer, a boned-out load on a short haul, or carrying gear and the small bag while a partner runs the frame pack. At 2.6 lb with an integrated rain cover, it is the pack you hunt in all day. For four trips of 70-plus pounds over miles, bring the frame pack.
Keep Your Chest Gear On
A loaded pack changes what you can reach. Anything stuffed in a lid pocket is now behind 70 pounds of meat. That matters most for two things: bear spray and your binoculars.
Fresh meat on your back in grizzly country is the textbook setup for a bad encounter. Carry spray where you can draw it with the pack loaded. Our Bear Spray Holster ($15) mounts to the sides or bottom of the LT1 and LT2 bino harnesses with an open top for a one-handed draw. More options are in the bear spray holster guide.
Binos stay useful on the pack-out too: checking the meat cache from a distance before you walk in, and picking a route down a face you have never descended. A chest harness keeps them on you and out of the way of your pack straps.
Pack-Out Checklist
- Before the hunt: know your regulations (evidence of sex, salvage, antler rules) and how far from the truck you are willing to shoot.
- At the kill: photos and tag first, then break the animal down quarter by quarter into separate bags.
- Stage the meat in shade, off the ground, away from the carcass, and drop a pin.
- Pick a load you can control downhill, around 40% of body weight or less.
- Carry meat first, then camp, then the head or antlers if your state allows that order.
- Back at camp: get the quarters hanging and cooling the same day.
Next Step
If your bags are cotton sheets from a garage drawer or a set that tore on the last animal, the Lone Trail Game Bags 5 Piece Set ($70) covers a full bone-in elk and rolls up small in its carrying pouch. Like everything we make, it carries our lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects (send a photo and we send a replacement) and free returns. For the full field-to-freezer picture, start with the best game bags for elk.