Thread: Be Honest - How do people carry out meat and large weight

I am enjoying being involved with hunting - it has taught me a lot in the last 18 months.

I have asked several people how they carry out meat, especially on multi day trips. How to store it (esp in summer) and retrieve as much as they can. Basically the logistics of carrying all kit for say 3 days and then how to get all the meat out.

When I initially spoke to people I know, they kept telling about huge quantities of meat they would recover. It transpired that was via quad bikes or side by sides, or utes where available (Nothing wrong with that).Or that they had friends along who werent shooting, but helped carry the meat. I also discovered that in some cases only prime cuts were boned and carried out, hence being able to shoot and take out meat from several animals.

On my first multi day hunt we each carried our kit plus aprox 25-30kg of meat. That was a 3-4 hour trek out.

On some NZ hunting videos Ive seen hunters walk out (at least on camera) carrying their kit and meat totalling 45-50 kgs.

I know there are differences in fitness, age, strength etc - but what is the average walk out weight of meat that people carry? And what is the weight of peoples kit incl firearm, ammo, binos etc?

I certainly learned one thing very quickly - I don't want to carry bones out

Fyi My backpack/tent/all kit for three nights incl firearm, ammo etc weighed around 16-17 kg total. I was told this was light?

Interested to hear peoples stories re this. Especially around kit weight and meat weight and distance/time travelled on foot and any other logistics or advice (I hunt ion foot on DOC land mainly).