Do you pick all the ticks off first??? LOL
There is another option to do. I can't explain it, but can show and there is probably videos on how to do it.
But you make slits in the skin to expose the tendons in the front legs, stick the back legs thru the slits, and wear the animal like a back pack
I've done similar with deer in the past. Instead of sticking the legs through the tendons, we skin the forelegs up to the knees, leaving the hide and dew claws attached, then cut the forelegs off. Tie the right front leg to the left rear leg using a square knot (the dew claws keep the knot from slipping). Tie the left front to the right rear. Lay the deer on it's back and scoot into the pack you just made. I carry the deer horizontally with the hind quarters on one side and the front end/head on the other. The head hangs down so you don't come bobbing through the brush with horns sticking up. Depending on how big you are, a 100-125lb buck fits me (5'10", 200lbs) just about right. If you're a big-ol' dude, you'll be awful tight with this method on a small deer.
I always gut an animal before I haul it out. The exception would be if I had to drag it through swamp water or something where it was going to get awful filthy/nasty.
I dunno, carrying an animal on your back just seems like begging to get shot by some nimrod,besides being heavy. when younger I could carry 100 lb bags of cement but never through swamps or woods, plus dead wt feels heavier for some reason. plus it sounds like a good chance to trip/fall and really mess up a knee or back.
You put an orange vest on it, silly
Either that or however much of your roll of orange tape you have left in your pack! I've always got the orange tape to hang on blood-trails as I track one...or to mark my trail back to a dead animal if I go back for the cart or pack. Either way...you'd have to be a fool to shoot at the deer I pack out...looks like a tan/orange zebra by the time I put it on my back. And if I hear a rig or see a person, they damn sure know I'm there. I've been known to call out that I'm coming up out of a draw packing a deer and to not shoot before when I wasn't sure if there was somebody in the area or not. I packed a deer like that about 5.5 miles several years ago and was singing at the top of my lungs most of the way out because it was pretty heavy timber and I couldn't see very well and I knew there were other guys hunting not too far away and I hadn't seen them in a few hours to know where they were for sure.
That's part of the reason I want the head hanging down as well. People are known to get a case of the dumb when they see horns coming through the brush. I've got pics somewhere of me carrying a 6x6 bull elk rack out on a pack...hanging upside down of course. There's never been a christmas tree half as decorated as those horns were...I used an entire roll of flagging tape on them just to be sure. You couldn't even tell there was a horn under all that tape as no horn was exposed at all!
I do understand what you're saying about having that much weight on your back as you're getting on in years...at 36 years old I'm still young enough to convince myself that I'm young and capable of whatever I need to do. We won't talk about how my fat butt feels in the morning however! 18 years of running around on the Navy ships and my knees aren't what they used to be. Joking aside...Dad showed me the "turn the deer into a pack" method in Oregon on a blacktail when I was a young boy. I got to carry Dad's last blacktail out for him last year as he's not in the best of health anymore. It won't be a whole lot longer until I'm too old to be packing one like that but I'll be prepared as I've got all the packs I could ever need and a game cart already. :rockon
