It's a good problem to not have.
We never left anything overnight when I was hunting Wyoming, in the 80s'. But, grizzly bears numbers weren't very high, either. We were more worried about black bears finding it.
We did just barely beat a black bear to a downed bull in Colorado one time. Shot was right before dark, in the rain... didn't find it until early the next morning.
As we were breaking it down, a beautiful cinnamon came up, 20yds away and just sat down and watched until we were done. No tags... and, he was too small, anyway.

 

Left a deer lay overnight last year and ended up loosing 1/3 of it to a black bear. I actually think him dragging it around my have saved the meat.

 

Twice in Colorado I had black bears on my elk carcass the next morning. One was a Giant brown phase.

 

Not elk, but had a grizzly on my moose quarters in Alaska the day after I'd killed him and packed him over to the gravel bar where the air taxi had dropped us off. The grizzly stood up on his hind legs 30 yards away in the willows when we walked over to where the meat had been. We backed out a couple hundred yards, got up the hill and set up the spotting scope to watch him....he was laying on top of the mound of moose meat and gravel bar sand he raked over it.

Eventually he wandered up river and when he got about a mile away we headed over to the meat. We excavated the pile, filleted the sand off the meat...he'd ruined every game bag, got new game bags and packed the meat to a small lone spruce quite a ways off the river bottom. He never found it over there, but we lost quite a bit of meat in the process.

A couple days latter a different grizzly was on the moose carcass and we watched it run two wolves that came by about 200 yards as fast as he could go. Needless to say we stayed away from the carcass. Pretty dang exciting stuff, to say nothing of the night the grizzly walked around sniffing our pack tent!

 

I lost a doe I shot to an Amish guy one time. Guess that doesn't count.

 

In WI. lost a buck to black bear, left it for 3 hours & started to track went just over 150 yds. on blood trail & then found drag marks from feet where bear carried it away.

 

A guy I use to hunt w did on one of the hills near Big Sky in 2014. Like you said, from the time he shot the elk to the time we met up to go get it, the bear found it. Big ol grizzly slept next to and ate on that bull for 3 days. We tried to get it every day but got charged by the bear when we got within 75 yards the first day. Bear spray kept him back but it wasn't afraid of us and stood its ground. That bear claimed it and became a bear watching show in the polaris ranger by that point just waiting to retrieve the rack. We kept thinking it would leave and even hung out at the Gallatin Riverhouse Grill to buy time in between us working and checking on the kill riding up in the ranger. Day 4 there wasn't hardly a trace left of the elk besides a few bones where it laid. Not sure if the bear or something else drug it off but we never did find any part of the head.

 

My buddy shot a nice blacktail buck (archery) last year and found a black bear eating on it after tracking for an hour or so. As it turned out, he got a two-fer out of it, so it wasn't so bad.

 

I have not, but I hope to take a grizz in Alaska in four weeks.

 

Good luck! Hope you whack a good one!

 

I had a black bear get my fronts on a kill once way down off in a hell hole. Bummed me out pretty hard.

 

I've got one buddy thats the only guy I know that has shot a wolf with his bow....shot it off the carcass of his elk.

The same guy used to hunt around the park and the last 2 times he shot decent bulls....but the Grizz were on them so quick he couldn't get the meat out. In one case 3 bears were on the carcass in a little over an hour. He says he would still be hunting there if it weren't for those pesky grizzlies.
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I've never had an elk stolen but had 2 golden eagles eat the back hams out of a big muley in Grand mesa NF. I had to leave it hang overnight, when coming back to the high tight draw where I hung the meat the eagles spooked at about 10 yds and they were so full of meat they swung in on us coming up the tight draw at chest height not able to climb and we had to dive out of the way. I will never forget that....awesome birds.
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I've had grizzlies on carcasses on Kodiak many times. I will never forget my first trip there and I was telling my buddy I wanted to see a Brownie...he said, "NO, you don't". This was back when a guy could shoot 5 bucks. It was my buddies 3rd, I think, we were packing them right after we shot them. I helped him pack the meat back to camp, we had a sandwich and went back out on the ridge across from his kill....about 120 yds away. As we got closer it was obvious a brownie had already found the kill as he had mowed down and dug up a 30' circle and piled up a huge mound of dirt on the carcass.

I told my buddy, 'thats crazy he could pile up that much dirt' ...and he said, 'that ain't dirt'...and he was right. A huge dark brown bear the size of a VW beetle was laying on top of the carcass. We sat and watched him for awhile as that was the first brownie I had seen that close....and he would get up....toss the bones in the air.....gnaw on them...then lay back down. It didn't take long for me to bump another brownie the next day crossing a alder choked canyon...but thats another story.
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I've seen carcasses where blackies get on them and just make a total mess crapping all over....pretty gross....and not worth trying to salvage the meat.

 

Me.First day ever hunting in the Yaak.Shot a 6x1 bull right at dusk and backed out to return at first light,blood trailed him right to a huge pile of dirt and limbs with 4 elk legs and a rack sticking out of it.Backed out and called the local warden,was told I could cut my tag and take the rack or keep on hunting.He told us if you have to leave something over night plan on loosing it in the Yaak drainage,saw more grizz in there over two hunting seasons than my 40 some years on the east side of the front combined.

 

^

Note to self:
Don't hunt elk in the Yaak.

 

Note to self... Google Earth where the hell the Yaak is!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaak,_Montana

 

Like Beendare we had Brown Bears on our Sitka blacktail gut piles/skeletons the same evening on Kodiak. I never skinned, quartered and caped a deer as fast as I did on a buck I arrowed in a well used pass that had a bear trail about 18" wide with a bear "rubbing post tree" about 10 yards away from where the buck died. The top of the bear rub was about 9' above the ground as I remember. The boars back up against the tree standing on their hind legs and rub their head on the truck as a territorial thing. Anyway, I was using his turf and wanted to get the heck out of there. The next morning the gut pile was totally gone.

After it snowed, where ever I walked one day, brown bear tracks would be on top of mine overnight. If I went out on a point to glass, so did the bear! I think they tracked the hunter knowing they would find a gut pile. They never came within 100 yards of our lakeshore camp though....always swinging wide around it.

 

^ good post Block.....yeah, life picks up a beat in that Grizz country, eh?

I would have guessed there would be more guys chiming in on this considering Grizz expanding their range.

 

Yes it does pick up a beat in Grizz country. Heading up to N BC tomorrow to pack in with a buddy that is hunting Stone sheep for 10 days or so. After that a solo Mt Caribou backpack hunt starting Aug 15 for a week or so will keep my eyes and ears in scan mode...especially if game hits the ground. Unfortunately no grizzly tag this year, and none until we have a change in Provincial Gov't...if then. No handguns, so bear spray is always on the belt.