If you ride a Giant beetle, you should be able to get 750 per trip.
Collect 250, put in the beetle; collect another 250, put in the beetle; collect another 250 and recall to the bank.
Going over about 500 internal load will put your beetle to where you can only walk while mounted, though if you can survive just walking (going for spined or horned should be easy enough), you should be able to fill the beetle to 1600, then get 250 on you, before having to leave.
Also, why are you stuck getting only 250? Low strength, and making the mistake of gathering leather with an Elf?
Even an elf should have room for 300 leather at 100 STR. One's equipment for a hunt - armor, weapon, skinning knife/Butcher's War Cleaver, aids - shouldn't weigh over 90 stone. The only exception I can see is if you're hunting dragons, and using Potions instead of healing skill or magic. At about 350 weight, the leather won't go to your pack, but stay in the corpse, but you can still open the corpse to get it out.
At 85 weight, before hunting, you should be able to recall out with an 100-STR elf with the leather & scales of 15 dragons in Trammel, even without a beetle - about 35-40 with a beetle.
Now, if you're looting the gold & gems, it gets a bit more complicated, but if I go for the leather, I typically just pile the gold (say, where it can only be seen with a circle of transparency - putting it into a pouch on the ground makes it even less obvious when hid this way), and come back for it AFTER I'm done with the leather. These days, 20 horned pr barbed leather is worth more than the gold & gems combined off a dragon.
Now, I must point out that one is MUCH better off gathering leather on a HUMAN character.
- A human's carry capacity is substantially higher than an elf (about 3 additional stone for every 5 points of STR; 60 at 100, 77 at 125). That means you can kill more things between bank runs.
- A human gets 10% more leather per creature skinned. In Trammel, for things like Ratmen & imps, thats +1 spined each. For Lizardmen, Giant Serpents, Wyverns, Drakes and Dragons, that's +2 each of the appropriate leather. Greater drags give +3 barbed each, AW & Hydrae +4 each, Thrasher gives +5 leather, and Hiryu types give +6 leather - compared to the amount an elf gets. For the big critters, that's 1 less fight per 10 things killed, and will dramatically increase your load.
- Unlike mining & lumberjacking, Elves get NO form of bonus to resources for gathering leather.
- Now, consider, all this is doubled in Fel (though the +10% is calculated AFTER the doubling, so some things that give +2 leather each in Trammel, like the lizardmen, only give +3 more in Fel to humans).
Compare - This example is hunting Wyverns (no scales or gems and minimal gold, so only looting the horned leather), with 80 stone of gear. Note that one can go carrying capacity/100 (rounded down) over one's maximum weight, and still be able to recall and walk (unmounted) - but if you're on a Beetle that is at its fatigue limit near 500, you can't even walk (but can still recall)
- Human 100 STR (450 capacity) in Trammel. Can gather 374 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be 17 Wyverns (exactly), but will have to manually loot the last 4-5 leather piles from the wyvern corpses.
- Human 100 STR (450 capacity) in Felucca. Can gather 374 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be 8 Wyverns (with room for HALF of a 9th wyvern's leather, if you're willing to leave the other half on the ground till you get back, so 17 wyverns/748 leather every 2 trips), but will have to manually loot the last 3 leather piles from the wyvern corpses.
- Elf 100 STR (390 capacity) in Trammel. Can gather 313 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be 15 Wyverns, and most of a 16th, but will have to manually loot the last 2-3 leather piles from the wyvern corpses.
- Elf 100 STR (390 capacity) in Felucca. Can gather 313 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be just shy of 8 Wyverns but will have to manually loot the last 1-2 leather piles from the wyvern corpses, and leave 7 leather behind from the 8th.
In these examples, the humans have to kill less wyverns, to bring back over 60 more leather a trip. Now, the same examples at 125 STR.
- Human 125 STR (537 capacity) in Trammel. Can gather 462 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be 21 Wyverns (exactly), but will have to manually loot the last 8-10 leather piles from the wyvern corpses.
- Human 100 STR (537 capacity) in Felucca. Can gather 462 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be 10 Wyverns (with room for HALF of an 11th wyvern's leather, if you're willing to leave the other half on the ground till you get back, so 21 wyverns/924 leather every 2 trips), but will have to manually loot the last 6-7 leather piles from the wyvern corpses.
- Elf 125 STR (460 capacity) in Trammel. Can gather 384 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be 19 Wyverns (without having to use the +4 stone safety margin for movement/recall) but will have to manually loot the last 5-6 leather piles from the wyvern corpses.
- Elf 125 STR (460 capacity) in Felucca. Can gather 384 stone of leather without needing to recall. That would be just shy of 9 Wyverns, with half of a 10th (similar to what the humans have to do - you can average 19 every 2 trips, by leaving half the leather behing every odd trip, and picking it up for the even-numbered trips). Again, you'd have to manually loot the last 3 wyvern's leather.
Both example sets are without a giant beetle, which of course would add 500 (if you want to stay full mobility) or 1600 more leather per trip.
In Trammel:
500 leather would be 25 wyverns for an elf, 22 (and most of a 23rd) for a human.
1600 leather would be 80 wyverns for an elf, 72 and a fraction for a human.
In Felucca:
500 leather would be 12.5 wyverns for an elf, 11 (and a fraction) for a human.
1600 leather would be 40 wyverns for an elf, 36 and about 1/3 for a human.
Less fighting = less time/leather + less need to cast heals/cures.
These comparisons also hold up for the spined-producing creatures, and for things like drakes (even if you loot the scales).
For Dragons and greater creatures, keeping gold can hurt your leather-gathering for EITHER race. You better off looting nothing but leather, scales and maybe the gems - possibly (as suggested before) piling the gold outside the corpses to come back for, if someone doesn't grab it first.
