At the end of the hunt the difference between a great pack and a just okay one will save (or trounce) you. Learn from my mistakes and both your body and wallet will thank you.
With sixty pounds of elk meat on my back in addition to my normal load of the survive-the-night stuff and four miles to go to the cooler in the back of the truck, I’m looking at the Colorado mountain stream in front of me with less than my usual enthusiasm. While perhaps not plunging, the water is quickly threading its way down a steep, rock-covered narrow gorge. Dead trees have been strategically thrown across the stream at waist or chest height. This should be fun.
It was round one of a tough hike made harder by a pack that wasn’t fully up to my expectations. Add in that I should have loaded the pack better, and I was in lots of pain after the second trip the following morning for the last of the meat. I avoided a third agonizing round trip because my friend Dave carried a load out with me the previous day.
Packs
Daypacks range in size from miniscule to about 2,000 cubic inches (ci). They usually have a minimal amount of padding and lack a hard frame of any sort to transfer weight. Midrange packs come in from 2,000-4,000 ci and large multi-day packs start at 4,000 ci and can run to 7,000 ci or even larger. These two packs (mid-and multi-day) usually incorporate an internal (or external) frame to help transfer heavy loads from your back to your hips which helps tremendously with long-term comfort. These size ranges aren’t set in stone; I just want to give you an idea of the three sizes I’ll be writing about.
Daypacks: Little wonders…
Daypacks keep your essential gear when beginning your hunt from a cabin or a vehicle. Just large enough to get you through the day, they’ll hold rainwear, survival gear, food, water and whatever else you like to keep with you. They are svelte, lightweight and designed to carry small loads. I’ve managed to backpack many miles in and then hunt for a week from a daypack. It wasn’t ideal and it wasn’t very comfortable on the hike in or out (not to mention loading it with elk meat) but I made it work.
Midrange and Multi-Day: Packs with a backbone…
Midrange and multi-day packs are very similar, usually it’s only a matter of size that sets them apart…think small SUV vs large SUV. The step up here is that these packs usually feature an internal frame structure that drastically increases the amount of weight you can comfortably carry. The trade-off is that they are larger and a little heavier than daypacks. With a well-made pack in this class, the only limit to the weight you can haul is usually your level of fitness. I’ve hauled 70 pounds of meat with ease and gone on winter camping excursions where my load was well over 100 pounds.
What are you looking for?
At this stage, there is no shame in not knowing what you are after. In fact, that mindset is advantageous. Let me say it now: The perfect pack doesn’t exist. I’m fine with that. I do lots of different things outside–photography; mountain biking; backpacking with the kids; hunting for squirrels or elk or geese–and no one pack will help me to do all that. It’s about expectations and compromise.
Are you hunting from a cabin? Hiking in from a parked car? Or packing in all of your gear and setting up base camp miles from the road? How comfortable do you have to be? Can you still deal with using a daypack when you have to carry out an elk quarter—four times? Can you handle the size and weight of a larger pack for day hunting, even if you don’t harvest an animal? Are you hunting where it’s flat or where you need to traverse steep ridges all day?
What works for me…may not for you
I prefer to hike in several miles to be closer to the animals, further from hunters and closer to where I think the action will be. I’ll camp out for a week or more if need be. I’ve done this with a daypack but don’t recommend it. Cramming all of my gear into and onto a small pack isn’t fun, fast or comfortable, never mind how it feels to haul out as much of your animal as you can and then repeat until done. I’ve moved on to a large multi-day pack with ample room for everything I want to bring–after I down my animal and debone it, I can immediately carry meat back to base camp. I’ve downed an elk within a football field of tree line and had to traverse hundreds of feet up and down and back again over several miles just to get the meat to our base camp. Being able to haul as soon as I’m done deboning the animal and having a pack that makes repeating this process comfortable is extremely important.
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