How far can you drag a deer?

[Fishman]

Deer cart. Best $50 you'll ever spend. I hauled a doe almost 2 miles last year and it was no big deal. Even hauled two deer on it once about 3/4 of a mile. It takes about 1/4 the effort of dragging with a shoulder harness, and I don't even want to think about dragging a doe by the legs for 2 miles.

[DougGuy]

I carry an air tire hand truck, one with the stair rails on the back above the tires. Ratchet straps hold the deer on and it makes it a lot easier.

[Suo Gan]

If you are going more than a mile in. Carry a backpack. Put your lunch, water, ammo, survival kit, flares for those times you have a compound fracture...and can't walk no more. Carry a small tarp for boning. Wrap the meat in the tarp. Small hatchet. Bone out the meat leave the ribs and backbone out there in the woods. I don't even bring back the antlers anymore.

[MT Gianni]

25 years ago I drug a buck 3 miles and wore the hide off of his rump. He ate fine. Ten years ago I drug a whole 6x5 Elk downhill 1.5 miles until I hit a gully and had to go for the rig.

[Brett Ross]

Not near as far as I could 30 years ago.

[1Shirt]

I no longer try to drag by myself. Last two deer were loaded into the back of the truck at no more than a 20 foot drag. Old Pa dutch saying, "Ve got to soon old and too late smart"
1Shirt!

[RoyEllis]

I no longer try to drag by myself.

Wait til you have spinal fusion surgery, it makes a capstan winch & 1000ft of rope invaluable! Can't drive out in the winter wheat fields ya know. Any more, I do good to drag my own fat **** back out of my hunting spots, much less drag a dead deer.

[Jal5]

That plastic snow sled works fine over snow or dirt!

[winelover]

Deer cart, plastic snow sled and a wife that hunts and helps!
Priceless!!




Attachment 88288






Winelover

[Shuz]

In my younger days, I used to drag them a lot further than I do now! A neat technique I used was to tie the fore legs up into the rack of a buck and then a nylon double looped sling around the neck and the loose loop went over my shoulder and gave me something to hang onto when the dragging began. Much easier to drag when the fore legs aren't slopping and flopping around.

As I've grown older, I've noticed the deer appear to be browsing closer to my rig!

[legend]

I learned a long time ago to hunt up....drag down....works well in the black hills of wyoming....

[wolfe28]

That plastic snow sled works fine over snow or dirt!

Good Morning;

This is what I opted for. $10 sled, $5 of 5/8" rope, and a HD bucket with lid. I pack the extra cloths in the bucket, snap the seat/lid on, lash it to the sled, and then carry the whole thing like a backpack.

Now all I need is to shoot a deer.

Thanks again,
D

[HollowPoint]

The last deer I harvested was done during an Arizona archery season. It was a smallish whitetail. After field dressing it couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds of so.

It was a little over a mile back to my vehicle. That one mile had only a few shallow ups and downs in the terrain but even still, that one-hundred pound buck felt more like it weighed a ton after the first one-hundred yards.

The excitement of the hunt and the excitement of the kill wore off pretty quickly cause, on this hunt, I had to do all the hauling, dragging and straining by myself. Only after I finally got back to the truck did that excitement come back.

At or around the half-mile mark I started cutting off body parts just to lighten the load. It was a mistake to have cut the legs off up to the elbows. If it weren't for the drag-rope I carried in my backpack, I'm not sure what I would have done. I really didn't want to cut it in half and make that trip twice.

When I finally did make it back to the truck, there was no fur left on the entire right side of that deer carcass.

I was hunting on top of a mountain called Sugar Loaf Mountain just east of Mesa, Arizona. I seen several deer that day. The one I got just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the last weekend of December and that year's archery deer season.

Interesting side note; In Arizona, the current year's archery deer season ends at the end of December. In Arizona, that same archery deer season extends into January of the following year but, you have to get a new hunting license and a new archery deer tag.

I did just that and the following weekend I was back out at the same spot trying to get another one of those small whitetails I'd seen. I never saw another deer when I went back but, I did get trapped by gun-fire on top of that same mountain while I was trying to get back to my truck.

On the top of this particular mountain is a mesa that extends nearly its entire top; (hence the name Sugar-Loaf mountain) it's flat with only slight terrain variation. On the way back to the truck this second time out, I got to the edge of the mesa just above my truck and found a couple of guys target shooting into the side of the mountain. The volcanic boulders that make up the side of this mountain were causing their ricochets whiz dangerously close to my body so I had to hit the dirt till they stopped firing.

I had visions of me being dragged off that mountain.

HollowPoint

[10x]

It is much easier to drag a dead deer than push it.
In field dressing any big game, 1) get the guts out 2) get it cooling, 3) get the blood out.
Any dragging that does not break bones and the blood is out of the meat is not going to do much damage at all.

[Thundarstick]

As far as I need to, and not one step further than I have to!

[waksupi]

I was lucky this time, maybe 300 yards, all down hill.

[kbstenberg]

This year for me the distance wasn't too bad (quarter mile). it was constantly having to get the deer over dead falls. Kevin

[smkummer]

This brings back memories of my first mule deer buck shot in N.Dak. It was down in a butte valley in western N.D.. My hunting buddy and I were both Juniors in high school and in wrestling did all we could to drag that over 200 lbs. field dressed buck 1/4 of a mile to the trunk of a early 60's Ford Falcon. We didn't even bring rope. My feet and back hurt from that memory but we learned.

[Blammer]

stuff them in a tractor tire then roll it down the hill...

[Murphy]

In or out of season? Day or night? Too many variables...I need more specifics.

Murphy

P.S.: Don't be hatin', this was long ago.