Ep. 78: So You Want to Backpack Hunt?

we're gonna we're gonna uh no, all getting aside. We do enjoy a backpack hunt, but there are times where you need to you need to make the you know, there should be a decision tree made. You know, it's not that complex, but it's like do I need to go ten miles in or am I going to start to hit horse camps? Or am I you know when

when does it make sense? And we'll try to break that down for you in my simple term, or you know is like if there are elk that are in an area or lots of elk, or elk I want to kill and I really don't want to walk in there every morning and walk out every night because it's a long or it's physically arduous and I don't want to deal with that. Then that's kind of that's my

very easy decision. But talking with Dirk, we'll jump into all of that and uh and they give you, you know, our best information as far as gear strategy, tactics, some of the other things you need to think about that you don't maybe have to think about. And if you're on the fence, you're new to backpack hunting kind of what what you may need to think about as you do that. So welcome to the show, Dirk.

But then there are some things like strategy. You know, is there different strategies when you're backpack hunting versus you know, meat care, physical requirements, you know, some of these other things that come into play gear requirements, you know, taking care of your gear, all that stuff we're gonna we're

gonna try to touch on the day. But just like every episode of Cutting the Distance, we're gonna start off with a few questions that we get asked routinely, and we had to dig pretty deep because we're not, like I said, we're we don't promote backpack hunting like some of the the groups out there, but we do. It is part of our strategy. I always look to try to backpack hunt, you know, once a year, if not more.

And Dirk, you know, we've had some trips to Colorado where we lived off of our back We never stayed at the base camp once and so we're we're experienced, we've got the gear, and so we're gonna touch on that today. But we're gonn jump into three questions that we took from you know, the listeners, and if you

have questions of your own. Feel free to email them to us at ct D at phelpsgame Calls dot Com, or send us a social message, a message on social media, and we'll do our best to get them on here for for me and for us and our guests. So, Dirk, I'm gonna throw this one to you first. When do

you decide when to backpack hunt? And I guess you can take it a couple different ways, But I think what we're what we're getting at, or what people really want to know, is when you decide whether that's going to be a day hunt or whether this unit or area really needs backpack hunting to be successful.

There's some brush on brush on brush, The trails are terrible, They're not well maintained by the Force Service so it's just going to be a suckfest packing, you know, your backpack full of all your gear, you know, for several miles and for several days back in those areas to only find that there may or may not be elk in those areas. So those kind of places I like

to stay nimble. I like to day hunt. Now, Let's say I walked on a great trail and I got way way way back and there was there were elk everywhere and where in an area that was big enough to that I wouldn't hunt it out in like one single day. I would definitely like on my way out, I would be planning on, Okay, where am I going to stay. I'm going to get back to the truck. I'm gonna have my other pack. I always take two packs with me when I go to elk camp. I

take I'm fortunate enough to have two packs. I have one that's a day pack, and then I have one that's already set up ready to go. All I have to do is like put my put it on my back and go And it's got all my my bivy hunting stuff in it, so that way I just I can go back the next morning get up early, hit the trail early, early early, get back in there and then hunt and then you know, maybe once I get back there, it may maybe it makes sense to have

like a little spike camp. Maybe it makes sense to have all my gear with me all the time and just hunt until it's dark and then and then build camp and then just continue kind of kind of a bivvy type hunt. But those are the kind of things I'm really going to consider. And then also water, like does the area have a lot of water? Is water read readily available? Some areas, you know, you may have to drop a thousand feet just to get any kind

of water. Maybe you're in some really high, high dry, dry mountains you have to drop a thousand feet or two thousand feet to get water. I'm I'm not really interested in doing that too much, but maybe the hunt will take you down to the water, and you know, maybe that does make sense. So I factor a few things in.

on its own. But if if there's a bunch of roads, it doesn't necessarily make sense to to, you know, backpack in when you can hit most of everything or the stuff that you really want to get to on a day hunt and maybe not burn too much energy. Now, there are spots that might be a mile in that I want to backpack hunt because I don't want to, you know, if it's a mile in, but two thousand feet up or three thousand feet up extremely steep to get up into an area, I'm not interested in doing

that every morning and every night. But yet, if there are animals there, I want to stay. So we usually find a lot of these backpack hunt areas on a day trip. You know you're in there hunting your your daily hunt. You know you're following sign, you're trying to

get on a ridge, you're working your tail off. It's meant to be a day hunt, you're like, oh, this place is good, like it deserves more time, or there's enough there's enough area in here that I can stay and hunt it for a couple of days and not necessarily screw it all up or blow it out, or I can be patient, and so then we'll like, all right, we're going to load up, you know, food and all of our backpacking gear, and you know, come back in

here and if the animals like everybody one thing. Maybe it's a myth is that you don't just you don't just walk. You know, there's not more elk at ten miles, and then there is a five miles, and there's not more elk at five miles, and there three miles. I think there's a little bit of a myth that you just the farther you hike and the farther you get into these areas that just don't have as many people, or maybe you're as easy to get to, doesn't necessarily

have more animals. Sometimes your hike in keeps taking you up in elevation, and if it's a hot summer, guess what, you get to a point where all the food's burnt up. So it doesn't make any sense to keep hiking and you might as well not backpack any farther. In twenty eighteen, I believe Idaho was extremely hot. We showed up to a new unit. I did all this, you know, Google Earth Scouting showed up number one. All the food was

burnt up. At number two. They had been running sheep in the area for the last it seemed like year, but it was probably months, and every bit of food was ate up and they elk need food to survive, and they had bounced out of there and went back to a lower spot where there was green, lush food. And so there are times there where it's like just the just the nature of the food turned that thing

into a non backpack hunt. You know, the water wasn't there, and so we had to actually go down in elevation from a lot of the road systems, and up was the wrong, wrong answers. So you just I don't want to make oversimplified or make it sound too easy, but you just have to be a smart hunter. If the backpack hunt leads, If I believe the backpack hunt will lead the more success than doing it from the road, then then that's when I decide I let my success and what I think is going to give me the

best option, kind of dictate it. There may be areas where you may want a backpack hunt because there's there's may maybe there is a bigger critter in there that never gets her ass, but there may be less you know there there's all these different reasons. So whatever your goal is, but that's that's what I base my decision on. If I can find success or more success on a backpack hunt, or a higher chance of success than a day hunt, I'll make that decision.

boot to have boots on the ground. So they'll go to a trailhead in Colorado and then they'll backpack in and they'll be in there for seven days, and they'll say a lot of them say the same thing, Yeah man, we got there and either there were no elk where they were at or there was a fresh sign and they thought, oh yeah, they'll those elk will be around here somewhere, and they never turn them up, or they see elk in the beginning, and then as time goes by,

there's less elk, less elk, less elk in that particular spot. And then but day three, there's no elk in there because maybe they've encroached too much with their you know, their scent and stuff and spooked them out.

probably stay that long. But I know, like, for instance, you know, Wyoming, in the past, I've hunted, We've had some long day trips like fourteen mile days, seventeen mile days, and those suck. I mean, it was awesome because we

were in bulls, but it's man, it's a grind. I mean, you're walking for two hours in the morning in the dark and two hours at night in the dark, and in those kind of situations, I thought to myself, Man, it would be super smart to be to have a base camp out here, like four miles from the truck, you know, and then we're not walking nearly so far every morning every night. That would have been a perfect scenario where we definitely should have backpack hunted it. We'd had more energy every day.

you like to plan your backpack hunt from? And it's maybe stems off of what I was just talking about a little bit is is maybe I answered you my own question before it. But Dirk, how many days do you plan your backpack hunts for it? Whether you're going to go for two or three or five? And we do this all the time, like, hey, we're just gonna stay a one night or we're gonna stay for three year five, And how do you decide that?

if you know. And when I say you know, like maybe you've glassed into an area that's way in there, and you know there's there's maybe more elk, or there's multiple drainages out of there, or if the efforts really really high, like I tend to want to stay longer if the work I got to put in to get there is higher, you know, So if I've got to walk in seven seven miles and climb three thousand feet, You're like, you know what, I might stay in here an extra day or two because or at least plan

for And this is one thing people maybe get wrong, like if you if you're food and we're gonna get into all this in more detail later, but let's say you got two pounds per day. It's like you can always throw in food for five, but plan for three. You know, It's like, we don't ever do that, But all right, what's the extra four pounds on the on the grand scheme of it. Worst case now you walk out with it and you eat it the next two days.

So we've got to the point now where I maybe maybe throw X amount of days worth of food in that I think I'm gonna be there maybe one more and then maybe some extra snacks. So if I really had to stretch it, you know, to I can I can stay in there, but it really just depends on

how far you're going. And to twist the question a little bit, what I think a lot of people get wrong is, and it comes back to the eggs in one basket, is because you said you're going in there for three days, and you get in there on day one and explore it. You hike in, maybe it takes you three or four hours, and there is it is

a dead zone. You don't hear Google the whole time in you don't see tracks, don't be committed because your pack has two extra days with food in it, Like, get the heck out of there and go somewhere else.

that's I just failed. That's not a failure. It's like, well, now you understand that the area better and no failing would be staying there for seven days or three days and continue to hunt an area that has no animals in it.

whether I'm going to backpack hunt. But do you find more success on backpack hunts compared to base camp or day day type hunts?

But I seem to tend to do more day hunting than I do backpack hunting. Yea, I think if like this fall, I'm going out elk hunting with Cody Wilson, it's going to be a backpack hunt. You know, just the true nature of the area. It's going to backpack. I mean, we could day trip it, but there's going to be a lot of people, and I think those people are probably going to be day tripping day tripping it too, So we're gonna have to dig in and and and and spend multiple days in a backpack hunt situation.

But but I think it'll be good. I think, you know, it's there's a lot of animals there and it should be good.

your camp. You know, we've had a few of those, but I would I find more success on areas that could have been backpacked hunt, but we went in there and found success, like on the long day hunt portion of it, Like you could have easily come back in and stayed in that area, but typically, like our long packs, you know, we might be three to five miles, but

we were day hunting it when we found success. And you know, like even our New Mexico bowls in nineteen, like we could have been spiked out in that area, but we're it's a three mile hike and it's not real steep in New Mexico, right, So that was another thing like, yeah, it might be two or three miles, but we can hike in here every day and probably not blow the place out if we were to set up

a stinky camp in here somewhere. You know, my big bowl was, you know, are three mile hike in You could easily you know, kept the fifteen hundred foot climb on it, but we we were only there for a couple of days and it's just how it worked out. So I really think that the success for me is fairly flat. Like if I decided to go backpack hunting, then then you're kind of in that same realm of

whether your base camp or day hunting. It's kind of it's kind of flat for me, and it's once again, it just comes back to whether I think, you know, putting my tent and my sleeping bag and my you know, jet boil or ms R or whatever I'm using. If if I'm gonna put if it's worth putting that in my in my pack and uh going, then then I'm gonna be able to to find very very similar success, uh you know, whether I'm backpack hunting or whether I'm I'm day hunting. So yeah, that kind of wraps up

the Q and a section of of the podcast. Once again, if you have a question you'd like me or my guests or Dirk and his guest to answer, feel free to email them to us at ct D at Phelps game Calls dot com, or send us a message on social media and we'll do our best to to to

kind of get them on here. So now we're gonna jump into more of our discussion we wanted to have of just what do you need if you're you're trying to figure out, you know, your first backpack hunt or interests you or you you want to try it, what

do you what do you need? And so I always look at the hunt very similar to regular hunting, but there is some specialized gear right where we're gonna need and going through that list, We're gonna have a pack, We're gonna have a shelter that needs to be added, We're gonna have to have a sleep system that's added. You're gonna have to do something a little bit special with your food and cooking, and then water, in my opinion or really what differentiate you know, or water treatment

is what's going to be different than than normal. So let's go through kind of what your pack setup is and what you prefer to have ready for a backpack hunt.

clean water, you have to have a sleep system. All the other stuff in your pack is going to be the same stuff you have in your normal day pack, you know. So, so you can spend as much money as you want on sleeping bags and and pads and stuff like that, and then like a shelter. But it's it's it's it's hard to find like a balance. It's like affordability and versus like weight. You can add a lot of weight by putting a sleeping bag in there. So I think my sleeping bag is under five pounds.

I think it's like three or something. My sleeping pad is around three somewhere in there. And one thing is I I will I'll sacrifice some weight, like I'll buy a heavier sleeping pad, definitely, because I'm a I have a hard time sleeping on the ground in the back country. For whatever reason. I just I can't turn my mind off. I'll be exhausted at the end of the day, but I can't turn my mind off. So I'm laying there solving calculous equations and bird building birdhouses in my brain

when I should be sleeping. I know, when we've shared a tent, like you'll be over there sleeping snoring. Well not yeah, you snore a little bit, a little bit.

mooching off somebody else's water filtration system. And I mean it's doable, but especially if you're like in your really bad place, maybe you only want to take one and just share. Anyway, if they're you know, some of those pumps, you know, they have a little bit of weight to them. But yeah, but and I thought, you know that stairy pin I bought. The reason I bought it is I thought, this is gonna be super easy. It's gonna be quick.

All I gotta do is scoop water into my nal gene and then just turn this thing on and stir it until the light turns green. And I'm good. Well hunting with you and some other guys versus that that system versus like a Sawyer water filter and those little bags, those little dirty bags you guys get. So you just you fill the little bag up, you screw the filter on,

then you just squeeze it into the nal gene. It's actually faster to do that with those little Sawyer filters than it is with that stairy pin.

sterrypin them later. But I like the idea of like I can carry a lot of dirty water with me or whenever I run across that versus the other thing that really bothers me at the stairy pin. I've got one. I've got the Sawyer squeeze filter. I've got a Cata dying pump. You know, we've did io dye, which I hate the taste of yeah, and no matter, and then you have to drink juice water or flavored water the rest of the time. But I don't. And I guess

this depends. If you know you're going in an area with like fresh running creeks, then the stiry pin's fine because usually your water, but there have been times deer hunting here, and you know the high cascades where I know I'm pulling out of a puddle somewhere if I don't want to leave the top and the stairy pin doesn't get rid of the floaters or the or or the color or the sediment or the chunks where my

sawyer squeeze filter. It's it is relatively light now. It's quite a bit smaller than like the old catadyron or the the MSR pump squeeze to carry. And I really like being able to just squeeze and have like at least no chunked water coming out. It may still, you know, you can't get rid of the taste some of this water's got weird flavors or right, but you least don't

get the chunks. Yeah, people can say you can take it through like a cheese cloth or some people carry a little little chunk of cloth so that you're not getting getting the grit and grime in there. But the one downside to the sawyer is some of the extreme weather hunts, if you can't get that thing dry, it'll

end up cracking the filter. And then you're not filtering anything on the on the backside of it, So you have to make sure to kind of let that thing dry out, shake it out really well, kind of reverse pressurize it, and get the water to come back out of that that filter.

very structural frame. It was an external frame pack. You know, you got external the Cabella's Alaskan Extreme packs, and then you've got this new tier of you know, Kafaro XO, Mystery Ranch, you know these you know, Stone Glacier, these higher end that are you know, sometimes their frame sheets,

sometimes their vertical stays. But what these companies have did, They've figured out how to transfer weight very very well, keep it off your shoulders as much as possible, transfer into your hips, and then create a system where you can you ever going to be comfortable, but as comfortable as you can be with you know, one hundred plus pounds on your back at times because you are trying to get meat and camp and everything off of there. So I'm not gonna jump into necessarily brands. You know,

I personally use a KAfari right now. You know, it's more of their older hunting duplex. Uh. But I want to I want to talk a little bit more about bags. I learned early on. You know, I was a guy that would roll my sleeping bag up nice and neat and put it in its little stuff sack. And then I would take my sleeping pad and roll it up nice and neat and put it back in its bag. I'm now just a stuffer. I wake up. If you're spike camping and you're moving with the yelk and you're

not coming back there, I wake up. I just how it is. I'll let the air out of my mattress, I'll take and everything just gets shoved in the bottom of my bag, and so I don't My bags that I like to hunt with typically are one big, big open bag with some optics pockets on the outside for stuff that I need to get too quick with. It's my spotting scope, or whether it's you know, a knife or a kill kit or just what you know, headlamp,

something on the outside, maybe my day's food. But I'm a guy that likes to hunt with a big, you know, six thousand to seven thousand cubic inch pack. It's a little bit overkill for for you know, three or five days. But guess what, the pack when you don't need it just just compresses and goes away, right it doesn't. I'd much rather have the room if needed than than not have enough. So that's I'm not an organizer. I stuff everything into the bottom I hunt, especially if you're gonna

hunt with camp on your back. You want all that lighter stuff you know, you're sleeping bag, you're sleeping pad, pillows, shelters, all needs to go into the bottom of your pack. Anyways, and we'll talk about you know, how you pack and load, distribution and in just a second. But that's that's my

my morning routine. You take the tent, pulls out your tent, your ground cloth, everything you slept on or in goes into the bottom, and then you restack your bag on top of that is my go to and so not a lot of organization skills inside of my pack.

The funny part is I tend to be on the the guy that rolls my stuff up and puts it back in the little stuff sacks and nice and neat and organized. I love my pack organized, and it drives me nuts to do it like that because I feel like, man, I it's just a hodgepodge of crap in my pack. But I agree it is it's more effective. You'll fit more stuff in your pack that way, and it's more or the load is more equal per se as your stuffing in. So I'm trying. I'm trying real hard to

master that. I mean, I should be a natural at it, by the way, to shove the crap in my desk.

a fire drill to get everything put back. And like you'd mentioned it too, though, it things fit better when you stuff versus if everything is a perfect circle or and it's weird little cylinders like they don't stack together. It leaves a lot of air in between, and so you actually save or make a lot of the room more available in your pack. And then load distributions. I'm

not going to get into it. I'm not an expert on it, but I do like to put my stuff on the bottom, around the outside, and on the top. This is you know, water bladder if you run, a water bladder goes against your back and then your heavier stuff like your food, your fuel things I try to put against like the center of my back, you know,

between my shoulder blades. It's like it's ideal spot. And so I talk about this, but in reality, usually I'll throw I'll stuff all that you know, sleeping stuff that I talked about earlier on the bottom that I just kind of put stuff around it and then tuck my coats or my my you know, my puffy coat and stuff around it. So it kind of ends up getting

packed that way. Where I really pay attention to load distribution is when you load up with meat, though, I definitely want the center of of that that meat pack and you know meat bag or game bag to be as close in in between the center and my shoulders as possible.

slept on the ground in a sleeping bag. It's like I didn't like the creepy crawlers, right, I didn't I like the ground cloth, like self contained, Like if there's not a bug in here, there's not gonna be a bug in here. So you got floorless shelters. You've now got floorless shelters with some titanium or stove systems that are now pretty useful. Single wall, and then you've got I've got a Hilliberg, which is a double walled like

bomb proof shelter. But then you pay for it and wait, and all of these things kind of from progressed from the most lightweight that only requires a sleeping bag all the way up to when you're into a hilliberg double wall tent for two guys. Somebody's now packing seven pounds worth of tent around. But there are times where that makes more sense. So what's your preference, Dirk, or is it just really depend on the hunt or what's your go to?

were to backpack on New Mexico a lot. I don't know if you guys know about this, but Jason Phelps and cal Ryan Callahan they went elk hunting in New Mexico in a place for a week, ten days whatever, about a week before I went to the same place. So they went there first and then I went there. And you know, he did share a little bit of the elk intel with me a little bit. I think he probably kept a little bit of information to himself, if I'm gonna be honest here, But.

the bites start getting all over my chest. So basically from my waistline up, Man, I look like I've been shot with buckshot. Like there's a hundreds of these bites, and they're itchy. They itch like nothing you've ever had before. Well, it turns out it chiggers. And I had no idea that chiggers lived in New Mexico at all. I like, have chigger. I picture chiggers like the Deep South or you know, Midwest or somewhere. And Phelps is like, oh, yeah,

those things ate ate. Ryan Callahan up and I got bit pretty good too, and I'm like, well, man, that it might might have been some good information. I would have like put some promethrone on my clothes and and stuff had I known that, because.

shelter the first time. I just think they're on your closers. I don't even know how chiggers work, That's how uneducated I am about them. But I know that I still got lit up the first year, and I think I was in a Floord floor shelter that time.

So if I want to go floorless for three guys and have the ability to use a stove, and then if the weather forecast is like man, it's gonna be absolutely frigid and you're gonna get some snow and you're you know, then I'm gonna grab the hilliberg and so I kind of bring. And I've also got to seek outside ultra light floorless, which is like that Cuban fiber or dynama. You can almost see through my tent with one carbon pole. For like a pound and maybe two pounds,

I can get a four man's shelter if needed. You know, it's luxury for two guys. And so I'm looking at the weather. I'm looking at like the Kafaro sawtooth is great if I need. It's not gonna be really cold, but we may get some rain. Right, there's gonna be scattered showers and I might want to dry stuff out. So I'm gonna grab the stove and that I can get all of that in there front of five pounds. So you just you know, Idaho backpack hunt me Entyson one on the other day before you left the truck,

You're like, ah, man, it's not gonna get above. It's not gonna get out of the single digits for a week straight. And so I'm making decisions like it would be awesome to have the stove, but if somebody's not gonna sit and stoke that thing all night, the double wall is gonna be fifteen to twenty degrees warmer, and it's not gonna collapse under the snow. We're not gonna

have as many issues and condensation. So a double wall tent for those I'm not trying to educate everybody on backpacking, A single wall tent all your condensation from your breath throughout the night, your body heat will go up and hit the stove or the tent and basically condensate on the inside of your tent and drip back on you when it warms up or whatever. A double wall tent, the condensation gets through the first mesh layer and sticks to the outer wall, and then you don't get dripped on,

and it makes it ten to fifteen degrees warmer. So like on that hunt where we knew it wasn't getting away from five degrees very far, we just ended up grabbing that hillerberg, which provided a more comfortable night sleep because we didn't have to worry about stoking the fire and we didn't have to worry about getting dripped on all night. So it just it just depends on the type of the hunt, the weather, and what you need out of your shelter. For what I'm gonna grab when I leave the truck.

your clothes and then run through the dryer. And and what it does is it is it just kind of makes it smooths it out, makes it quiet because that thing when it's brand new, which I of course I didn't do this. It was nice and nice and noisy. Man, you lay on on tievek and then you if you roll over, flip over, make if you breathe, you know, heavily. That stupid tiek will sit there and make crunching noises

all night long. And if you're sharing a space with with someone else, and they're probably gonna want to kill you. I wanted to kill I want to kill me because I could. Yeah, I could have. Well there again, I'm having a hard time sleeping anyway. Now I got that crunchy thing going making noise all night long.

So for me, I switched to that thermorest and and it's been I've gotten way better sleep. The one downside, I say I got way better sleep because I don't have to worry about blowing the dang thing up all night. I don't end up on the ground in the middle night with like a slow leak. So that q core was a little fragile. Where there's new thermost is a lot more durable, but it is also like you're sleeping on a bag of lazed potato chips at night, and

so it does provide additional noise. But I found that I sleep better. So it's a little bit of trial and there. I know it's a little bit of an expensive trial and air, but there are good systems. But you know, you can't go wrong with some of the big manufacturers. I just needed to find something more durable for the way that, you know, we were throwing stuff on the ground and I couldn't afford to have any more pop pop sleeping pads.

and just have that little ultra like cot. I might even try that. Yeah, you know, so I wouldn't really be adding that much more weight to my system, but maybe just that extra comfort because you don't want to. And that's one reason why I don't tend to backpack hind a lot too, is because that good night's rest. Like if I can sleep in a normal cot and get a really good night's rest, I'm ready to go in the morning. But if I didn't sleep at all, the next day is gonna just suck.

would I have You know? Down is great until you live in the Pacific Northwest and you're going on a hunt in October November. Now, if you can guarantee your shelter, so I will take down inside of a Hilleberg tent, right, I know it's not gonna get wet. I know it's

not gonna get dripped on. But if I know that I'm going to take a single wall and I have a potential for my sleeping bag to get wet or damp and I can't draw it out or dry it out with a stove, then I'm probably gonna grab that synthetic pill just because the nature of down getting wet doesn't work as well anymore. So that's kind of why

I have both. But down, you know, especially for our September hunt, early October hunt, when you're maybe not dealing with a bunch of rain, is always going to provide a little bit more packable system. Warmth seems to be a little better for what you're packing. And so we do have a few different you know, sleeping bags on hand, depending on you know, how wet it's going to be.

and I bought it. Well, I hadn't used it until I got out in the mountains and the next morning I'm trying to unzip it cause it like it zips up.

I thought, I'll just bust this thing out the seams. No, I'm trapped. So finally, after like a whole bunch of pleading and begging and and and they would still wouldn't help me. So I had to unzip it, and I sprung out of my tent. But you know, try your stuff before you go. Try your stuff before you go, because if you buy it, it's unclearance or maybe the bargain cave somewhere, there's probably a reason why that thing's not getting sold for top price.

season now it's too late to even return it. So that thing was expensive, So make sure you try it before you buy it. Those are really nice pillows. I need to buy another one.

boil your water. So there are guys that will still eat mountain houses or peak meals and literally put cold water in them earlier in the day, and like, that's not me. I want to I don't want to go back there and just be miserable the whole hunt. There are some guys that do cold camping where they're packing like you know, hard cheeses and salamis and pepperonis, and then they don't ever have to ever heat up water. So there is a pretty decent system you can use there.

And then I would say the the more normal is for somebody to pack a little teeny can of isobutane and then either a jet boil or MSR reactor or whatever sort of system you know, for making coffee in the morning, for boiling your one hot meal a day.

I would be lying to say that we haven't ever thrown a couple extra bags a top ramen in when you want if it's a cold day and you're just like, this is gonna be miserable all day, Like you'd be amazed at how some warm top ramen for lunch can sometimes like be a big, you know, big you know lift for the day kind of change the morale and mood. But yeah, there, I've seen people pack food from as healthy as you can be up to guys that literally have two thousand and three thousand calories of candy in

their bag. It can be from one side to the other. I don't know. I'll let Dirk at his two cents about, you know, packing food and what he tries to do there.

like a like a puto or whatever. There's some cheap Chinese when you can get off Amazon too. I mean, if you if you're really wanting to, you know, pinch pennies, you can get into those things for super cheap, but they don't nest quite as good together with them, you know, little pots and stuff. But but the thing is, I like to have that that hot, yummy meal at the end of the day. Like that's like kind of like

the the the the little capstone of the day. You know, you have you know, you eat eat snack stuff all day long and then at night, I have like a peaks or a mountain house whatever, dehydrated. But it's hot, it's yummy. It makes you kind of feel good inside, and it's like all right, yeah, yeah, especially if you had a hard day you have been to get your teeth kicked in all day, It's like, Okay, tomorrow's gonna be good, you know, after you have a nice meal.

One thing I don't do is I don't put a munch of junk food in my in my pack for for the snacking or you know, for my breakfast lunch stuff. You know, junk food to me, like the super high sugar content stuff. I mean, you can get some energy out of it pretty quick. But but man, I just feel like crap later on whenever I eat that stuff. So I try to go as healthy as I can.

So I do a lot of dried fruits, a lot of you know, almonds or nuts or or things like that, things that are healthy, healthy choices that don't have a high sugar content but do have a high chloric content, a lot of protein, a lot of maybe natural sugars or whatever. And I seem to do way better on that stuff. So, but I do know guys that, like, they operate on snicker bars and rollos all day long, and you know they can. They can make it up and down the mountain and mountain dew. I mean, they'll

have mountain dew in their pack. But for me, I just I can't. I can't operate like that.

your pack. And I'm like, you know what I want to enjoy, either my food or It's like, if I want to bring something that doesn't meet that, then I'm going to bring it. Like I've come to learn that that extra pound isn't going to be the differentiator between

me killing the bowl or not. So I just I pack what I want for the day, something that, you know, whether it's a morale left or just something that might be fun, you know, you know, bring something in to share with a buddy that nobody thought you'd pack in

or whatever it may be. That that's kind of and I I'm a big guy, you know, while I'm hunting hard, I just tend to kind of shoot for twenty five hundred to thirty five hundred calories somewhere in there, and then I just throw that much in a bag and go. I'm I'm not I don't get too overboard. If I lose a pound, great, If I gained the pound, probably not. But you know, it's like it's just food, and I don't I don't go to the crazy extremes I used to do with like you know, macros and everything laid

out like I'm just gonna go hunt. It's not gonna affect me that that much one way or the other. But I do like a hot meal at the end of the day. I like, you know, warming up, you know something, and it just kind of you know, if you're out sleeping under the stars or hanging around around, you know, under the with some buddies, it's it's just

kind of nice to to eat a hot meal. And then I say, get as long of backpacking spoon as you can, because they I feel like the ratio to the depth to the width of all of these seal of meal bags that everybody uses or not right, because you have to get to about your wrist with a normal a normal link spoon to get to the bottom corner. So you get those long spoons, sporks.

protein bars. I can't do those at all, and I wish I could, because protein bars you can get some really good ones. They are just chalk ful at all the good stuff. But I literally will gag if I put those in my mouth just because of eating too

many of them. So you have to like get creative and find things that like to have high coleric and content but it tastes good and that you will be willing to eat that You're just not forcing yourself to eat and that can and if you hunt a lot that that definitely is a challenge.

the end here, you know, meat care. I would say backpack hunting can sometimes lead you farther or potentially farther from from the truck the normal, So just make sure you're you're thinking about that if you were to kill something here, like is there a creek available? Is this a really dry area? Is it really hot right now in the middle of September? Like, how are you going to make sure that that meat can it can all be taken care of, you know, as you're hunting further

and further away from the rig. Yeah, is another important topic.

you know, ten miles. Well, I'm here to tell you, walking ten miles with no no weight, it's kind of hard in the mountains. So you throw one hundred pounds on that might might might kill you, that might break you. So you like, know your limitations, understand. I mean, maybe you've trained for it all summer and in your superhero

strength and cardio and your excellent shape. That's awesome, good, But man, a lot of the just average Joe's people like me, that's got to average average Joe fitness level. I know my limitations, and I know I'm not gonna be able to pack out giant loads for for an extended time, like ten miles or I mean four miles is no joke. Four miles will hurt you too, So just be cognizant of that.

So if it's a long high out and I won't have the ability to keep getting the meat out and letting it dry, or you know, I might just end up I have a pack where my bag will pull away, so I might just keep it out in the air and avoid using my dry sack. So it's just you

just need to be smart. You need to understand on these long pack outs, especially if it's you know, an entire day or multiple days for some people, if you don't have a big hunting party or people to help you, just just you know that that's sometimes my own limitation is like if I was to kill something here, could we get the meat out? And that's what stopped me from going any farther, So keep that in mind. Extreme weather.

One thing that some people may overlook is the extreme weather on these hunts and the inability to go turn your truck on and turn your heater on right if that was your If you're at a base camp, you can at least go dry stuff out that way. When you're in the mountains, you're pretty much or you're in the mountains backpack hunting, you kind of lose all of that ability. So the extreme cold weather hunt I was talking to Dirik about, we would we had a wyoming saw.

That's another little crucial piece. How are you going to start a fire if you need to? We had a wyoming saw. We created fires every day when it was five degrees all day long, snow and it was twenty inches of snow. We would start a fire and we would set our guns around the fire as we were glassing. We would then walk back to camp, get in a

freezing cold tent and it would the gun would freeze up. Well, one thing we didn't realize until we had crazy pressure signs when I shot the buck that I did you know, primer's just falling out of the gun. Well, coming to think of it, he's like, well, there was, you know, talking about it, the connensation had been building up inside the action in the barrel and would freeze and would never get out of there. So that first shot where I would basically you know, cause the pressure issue because

of that. And so it's just thinking like I should have just left that gun out in the cold all the time, like, never let it get near a heat source.

So there's these little things that we probably can't go through all the little lessons we learned, but there's stuff like that where all right, does your bow just need to be hung in a tree all night while asleep, you know, don't let it get hot and cold, and you know, or a gun, especially where you got metal metal metal barrels heating and cooling, like you want to avoid that.

way your muzzleloader goes off. So that's like a big, big pro tip. Like if you're musloader hunting, you know, it's if it's cold out, just keep your gun out in the cold, keep it out of the you know, keep it dry of course in a waterproof case or something. Just keep it cold the whole time and don't put it inside, you know, change your environmentals on it.

and screen fields or uneven terrain. Sometimes those things can can save your you know, your bacon as you're trying to navigate tough train with heavy heavy loads, so you know, trekking poles. I'm trying to think my first aid kit doesn't change much on backpack compared to my day hunt. I'd heard somebody say a long time ago, and I just kind of subscribe to it. I carry ibuprofen, titl, a prescribed painkiller, and duct tape as well as Luco tape backpack hunting. I will say that Luco tape should

definitely be in your pack. Any blisters, anything that pops up or gear repairs. Luco tapes very very good. But back to the first aid kit. If I can't fix it with titl, ibuprofen, a prescription pain pill, or duct tape, then I've to help anyways because I'm not skilled enough to fix anything beyond that. So I keep, you know, uh that relatively, you know, and it's the same as my day hunt. We you know, if it's I always

have a little bit of rope in my pack. Trying to think, is there anything else as far from like trekking pools, Wyoming saws that you would put up on a.

have a buddy. Let's say you're you're you're skinning out an elk or breaking down a bowl, and and you cut yourself in and it's a bad bleed, like you're going to bleed out. Like you got to have a tourniquet. You got to have something to put on there. But you have to actually know how to use it too. So you have to be able to put it on. So get that thing out, practice with it one handed, you know, act like you've maybe had you cut your one hand or whatever it is, like, you have to

be able to get to it. Don't have it buried in the bottom of your pack, have it accessible, quickly accessible, and the outside of your pack. Make sure your partner knows where it's at. And that way if you do cut yourself in a bad way, that you can quickly stop the bleeding, because I mean it's no joke. You can bleed out really quick if you stab yourself in the in the drowing with a with a have loin or something. I mean, it's it's a big deal.

saws like what Grandpa had in the eighties. But these silkies. You got to check these things out, Jason. They just they'll power through like big big wood really quickly, So yeah, definitely, and they're pretty cheap. You can get them off Amazon or wherever you like to shop. You can get those things.

know how the hunt's going. If you want to. You can leave bread breadcrumbs for your significant other or send them messages. All of that's available. So that's something else we do care. You know, I only run like the three month plan, so I activate it for September, October, November and typically turn it off after that. But nice little peace of mind when you don't have any service.

I know, you're out in the back country trying to dodge service in all normal life, but it is nice to have contact back to the rest of the world, the connected world while you're out there. Yeah. Yeah.

so he can power up. We're gonna have I'm gonna have full WiFi and stuff. We'll be streaming YouTube in the back Country.

of It's just another tool. Like backpack hunting is an extension of who I am is an elk hunter and or deer hunter. And if I think that that's my best chance to kill something, then I'm gonna use use what I've got to do that.

every night and all this stuff. But the romance kind of kind of leaves when the weather gets bad and and you're or you're in a physical suck fest. But but it's still if you enjoy those hard things, and then you'll you'll enjoy backpack hunting for sure.