With wolves, some grizzly bears, black bears, cougar and coyotes, I like taking my bucks out whole and then cleaning them at home, I also like weighing all my whitetails. Elk are 3 to 4x the size of a whitetail which makes it much tougher to get an elk out whole. Unless your very close to a road or have a chainsaw winch, this is pretty tough, not to mention the TIME it takes to get an elk out in the early archery season (not wanting any of the meat to spoil) so with elk we usually don't even gut them in remote areas, we take the quarters, tenderloins, backstraps, and neck/rib meat. leaving the guts untouched.