Ep. 78: So You Want to Backpack Hunt?
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Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today we're going to jump into a topic that we don't hit on a lot, but we do backpack hunt. And we're going to go through the decisions like when it makes sense to backpack hunt versus when maybe it makes sense to just day hunt it or hunt from a base camp. I'm joined today by my co-host Dirk Durham. Appreciate having him on. And what you're pretty much getting today is two of the best backpack hunters to ever do it. We're going to...

uh no all kidding aside we we do enjoy a backpack hump 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 10 miles in or am i going to start to hit horse camps or am i you know when when does it make sense um and we'll try to break that down for you and my simple term or you know is like if there are elk

that are in an area or lots of elk or an 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 i don't want to deal with that then that's kind of that's my very easy decision but um

Talking with Dirk, we'll jump into all of that and give you 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 you may need to think about as you do that. So welcome to the show, Dirk.

Yeah, thanks for having me on again. Yeah, yeah. It's nice to catch up even though we run our own shows and we were just at a, I don't even, you can't call it cougar camp if you, our wives may question what we were doing hunting at cougar camp. But we were just at cougar camp a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. So we did get to hang out there for a little bit, but it's always nice to, to jump back on the podcast with you and, uh, you know, um, just talk about hunting. So yeah, today, once again, we're going to touch on backpack hunting. Um, you know, gear in my opinion is the real differentiator between your normal hunting and backpack hunting. Um,

But then there are some things like strategy. 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

All that stuff we're going to try to touch on today. But just like every episode of Cutting the Distance, we're going to 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 don't promote backpack hunting like some of the groups out there, but we do. It is part of our strategy. I always look to try to backpack hunt once a year, if not more.

Um, and, and Dirk, uh, 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 going to touch on that today, but we're going to jump into three questions that, that we took from, you know, the listeners and, uh,

If you have questions of your own, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com or send us a social message on social media, and we'll do our best to get them on here for me and my – for us and our guests. So, Dirk, I'm going to throw this one to you first. When do you decide when to backpack hunt? Okay.

And you can take it a couple different ways, but I think 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. Well, there's a lot of things I kind of factor in. So if I'm looking at the area, can I hunt it effectively by backpack hunting in for a few days?

Or am I better off to do day trips? So depending on the road systems, depending on the amount of animals, depending on the kind of trails and the type of the foliage and stuff in the terrain. For instance, like North Idaho, it just doesn't make sense to backpack hunt. There's brush on brush on brush. The trails are terrible. They're not well maintained by the Forest Service. So it's just going to be a suck fest packing animals.

you know, your backpack full of all your gear, um,

you know, for several miles and for several days back in those areas, um, to only find there, there may or may not be any elk in those areas. So those kinds of places, I like to stay nimble. I like to day hunt. Now let's say I, I, I walked on a great trail and I got way, way, way back. And there was, there were elk everywhere. Um, and we're in an area that was big enough to, that I wouldn't hunt it out in like one single day. Um, 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 going to grab my other pack. I always take two packs with me when I go to elk camp. I take, um, 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. Um,

And then hunt. And then, you know, maybe once I get back there, 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 build camp and then just continue kind of a bivy type hunt. But those are the kind of things I'm really going to consider. And then also water, like water.

Does the area have a lot of water? Is water readily available? Some areas, you know, you may have to drop 1,000 feet just to get any kind of water. Maybe you're in some really high dry mountains. You have to drop 1,000 feet or 2,000 feet to get water. 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. Yeah. I, I, a lot of those same things, you know, I echo the same, same ideas. What I,

you know, we, we spend a lot of time pre-scouting, you know, you're going to maybe a new unit, you know, you'd kind of reference an area you're familiar with. If I'm going to a new spot, you know, use how road it is the area. Can I access, how much of the unit can I access? If you're, if you're in, let's say a unit that has two or three roads and that's it, it almost turns itself into a backpack hunt. And, and,

you know, on its own. But if, if there's a bunch of roads, it doesn't necessarily make sense to, to, um, you know, backpack in when you can hit most of everything, uh, or, 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 2000 feet up or 3000 feet up, extremely steep to get up into an area, uh,

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. And 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 around.

you know, there's not more elk at 10 miles in than there is at five miles. And there's not more elk at five miles than there is at 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, it doesn't necessarily have more animals. Sometimes your, 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. Um, I,

we in 2018, 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 burned up. And number two, they had been running sheep in the area for the last, I don't know. It seemed like year, but it was probably months and every bit of food was ate up and the 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 um there are times there where it's like just the just the nature of the food turned that thing into a non-backpack hunt um 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 answer so you just

I don't want to make it 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 to more success than doing it from the road, 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 to backpack hunt because there's, there's maybe, maybe there is a bigger critter in there that never gets harassed, 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, I base my decision on if I can find success or more success on a backpack hunt or a higher chance of success than, than a day hunt, I'll, I'll make that decision.

One thing too, is I talked to a lot of people who, um, let's say for instance, they go to Colorado and they said, yeah, we were going to do this seven day backpack trip. You know, that's, you know, we have, we have 10 days away from home. We have drive time, yada, yada, yada, but we have seven days to be hunt, you know, 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, uh,

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, 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 by day three, there's no elk in there because maybe they've encroached too much with their scent and stuff and spooked them out. So-

Um, yeah, they put all their eggs, eggs in there. One basket and I'm, I'm the kind of person I, I want proof. I want, I want a little bit of proof before I kind of like just jump right in, um, that there's going to be some milk there, or there's going to be lots of plan B's. Let's say I, I, I hike way back in, but it's, it's big enough, broken enough country to where, um, I'm not going to hunt it out or blow it out in the first three days. Um, unless, you know, if I wanted to stay seven days, but I'm not going to probably stay that long. Um,

But, uh, I know like for instance, in Wyoming, um, in the past I've hunted, we've had some long day trips, like 14 mile days, 17 mile days. And those suck though. I mean, it was awesome because we were in bulls, but it, 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. Yep. And, um,

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, four miles from the truck, you know, and then we're not walking nearly so far every, every morning, every night. Yeah. That would have been a perfect scenario where, where we definitely should have backpack hunted it. Um, we'd had more energy every day. Um,

I mean, hindsight's 20-20. As long as you made it through the grizzly bear attacks, you'd have been fine. Right, right, right. Well, that area wasn't known for grizzlies at the time. But they say, you know, the population's growing and they're starting to pop up in new places in Montana and Wyoming. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. We're, we're, we'll get into more maybe on the strategy side, like as Dirk was mentioning, like these long days, like I like to pick camps that give me maybe three days worth of hunting if I go out this Ridge. And so we'll talk a little bit more about when you come to spike camp, you know, setting up camp so that you don't get winded and all of that stuff here in a little bit. Um,

How many days do 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 the own question, my own question before it, but, um, 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 going to stay a one nighter. We're going to stay for three or five. And, um, how do you decide that? It's hard sometimes that, um, to, to know how many days you should go. I felt, I feel like a three day plan.

plan is, has worked really well in the past for me. Um, I know with, when we went hunted with, uh, in Montana with Giannis, that kind of bit us a little bit, um, on that hunt, only packing enough food for three days. But, um, but yeah, typically a three day hunt, you'll kind of know, you know, maybe you'll either kill or you will, um, you'll be like, eh, let's get out of here. You know? Yep. Um, so that, that's typically three to five days.

Yep. And a lot of it depends 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 effort's 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 3000 feet, you're like, you know what? I might stay in here an extra day or two because, or at least plan for it. And this is one thing.

people maybe get wrong. Like if you, if you, if your food and we're going to 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, on the, on the grand scheme of it. Worst case scenario, you'll walk out with it and you eat it the next two days. Um, 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 going to 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. Um,

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 a bugle the whole time in, you don't see tracks. Don't be committed because your pack has two extra days worth of food in it. Like get the heck out of there and go somewhere else. Yeah. I feel like there's a level of like a stigma or maybe even a, like a,

unnecessary pressure we put on ourselves. Like, you know, I plan to be in there six, six days or seven days or three days. And I got in there and the first day and I gave up because it sucked. Well, there's no hunting. There was no, no, nothing to no animals. Right. Um,

I almost feel like there could be a little bit of like stigma, like you kind of put on yourself and be like, yeah, I just failed. That's not a failure. It's like, well, now you understand 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.

Yep. No, I, it's just as valuable. I mean, not just as valuable. Don't that's, it was going to be wrong, but it's, it can be valuable to put big X's on chunks of a unit. You know, ideally it's better to find elk, but it's sometimes just as good to find areas where there aren't elk. So you don't waste your next, you know, the available time that you do have to hunt in an area that's just not going to pan out. Yep. And then the last thing, you know, it comes,

I use this as my determination on whether I'm going to backpack hunt, but do you find more success on backpack hunts compared to base camp or day type hunts? No, I find more success day hunting just because I can stay in animals. Like you say, you're marking an awful lot of X's.

It seems like I, depending on the area, there may be a lot of X's to mark off. And by having that day trip, um, I'm marking them off quickly, efficiently, and knowing where I don't want to go. And maybe I'm relocating, you know, several miles away instead of the next drainage over, um, depend on the area. But, um, but I, I seem to find a lot more success doing that, but I seem to tend to do more day hunting than I do backpack hunting. Um, I think, um,

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 it too. So we're going to 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.

Yeah. And I got to thinking that, you know, the few when we were truly spiked out where there's like meat and, you know, your backpack camp, you know, you end up daisy chaining everything off your pack because you're trying to get the last load of meat in 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, um, you know, we might be three to five miles, but we were day hunting it when we found success. And, um,

you know, like even our New Mexico bowls and 19, like we could have been spiked out in that area, but we're, ah, 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, um, you know, my big bowl was, you know, a three, three mile hike in, you could easily, you know, kept the, the 1500 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,

I really think that the success for me is fairly flat. Like if I decide to go backpack hunting, then you're kind of in that same realm of whether you're base camp or day hunting. It's kind of flat for me. And once again, it just comes back to whether I think...

you know, put in my tent and my sleeping bag and, and my, you know, jet boil or MSR, whatever I'm using. Um, if, if I'm going to put, if it's worth putting that in my, in my pack and, uh, going, then, then I'm going to 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, um,

So, yeah, that kind of wraps up the Q&A section of the podcast. Once again, if you have a question you'd like me or my guests or Dirk and his guests to answer, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com or send us a message on social media, and we'll do our best to kind of get them on here.

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What do you need if you're trying to figure out your first backpack hunt or interest 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 and

We're going to have a shelter that needs to be added. We're going to have to have a sleep system that's added. You're going to 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 normal. So let's go through kind of what your pack setup is and what you prefer to have ready for a backpack hunt.

So, I feel like people kind of get caught up on all the stuff they want to have in their pack. And once you kind of boil it down and you've been backpack hunting a few times, you realize there's a bunch of stuff you could throw in there that you just don't use. So, I always try to like, let's just keep this pretty simple. You got to have your food, you have to have clean water, you have to have a sleep system, right?

Um, all the other stuff in your pack is going to be the same stuff you have in your normal day pack, you know? So, um,

So you can spend as much money as you want on sleeping bags and pads and stuff like that and then like a shelter. But it's hard to find like a balance that'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'll sacrifice some weight. Like I'll buy a heavier sleeping pad.

Definitely, because I have a hard time sleeping on the ground in the backcountry. 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 calculus equations and 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, well, yeah, you snore a little bit. A little bit. Yeah.

But in comparison, not at all. Goodbye comparison. Speaking about backpacking weight, I'm going to figure out some way to like power up your little snoring machine and pack that sucker around with me. We may just have to get separate tents and like stay across the meadow from each other. But I struggle and I've spent a lot of money and my –

My sleeping pad's not the lightest by any means. I think we use the same one and the same type that is. We don't share one. No, no. That's a different kind of game. Clear that up. Clear that up, please. But anyhow, so, you know, those are some of the things that, you know, I'll spend a little bit more money and a little more weight on. It's like a really good sleeping pad. There's lots of different types.

for getting pure water or clean water. I've been using that SteriPin. SteriPin? You have to make damn sure before you go your batteries are good, you know. When we went hunting with Giannis, then my batteries died on like day three, day two. So I'm like barbecuing

borrowing, um, mooching off somebody else's, uh, water filtration system. And I mean, it's doable, but especially if like in your really bad place, maybe you only want to take one and just share anyway. Um, if they're, you know, some of those pumps, you know, they, they have a little bit of weight to them, but, um,

But, um, and I, I thought, you know, that SteriPEN, I bought, the reason I bought it is I thought, oh, this is going to be super easy. It's going to be quick. All I got to do is scoop water into my Nalgene and then just turn this thing on and stir it until the line turns green and I'm good. Well, hunting with you and some other guys, um, versus that, that system versus like a Sawyer, um,

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 Nalgene. It's actually faster to do that with those little Sawyer filters than it is with that SteriPEN. Yeah.

as far as cost to that, that sawyer's cheaper, like by quite a bit cheaper. And you can, if you are on elk, but like you mentioned, you don't want to climb down 2000 feet. If I'm on, if I'm on elk, I can dip four bags really quick or, you know, you're not, not being rushed, but I can dip four bags and deal with them later where you got to sit and stir, or you're going to make all of your, you know, your, your water bottles or whatever you're going to keep them. And you could do it. I guess you could just have dirty bags and then Steri pin them later. But I like the idea of like, I can carry a lot of dirty water with me. Um,

or whenever I run across that versus the other thing that really bothers me at the SteriPEN, I've got one, I've got the Sawyer squeeze filter. I've got a catadine pump. Um, you know, we've did iodine, which I hate the taste of. Um, 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 to an area with like fresh running creeks, then the SteriPens 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 SteriPEN doesn't get rid of the floaters or the color or the sediment or the chunks where my Sawyer squeeze filter, it is relatively light now. It's quite a bit smaller than like the old Katadyn or the MSR pumps we used 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. Um, but you at least don't get the chunks. Um, yeah, people can say you can take it through like a cheesecloth or some people carry a little, little chunk of cloth so that you're not getting, getting the, uh,

the, the, the grit and grime in there. But, um, the one downside to the Sawyer is, uh, 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, um, kind of reverse pressurize it and get the water to come back out of that, um,

That filter. Yeah. You have to be very careful about that filter getting frozen and cracked. My buddy Donnie, he got Giardia cause he was filtering, he was in Alaska hunting and was filtering with these, with his, uh, whatever. I don't know what brand he had, but he was filtering his water and man, he just got sick, super sick. And it turns out he got had Giardia cause his, his, uh, filtered frozen broken and he didn't know it. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so back to the pack, there's a lot of options. You know, your backpack that you're, you know, your duffels or your school backpacks, they don't have any support. So I'm going to break this all the way back to the point of what you need in the pack. You know, growing up when I was a poor college kid, I used an old Dana Designs, which was more geared what I would say for backpackers, but it had a very...

a very structural frame. It was an external frame pack. You know, you got external, the Cabela's Alaskan extreme packs, and then you've got the, this new tier of, you know, Cafaro XO mystery ranch, you know, these, these,

you know, Stone Glacier, these higher end that are, you know, sometimes they're frame sheets, sometimes they're vertical stays. But what these companies have did is 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're never going to be comfortable but as comfortable as you can be with you know 100 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 going to jump into necessarily brands you know I personally use a Kefaru right now you know it's more of their older hunting duplex but

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 elk 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 a one size.

big, big, uh, open bag with some optics pockets on the outside for stuff that I need to get too quick, whether it's my spotting scope or whether it's, you know, a knife or a kill kit or just whatever, 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, a 6,000 to 7,000 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

and goes away, right? It doesn't, I'd much rather have the room if needed than not have enough. So that's, I'm not an organizer. I stuff everything into the bottom. I hunt, especially if you're going to hunt with camp on your back. Um, you want all that lighter stuff. Um, 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 in just a second. But that's my morning routine. You take the tent poles 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.

It's funny. What you described on how you pack your pack is how I packed my desk for

full of papers when I was in elementary school. I would just shove all them papers in there. I seen a meme the other day. It's like, hey, where are my people at that used to shove all their papers in their desk? How you doing? And somebody says, not good, man. Not good at all. Well, you just described how I used to do all my papers and stuff. The funny part is,

I tend to be on 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. Cause I feel like, man, I, it's just a hodgepodge of crap in my pack, but I agree. It is, it's way, it's more effective. You'll fit more stuff in your pack that way. And, and it's more, the load is more equal and,

per se, as you stuff it 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. I used to shove the crap in my desk at school. A little bit of it is...

Maybe me being lazy or when I wake up in the morning, I want that extra... I want to hit my snooze two more times because as bowls start to beagle and you're ready to start... I'm like, I don't... I slept for extra 15 minutes. Now I can't take that extra 15 minutes to load stuff up. So it's a fire drill to get everything put back in. And like you had mentioned it too, though, things fit better when you stuff versus if everything...

is a perfect circle or in its 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, you know, in your pack. And then load distribution, I'm not going to get into it. I'm not an expert on it, but I do like to put my light 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 um your fuel um

things I try to put against like the center of my back, you know, between my shoulder blades is like its ideal spot. And so I talk about this, but in reality, usually I'll throw all stuff, all that, you know, sleeping stuff that I talked about earlier in 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 that meat bag or game bag to be as close in between the center of my shoulders as possible. Yeah, no, I agree with that.

So shelters, there are limitless shelters. I have, I have went as simple as a sleeping bag on grass. No, no Tyvek, no ground cloth, just throw a sleeping bag out and sleep. We have taken Tyvek is like, Oh, the weather is supposed to be nice for the next four or five days. Worst case scenario, we get rained on. We'll have to walk out of here, but I'm going to just roll up in Tyvek.

There are floorless shelters, which I struggled with a lot early on. And that obviously before I just slept on the ground in a sleeping bag,

It's like, I didn't like the creepy crawlers, right? I didn't, I liked the ground cloth, like self-contained. Like if there's not a bug in here, there's not going to 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 Hilleberg, 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 in a Hilleberg double wall tent for two guys. Somebody is now packing seven pounds worth of tent around, but there are times where that makes more sense. Um, so what's your preference, Dirk, or is it just really depend on the hunt or what's your go-to? Yeah, I, I've, I've done the floorless shelter. I've done the sleep under the stars. I've done the, um, fully enclosed tent, uh,

Um, I haven't used one, uh, that has the stove yet. Um, I feel like that's, those would be good for two people. Like one guy packed the stove, one guy packed the tent type of thing. Um, at least, but, um, yeah.

like like you mentioned the creepy crawlies let's say new mexico right um if i were to backpack on new mexico lat i don't know if you guys know about this but jason phelps and cal um ryan callahan they went elk hunting in new mexico in a place um for a week 10 days whatever um about a week before i went to the same place so they went there first and then i went there and um

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 going to be honest here. I think you killed the bull on the X. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. Anyway, the funny part is after like the second day, I started getting these weird marks on the inside of my elbows, you know, on the inside of your arms. And I'm like, man, spiders are –

must have a big old spider in the tent here. And we're using a, you know, we got a base camp, we got cots and everything. I'm like, what the heck is going on? I'm looking for spiders. And as the time goes by, 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 hundreds of these bites and they're itchy. They itch like nothing you've ever had before. Well, it turns out

it's chiggers. And I had no idea that chiggers lived in New Mexico at all. I like there,

they have chigger here. I picture chiggers like the deep South or, you know, Midwest or somewhere. Um, 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 would have might, might've been some good information. I would have like put some permethrin on my clothes and, and stuff. Had I known that there, because I honestly, in my defense, I completely forgot to pass that on. And, and,

hindsight is I had been in that unit two years ahead of that and got lit up when me and Steve were there and so I had forgot between the hunts that until all of a sudden like day two you're like what oh it all dawned on me like this place this green grass in here that time of year is just loaded but yeah floorless introduces some of those things um you know that that

But to be honest, I think I was in a Florida 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 Florida Florida shelter that time. But yeah, I think I got them sitting around, you know, you, you hike in, you sit down, sit down on the ground, you do some glass and maybe you lay down and take a nap, whatever. I think that's where I got them. Yeah.

And then they're all over. And so really, shelter, I tend to pack everybody's, I don't even know what you call them, the black tubs with the yellow lids that everybody keeps everything in. When I go on a hunt, I pack all of my shelters or all of my options. There's Tyvek folded up in the bottom. I've got my big Agnes single man.

little, you know, tent, I've got my Kefaru sawtooth with its stove in there. 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 going to be absolutely frigid and you're going to get some snow and you're, you know, then I'm going to grab the Hilleberg. And so I kind of bring, and I've also got a seek outside ultralight floorless, which is like that Cuban fiber or Dyneema. You can almost see through my tent.

um, with one carbon pole for like a pound and maybe two pounds, I can get a four man shelter if needed. You know, it's, it's luxury for two guys. And so I'm looking at the weather. I'm looking at like the Kefaro sawtooth is great. If I need, it's not going to be really cold, but we may get some rain, right? There's going to be scattered showers and I might want to dry stuff out. So I'm going to grab the stove and that I can get all of that in there for under five pounds. So you just

You know, Idaho Backpack Hunt, me and Tyson went on the other day. Before you left the truck, you're like, oh, man, it's not going to get above. It's not going to 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 going to sit and stoke that thing all night, the double wall is going to be 15 to 20 degrees warmer. Yeah. And it's not going to collapse under the snow. We're not going to 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 10 to 15 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 tent

which provided a more comfortable night sleep because we didn't have to worry about stoking the fire. Um, and we didn't have to worry about getting dripped on all night. Um, so it just, it just depends on, on the type of the hunt, the weather and what you need out of your shelter for, for what I'm going to grab when I leave the truck.

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And a hack, like if you're going to use the floorless shelter, so I've got a Kefaru floorless shelter and, um,

You know, you want to put something down between the ground and your sleeping pad. You don't want to poke holes in it because pine needles and rocks and stuff are kind of sharp. So, I have a piece of Tyvek. A little hack is throw that piece of Tyvek in the laundry and wash it with your clothes and then run it through the dryer. And what it does is it just kind of 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 noisy. Man.

You lay on Tyvek and then if you roll over, flip over, if you breathe heavily, that stupid Tyvek will sit there and make crunchy noises all night long. And if you're sharing a space with someone else and they're probably going to want to kill you. I wanted to kill me because... You couldn't sleep? Well, there again, I'm having a hard time sleeping anyway. Now I got that crunchy thing going, making noise all night long. Yeah.

Yeah. And speaking of crunchy, we're going to get into like the sleeping pad. I used to use a big Agnes Q core SL something like big thick pad. It looks like I should be out on the, on a lake rafting around. Right. It was super comfortable, but I found that the durability wasn't as great. And so then there's the, uh,

um, what is it? The Therm-a-Rest, uh, Neo Air X-Lite, whatever the name of it is. So I switched to that, which isn't as thick. And so it's maybe not as comfortable, but it's way, way more durable. So for me, um, I, I switched that Therm-a-Rest and, and it's been, I've gotten way better sleep. Um,

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 this new thermo rest is a lot more durable, but it is also like you're sleeping on a bag of Lay's 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 error. I know it's a little bit of an expensive trial and error, but there are good systems. But you can't go wrong with some of the big manufacturers. I just needed to find something more durable for the way that we were throwing stuff on the ground. And I couldn't afford to have any more pop sleeping pads.

One thing I'm seriously thinking about before my next backpack hunt is getting one of those little ultralight cots. They're like low profile. Who builds those things? They make the little chairs and the cots. Anyway. New designs, mate. Yeah, there's a bunch. There's a couple different companies. They're two, three pounds. And I'm a side sleeper. So, like I say, I struggle. I'm almost thinking, and my brother-in-law, he...

He does a lot of adventure bikes, uh, trips and he has used all lightweight backpacking gear when he goes. And, um,

And he has one of those little, little cots and he's like, man, it is a game changer for him. I'm having that thing because he could side sleep comfortably on a pad. So I'm thinking I might just put one of those in. I won't. And if it's warm out, I might almost even skip the pad and just have that little ultra light cot. I might even try that. 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 on 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 uh the next day is gonna just suck

Ask Dirk lots of questions that next day, early in the morning, as soon as he's getting up. I'm a morning person. No, I'm not. The other part of your sleep system, we talked about pads a little bit, it's your sleeping bag. I've got three of them. I've got a Kefaru, which has synthetic insulation, and I've got a Marmot.

um helium 15 degrees and i've got a stone glacier um 15 degrees even for a tall or whatever they end up being 75 inches so a little bit taller sleeping bag i think all of these maybe the kefir was a little bit over but they're all in that three pound range um now why 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. Um, now if you can guarantee your shelter, so I will take down inside of a Hilleberg tent, right? I know it's not going to get wet. I know it's not going to 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 going to grab that synthetic fill 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 hunts, early October hunts 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 sleeping bags on hand, depending on how wet it's going to be. I've got a down stone glacier, zero degree. And when they say zero degree, like a lot of...

bag manufacturers will say, oh, it's this temperature rating. But honestly, that's the temperature that you won't die, but you're not going to be comfortable. So I'm like, with that in mind, I bought this zero degree bag and that thing, dude, it's next level hot. It's hot, yeah. I've slept in like 20 degree weather and like, I like unzip it and just lay on top of my pad and just kind of cover up half of my body when it's that warm. Yeah.

And I don't know, I believe it was EU rating. There's a rating system, right, where it's not that you're not going to die, but it's how you'll actually be comfortable. So I know like Marmot was EU rated. And I don't know if Stone Glacier actually is, but it seems like that was their standard. Like when they say 15, like you're going to be very, very comfortable at 15 degrees, not freezing to death. Right, right. And then I've got one of those Kefaru sleeping bags, the one that kind of zipped down the middle.

Um, I've got one of those, it's synthetic. And then my, my first, my first backpacking bag I bought, I bought it in the bargain cave at Cabela's. I'm like, oh yeah, this thing, it's like a $200 bag and it's like 60 bucks. I'm like, heck yeah. I was so jacked and I bought it. Well, I hadn't used it until I got out in the, in the mountains and the next morning I'm trying to unzip it. Cause it like, it zips up, you know, it had a, you know, a hood on it. You're kind of zipped up like a mummy in that thing.

I can't get it unzipped. Like...

the zipper stuck and I think that's why it was in the bargain cave the zipper didn't work right so I'm pleading begging with my hunting partners I'm like hey guys come unzip this bag I gotta get out I gotta pee real bad and they're like they're like we're not getting there nowhere near you man that's kind of weird I'm like no please please do just come and just get this zipper started for me and they wouldn't do it I thought well I'm gonna just incredible hulk my way out of this thing screw it I'm just I'm pissed I'm I'm gonna pee myself right laying there in bed so I

I can't even incredible Hulk myself out of this thing. It's too well made, right? 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 wouldn't still wouldn't help me. So I had to unzip it and I'd sprung out of my tent. But, you know, try your stuff before you go, try your stuff before you go. Cause if you buy it and it's on clearance or using maybe the bargain cave somewhere, there's probably a reason why that thing's not getting sold for, for top price. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and then my only, you know, some people say you can wad your puffy jacket up and use it as a pillow. This is where I take my one luxury item. I have a Sea to Summit little inflatable pillow, and I will always pack that thing. I hate trying it. My head falling off of a lumpy,

coat or hitting a zipper. So I think for whatever it is, 12 or 13 ounces, I'm just going to pack this pillow forever. Yeah. I bought one of those too. And there again, try before you use it. So I bought it like in, let's say summertime and it's,

My elk hunt wasn't until September. So I bought it and then put it, put it away and had it ready to go and never even aired it up. Never even used it. I'd seen yours before. I'm like, oh yeah, that thing's awesome. So I get out there in the mountains, aired up and the thing just keeps going flat. Well, there was a defect or something. Well, by the time I get back home from hunting season, now it's too late to even return it. So, um, 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. And a pro tip before you go and blow the thing up as big as it'll go, you don't want, you want it about,

Five eights full of air is the perfect point. Unless you like a super hard pillow, which is, I mean, maybe you're a psychopath if you do. The last kind of specialty piece of gear, we already touched on water and the different ways that it's really just come up with your own system. But your last thing is your food and cooking, right? How are you going to eat while you're away from your truck? There are extremists that don't pack any food

any heat, not heat, any, any way to heat your food or 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. Um, 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 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 of Top Ramen in when you want, if it's a cold day and you're just like, this is going to 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, um, for the day kind of changed the morale and mood. But, um, yeah, there I've seen people pack food from as healthy as you can be up to guys that literally have 2000, 3000 calories of candy in their bag. It can be from one side to the other. Um, I don't know. I'll let Dirk at his two cents about, you know, packing food and what, what he tries to do there. Yeah. Um,

I just feel like I always have a stove of some kind, whether it's the Jetboil or the MSR reactor. I like them because they nest together with the cup real nice. It just seems to, you know, the fuel, everything kind of nests together real nice. There's some of those little stove cooker things that look like, you know, they're tiny. They just barely fit.

are big enough to cover the top of your isobutane cartridge, right? And it's like a, like a Suto or whatever. There's some cheap Chinese ones you can get off of 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 the, you know, little pots and stuff. But, but,

But the thing is, I like to have that hot, yummy meal at the end of the day. Like, that's like kind of like 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 uh peaks or a mountain house whatever uh dehydrated but it's hot it's yummy it makes you kind of feel good inside and it's like all right yeah i can yeah especially if you had a hard day you've been getting your teeth kicked in all day it's like okay tomorrow's gonna be good you know after you have a nice meal um one thing i don't do is i don't put a

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, you know,

Things like that, things that are healthy, healthy choices that don't have a high sugar content, but do have a high caloric content, a lot of protein, a lot of maybe natural sugars or whatever. And I seem to do way better on that stuff. So, yeah.

But I do know guys that like they operate on snicker bars and, and Rolos all day long. And, and, uh, 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, uh, for me, I just, I can't, I can't operate like that.

Yeah, I'm kind of in the middle. Sometimes I've tried to eat keto all the way through where I'm eating MCT oil and nut butters and chunks of Parmesan cheese. Brick Parmesan cheese. Yeah, I mean, it works. But nowadays, I just pack what I want to eat. Back in the day, we always heard if it doesn't have 100 calories per ounce, it doesn't belong in 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 bull or not. So I just, I pack what I want for the day, something that, you know, whether it's a morale lifter 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 I you know I'm hunting hard I just tend to kind of shoot for 2500 to 3500 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 gain the pound probably not but you know it's like it's just food and um I don't I don't go to the crazy extremes I used to with like

you know, macros and everything laid out. Like I'm just going to go hunt. It's not going to 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, um, 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, um,

Get as long of backpacking spoon as you can because I feel like the ratio to the depth to the width of all these sealer meal bags that everybody uses are not right because you have to get to about your wrist with a normal length spoon to get to the bottom corner. So get those long spoons, sporks. Spork, yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And pack stuff that you're going to, that you are willing to eat, let's say. You and I, we spend a lot of days in the field every year. And there's some things I kind of refuse to eat at this point just because you eat it so much every year, like trail mix. There was a time I loved trail mix.

If I put trail mix in my mouth now, I literally gag. I cannot do it. I can't eat any kind of protein bars. I can't do those at all. And I wish I could because protein bars, you can get some really good ones that are just chock full of all the good stuff. But I literally will gag if I put those in my mouth just because I've eaten too many of them. So you have to like get creative and find things that like to have high caloric 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 definitely is a challenge. Yep. Yep. And you know, I want to, we were going to kind of, that kind of wraps up that gear and kind of what you need. I mean, those are kind of the, that's the foundation of backpack hunting, everything else, you know, your weapons are going to be the same. I'm not going to get into strategy. We're going to talk on that a little bit, but we're kind of running up against the, the end here. Um, you know, meat care, I would say backpack hunting can sometimes lead you farther or potentially farther from, um,

from the the truck than 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 um 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. I feel like some people sometimes get the mindset like, oh, we'll kill it first and then worry about it later. But man, you have to kind of go into it with a game plan. Like I know I'm going to have to be able to take care of this meat. It needs to cool down quickly. And then I need to be able to get it out in an effective way. Yep.

Yeah. And then, you know, as you're calculating time, um, you know, these, you know, air and temperature is equally important, especially in that first 24 to 48. So you need this thing to air out. You need it to keep cool. Um, once it does cool down that first night, you really don't want to let it warm back up, you know, above that 38 to 40 degrees if possible. Um, so you're just, you're trying to make sure, um, you're doing everything you can, can there, um,

And one thing I'll go ahead and say one thing, um, you know, with social media and people talking a lot and, and you just guys being guys in general, there's a lot of bravado out there. And, um, um, I, I know a lot of hunters, you know, whether it's hometowns or everywhere you go, you talk to people and there's a little bit of like this, this idea like, oh yeah, you know, I threw a hundred pounds on my back and packed it, you know, 10 miles. Well, I'm here to tell you, um,

walking 10 miles with no, no weight. It's kind of hard in the mountains. So you throw a hundred pounds on that might, might, might kill you. That might break you. So like know your limitations, understand. I mean, maybe you've trained for it all summer and you're in your superhero strength and, and, and, um, cardio and in your excellent shape. That's awesome. Good. But man, a lot of the just average Joe's people like me, that's got an average, average Joe fitness level. Um,

I know my limitations and I'm no, I'm not going to be able to pack out giant loads for, for an extended time, like 10 miles or, I mean, four miles is no joke. Four miles will hurt you too. So just, just be cognizant of that. Yeah. My system where I drop the meat into like a hundred liter dry sack and then the, like, it's not going to be good to be in there for, you know, so there's all this stuff I'm thinking about, like, all right, yeah.

you let it air out, you know, it's better off, but then, you know, the heat's out of it. You don't really want it to spoil because of no air. And so I'm, I'm thinking about all of this. So if it's a long hike 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 um 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 um extreme weather one thing that some people may overlook is

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 and,

you kind of lose all that ability. So the extreme cold weather hunt I was talking to Dirk about, 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, snowing. It was 20 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 the gun would freeze up. But one thing we didn't realize until we had crazy pressure signs when I shot the buck that I did, you know, primers just falling out of the gun. Well, coming to think of it, he's like, well, there was, you know, talking about it. The condensation 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 basically, you know, caused a pressure issue,

Um, 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 you sleep? Um, 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.

Yeah, especially muzzleloaders. That's like guys that are having a lot of issues with misfires with their muzzleloaders. If you're going in and out of a hot truck or hunt all day in the freezing cold and then you take it in the cabin or wherever and get warm in your gun, your muzzleloader up and you're not discharging that charge every day, you have to think all that condensation stuff is going to affect your powder and it's going to affect the way your muzzleloader goes off. So that's like a big problem.

big pro tip. Like if you're muzzleloader hunting, you know, it's, if it's cold out, just keep your gun out in the cold. Um, keep it out of the, you know, keep it dry of course in a, in a waterproof case or something, but just keep it cold the whole time and don't put it inside, you know, change your environmentals on it. Yep. Um, as I mentioned, like a Wyoming, like think about the hunt you're going on, what you need, do you need the ability to start a fire? You need the ability to, you know, cut firewood, whatever it may be. A Wyoming saw, you know, another great kind of specialty, uh,

piece of equipment or is, you know, trekking poles, backpack hunt. A lot of times I won't take my trekking poles if it's a day hunt. If it's a backpack hunt, I almost always pack them, you know, for hard pack outs and scree fields or uneven terrain. Sometimes those things can save your, you know, your bacon as you're trying to navigate tough terrain 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. Um, I'd heard somebody say a long time ago and I just kind of subscribed to it. Um, it, I, I carry ibuprofen Tylenol, a prescribed painkiller and duct tape, um, as well as Luco tape backpack hunting. I will say that Luco tape should definitely be in your pack. Um, any blisters, anything that pops up or gear repairs, Luco tapes, very, very good. But back to the first aid kit, um,

if I can't fix it with Tylenol, ibuprofen, a prescription pain pill or duct tape, then I've got to go get help anyways, because I'm not skilled enough to fix anything beyond that. Um, 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. I'm trying to think, is there anything else as far from like trekking poles, Wyoming saws that you would pack on a... Well, that, back to your, your, your, your saw, or not your saw, your first aid kit. So my first aid kit, mine's pretty detailed. It's got, it's got a lot of stuff in it. You know, I've got, I've got bandages. I've got, you know, stuff to attach the bandages. I've got, I've got a tourniquet. In fact, I did a podcast with...

I call him Jimmy Kits. He sells these, these, these first aid kits. But anyway, sometimes, you know, let's say you're by yourself or you 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 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 on 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, you stab yourself in the, in the groin with a, with a Havlon or something. I mean, it's, it's a big deal. Yeah. And, and if you pack a first aid kit, like mine hunt with a buddy like Dirk, so you have access to all that and you don't have to pack it around. Yeah.

Yeah, that's why he hunts with me. Also, I was going to say, talk about your Wyoming saw. So, I learned about these other saws. I don't even know if they said the name of them, but on what's that show called alone? Clay Hayes was on. But those people on there will have these saws. They're called silky saw. It's like a big folding saw, but these things are like next level. They'll just...

eat wood around all around a freaking wyoming saw like wyoming saws like what grandpa had in the 80s but these silkies you got to check these things out jason they just they'll power through like big big wood really quickly um so um yeah definitely and they're pretty cheap you can get them off amazon or wherever you like to shop you can get those things yeah and the last piece to my first aid kit which is always like the sos button is like we carry those garmin um

you know in reaches the little guys um contact anybody you know major emergency somebody's getting sick and might not be able to get out or something like that's always the last resort plus while you're backpack hunting it's nice to have you know the ability to contact the outside world if you need to bring in packers or if you have people on standby just let people know how the hunt's going if you want to you can leave bread bread crumbs for your significant other or send them messages

All of that's available. So that's something else we do. 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 the rest of the world the connected world while you're out there yeah yeah it makes it easier on your your family too you know like if you're gone a lot then it's nice to get updates from you and stay in touch and it makes makes them feel like they're part of it and you're just not that is he gonna come back is he okay he's dead out there did he break his leg and laying on a mountainside crying like

it's, it's good to have that connection back, back home for sure. Pretty soon hunting with Dirk. This is the progression. Dirk went from Orofino to Meridian. You're probably gonna get mad at me for telling this because of internet service. He claims it's because of his kids and stuff, but he really needed faster internet. Um,

So, and then now he's going to go from Meridian when we go hunting, he's going to probably bring those new like mobile Starlink, like for RVs and stuff. So we're going to get setting up our backpack camp and Dirk's going to pull out a Starlink set up so he can power up. We're going to have, I'm going to have full wifi and stuff. We'll be streaming YouTube in the back country. Well, dang it, Phelps. I was going to surprise you with that this fall. Dang it. How,

This is, this is, uh, nobody's still my idea, but I'm going to start working with Elon for like the backpack hunters version of Starlink. Like we're going to come up with a real small antenna and, uh, see if we can't get that hooked up for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you just make a call and he'll probably be like, yeah, I'll make,

He was going to call me today anyway, so I'll just talk to him about that when he calls me. He probably, you know, he'd probably let you have a certified account on Twitter or X, I guess they call it now. So you guys, he probably knows who you are. I just want the blue check mark. Yeah, you got the blue check mark. You're certified. No, well, I appreciate having you on, Dirk. We're bumping. This might be the longest episode we ever produced, but hey, who knew when you talk to the gurus of backpack hunting, you get a long episode. Oh, yeah. I mean, we could talk.

we could go all day about this information. We're so learned. Uh, no, it's, it's a fun way to hunt. I'm glad, you know, growing up, I never thought I would ever backpack hunt. You know, my hunting consisted of waking up early, getting to a landing, glossing a clear cut and then jumping in the timber. Um, and that's, but, uh, I'm glad that it's kind of added to, um,

it's just, it's just a tool in the toolbox, right? It's just like the ability to call elk. I look at, you know, calling elk or being in good shape or understanding elk. It's just one of, it's just another tool. Like backpack hunting is an extension of who I am as an elk hunter and, or deer hunter. And if I think that that's my best chance to kill something, then I'm going to use, use what I've got, um, to, to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I like it. Um, I don't like to do it all the time, but when I do do it, um, I enjoy it. Um,

Um, if you enjoy doing hard things, then you'll like it. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a romantic way to look at, at, at a hunt, you know, whether it's elk hunting or deer hunting or whatever kind of, whatever you're pursuing or bears, whatever. Um, it's a romantic way to hunt. You're like, oh man, that'd be so fun to be, you know, camping out every night and all this stuff. But, uh, the romance kind of, kind of leaves when the weather gets bad and, and, or you're, um, in a physical suck fest. Um,

Um, but, but it's still, if you enjoy those hard things and then you'll, you'll enjoy backpack hunting for sure. Yep. Yep. Backpack hunting is definitely that type too fun, but when it all works out, uh, it definitely adds, adds to the hunt. So, um, yep. Thanks. Thanks everybody. Uh, appreciate all your guys' support and, uh, we'll catch you on the next episode of cutting the distance. See you guys.

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