Backpack Hunting

I’ve seen thousands of hunters on my long backpacking trips in the Southeast mountains of TN/NC/Georgia/VA but only two or three actually backpacking while hunting.  For some reason the local boys (or whoever) can’t abide carrying a pack and staying out for a week while also humping in weapons and ammo and/or hunting dogs.  Around here hunters love staying very close to their Toyota pickup trucks.

Here’s a rare breed—backpacking hunters—

The shear mass of beer that must be delivered to one’s base camp precludes (for most hunters) going beyond a four-wheeler-accessible cabin or campsite.

I definitely appreciate my UL gear on a hunt since most of the miles are before there’s meat to haul.  A number of times, I’ve had little more than my usual UL set-up (a meat bag and 17-gram LIttle Vicky paring knife), load up a confortable amount for the first trip back and then grab a framed pack to haul more out on the next trip.  Also, at that point, you know exactly how long the meat-sherpa trips will be, so you can shed extra food, shelter, etc.

I find the most minimal framed pack suffices – a classic Kelty with a yoke suspension system and a well-padded hip belt.  I don’t need any fancy features beyond that and then the pack is 2.5 pounds, not 6-8 pounds like so many more “tacti-cool” hunting packs.

One of our ‘worst’ elk hunts was the year when we left the harbor and then were back tied up at the dock 36 hours later with 2 Roosevelt elk on board. The problem was that we got zero nights of camping and almost zero hiking in. We much prefer it when we have a couple of days of traipsing  through the alpine and some pleasant nights around the woodstove before we find the animals. This year our deer hunt required 30 miles of mountain travel for the first buck. That is sort of the other end of the spectrum and may be a little excessive. But the flowers were beautiful and the bears were in the alpine enjoying them too.