The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 083: What The Hell's In Your Backpack

Episode Date: September 25, 2017

Seattle, WA. Steven Rinella and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew discuss Janis's complete gear list for a 7-day backcountry archery hunt. Subjects Discussed: Steve's emotional distress over his son fishing with another man; Steve's special Japanese fish-bone pickers; guns vs. bear spray vs. bears; Janis Putelis shares his gear list for long hunt while Steve critiques and criticizes his selections; is it possible to own a camping pillow and still be a real man?; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. You know what was like a weird emotion I had the other day is I was coming back from a trip, and I get a call from my wife, and she's saying that my boy, my oldest boy,

has been invited to go fishing with his buddy and that buddy's dad. And it felt like my old lady was going out on a date with another guy. That's what you said? Yeah. Made me feel jealous. Did you get over that? Yeah, I got over it because I realized that's a totally unfair feeling, but it felt like I was getting cheated on.

He'd never gone fishing. I started fishing with my brothers, I think, a little bit, maybe up at our shack or something. Yeah, he'd never fished with another man and it like left me feeling uh yeah i was jealous my initial feeling was like of course of course but the back of my mind i was feeling jealous then he wound up catching a fish brought home the flay he's all excited ate a bunch of it last night yeah it's probably good for him to to uh have other uh teachers yeah i was just hoping they'd get skunked so he'd be like if you want to catch fish yeah go with the old man but now he's like anybody can catch fish did he come home with anything like oh we did this different or so-and-so no but he but if you turn around, you'll see that rig right there.

That's what he caught a silver on. He caught this little dinker, like 12-inch king that they turned out, and then he caught a silver on that. Sounds like the dude he was with, which is pretty nice. Dude he was with, the way my kid tells it is the guy says, hey, hold this rod. I got to do something do something i gotta run an errand on the boat and the way my boy tells it is the minute he held the rod wham a fish hit

but i feel like i gotta check i haven't chatted with him yet i feel like what happened was he maybe he hooked the fish which is a slick move right to not be like hey sonny there's a fish on here but just hand the rod and let him have like the discovery one being on there so i feel like he was pretty shrewd which makes me think he's a good guy but then he brought the fish home he brought one flay home he said another family kept the other flay because there's like a couple guys out there with kids and uh so he brought one filet home, and I took my Japanese bone pickers and picked the bones out. And then it sounds grotty, but it's not, man. You ever just take mayo and seasoning salt and lemon and herbs like parsley or whatever and mince it up, mix it all together, and just layer that, spread that on the fish? And then cook it.

And then broil yes that is good shit man but you tell people like you're gonna coat it and yeah it sounds weird you just gotta say i'm coating it in a sauce yeah rather than saying based on coating that something we need to go back to japanese bone picker oh my japanese bone pickers i have genuine stainless steel japanese bone pickers. I mean, looks just like a fancy pair of tweezers? No. Looks like a fingernail clipper.

But not sharp. Yeah. You know what's funny, too, about picking bones out of salmon? When I'm talking about picking bones, I'm talking about picking the pin bones, right? Like when you flay a salmon or any number fish, you can either like take the flay off with the ribs, then just rib it in one piece. Just take all the ribs out. Comes off like a paint of glass, you know. Or you take the ribs off.

Or you either flay around the ribs and leave the ribs connected in their rightful place, connected to the spine. Or you take the whole damn thing off, ribs and all, and then rib it. But the pin bones, particularly on a salmon, you just grab them with a pair of needle nose. But my Japanese bone pickers are amazing. I like them. But the funny thing is, what I found is when that fish is in a rigor state, even if it's just a fillet, it's very difficult to pull those bones. If you set it...

Like the muscles hanging on it. Yeah, like if you freeze a fish and then pick the bones, they pick easy. If you catch a fish and go to pin bone it right away, it's difficult. You set it in your fridge overnight, it's easy to pick. So if you EKG made it, it'd be easy to pick. I bet if you EKG made it, the Japanese bone pickers would work even better.

Yeah. But you can use these pickers. You can pick all kinds of fish with them. And the reason I'm calling them Japanese is they actually came with, there was no English on the package. I ordered them after finding out about them. I was looking at a Japanese cookbook that you got to read from back to front. It's just pictures of how to cut up every fish on the planet.

And in there, they're always picking bones. And I was like, what the hell are those? So I got to sniffing around online and I found those bone pickers for nine bucks. Nice. Nine bucks. Nice. Nine bucks? Yeah, but it's just one more thing you got to worry about someone losing, man. Yeah.

Like when I see my kids with those makes me want to kill them. Much as I like them. Speaking of ordering stuff, I ordered a pair of fishing pliers. Did you? Yeah, I got a new rule where I don't fish with grownups

who don't have their own fishing pliers. And now I don't backpack with grownups who don't have their own fishing players. And now I don't backpack with grown-ups who don't have their own SteriPEN to sterilize water. I'll probably come up with more shit like this as time goes by, but that's where I'm at right now with being rigid about people being, mainly it's fishing players, man. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt when you got to constantly be finding yours, taking them off the land, you're passing them around yeah and with salt water

you know like all the stuff's real heavy so you can't get through it you know yeah it's not like you like i just i wore a groove in my teeth cutting line my teeth but you can't cut my 80 pound yeah i'm always out there with my pocket knife cutting through the 80 pound mono and that's just not safe in a rocking boat when you just got that knife out and about all the time. Speaking of gear, not speaking of Sam and Flay's, not speaking of Mayo, but speaking of gear, what we're going to do, we're doing a thing here. This is for all the mugs that are always writing in asking super specific gear questions. Gear sells,

I like to think about it more than I really like to talk about it. Kind of, that's kind of true. And I've even declared, I've even got, we used to argue so vehemently about gear that for a while I tried to have it be that I would not engage in any conversation arguing about the merits of various gear pieces.

But we're going to do a big major gear deal here because Yanni is going on an extracurricular hunting trip right now. So he's all packed up to go for how long? A week. Yeah, roughly a week. So he's going hunting for about a week with his bow and arrow for elk during the elk rut. So a little background here. Where he's going, if you were gone for a week, I would expect it to be in the 70s sometimes. And I would expect it to be dumping wet-ass snow on you sometimes.

Yeah. I think that's a safe assumption. It's like you will have a morning, not for sure, but a very good chance. You will have mornings where you wake up and there's six inches of just sopping wet slush on all your shit and you will wake up and you will have midday periods when you're moving to a new area and you got to hike three or four miles into a new zone um when it's uncomfortably hot, right? Yeah.

And I expect you could have not only that. I was thinking about it because I was thinking about sun protection for those moments. So you want to be stripped down so you're comfortable, but you also need sun protection. So long sleeve versus sunscreen, what kind of hat do you want for it? But, yeah, I can imagine not just that, but like maybe possibly finding a bedded herd, you know, that's on a ridge or something. And you're moving in for the kill.

You get within, you know, shooting range. And then you're sitting there at 2 p.m. Knowing damn well that those elk probably aren't going to stand up until six, and you're just exposed, and you need to be protected because they might be just beating down some. Yep. Or could be spitting hail. And another thing to keep in mind, you're kind of in the, you're dead center in a population of about 800 grizzlies.

So you'll see some little mentions of that in there. Give or take a couple hundred. Give or take a couple hundred. No. Yeah, maybe more. Yes. It's been referred to, as I've been planning for this trip, it's been referred to as the gri been planning for this trip it's been referred to as the grizzly

pit yes yeah it's just like well we were in the zone not long ago and we saw six or seven in a couple what do we see seven seven in a few days um different bears all you know seven different ones including some youngsters in there now uh all right talk about talk like like run through the duds you bring and this is like like i said this is like something that people pastor not pastor about but just ask so much about and uh also before we get into this keep in mind the stuff we're gonna be talking about isn't just necessarily for this but this this is like 90% what you'd use no matter what you were going to do. Yeah, definitely. I think you just really make adjustments.

Certainly temperature. As the year goes on, it gets colder. You're going to expect more snow. So that's when something like we'll make adjustments towards that. We can talk about that later. You might have a shooting iron instead of a bow and arrow exactly and you might have different optics um you know or extra optics uh but yeah i feel like the base is pretty much always going to be the same you know little accessories here and there but little accessories add up to a lot of weight sometimes.

So you only told... You only told one... You got one pair of socks? No, so... That's your extra. Yeah, I broke down my... What is jump in with the duds? The clothing. I broke it down

into what I'm probably going to be wearing 90% of the time and then what's probably going to be in my backpack most of the time. Ah, so you're only wearing one pair, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I'll have basically one pair as an extra. Do you remember in the old days when you're kids and you thought that putting more socks on? Yes. And then putting bread bags on them was going to be the ticket to warmth? Holy. Yeah. Cotton ticket to warmth. Holy.

Yeah. Cotton socks, nonetheless. Yep. When you're putting your boots on, trying your boots on, you need to make sure that you can freely wiggle your toes around or else you will be a cold little hunter. So you got one of them on. And then you run merino boxersino boxers yeah see that's the

deal man this is like you know the old boxers briefs thing i'm not a boxers man and you're kind of stuck like oh boxers versus briefs not boxer briefs no no boxers versus briefs yeah yeah i'm not a boxer's man i was but i'm not and um that's a real achilles heel for you cotton it's the one cotton thing hold on i know that there's companies that make uh non-cotton briefs well they make those weird synthetic ones yeah don't like them those ones you can like wash in the hotel sink and dry them out real fast no don't like them those ones you can like wash in the hotel sink and dry them out real fast no don't like them yeah man it's an akil it's like the weak link in the gear is that one cotton thing yeah because they certainly i feel like those um and the ones we i use and most of our crew uses the first light red desert i believe they're called boxer shorts and they come down you know you know my long legs like almost the tops of my knees.

Yeah. So I feel like with those, and then if I pull up a long pair of socks to the bottom of my knees, it's like you almost have a whole second layer covering your legs underneath your pants. But doesn't it get hot in there? You know. Doesn't your scroll get banged around a lot? The Merino, they're not that loose, right?

They're like tight fitting. Merino will buy. They're not loose at all. Actually. They don't fit probably quite as tight as, um, as briefs, but,

uh, no. And they actually can prevent chafing, right? Like I don't have that problem. Cause I got chicken legs, but if you got like, if you're like a thick ththighed fella or gal,

your thighs are rubbing. That can prevent a little chafing down there. Oh, yeah. But anyways, yeah. I'm going to really try to stick to this list. I'm actually going to pack probably tonight and finish packing in the morning, and then I'm walking into the woods tomorrow.

But I'm going one pair of boxer shorts. Just the ones you got on. Just the ones you got on. Just the ones I got on. Yeah, but that's a good move because people, like the more stuff you, like the more clothes and things, I feel like a lot of people bring too many socks, too many underwear, and just stuff to manage. Well, manage, and like we have the luxury,

like a lot of our hunts where we, like, recently got flown in. And so a couple, three, four, even 10 pounds of extra gear is just going to sit in my tent. I'm not really packing it around because when we leave to go hunt or whatever. No, we're packing around plenty of other stuff because we're working. So there's cameras and batteries and whatnot. But here I'm really, like, there's none of that stuff. This is purely for fun. And so there might be times when I'm actually having my whole camp and all my gear on my back

and I might be chasing elk. And I know from experience from the first time I ever did that, I walked into the woods with, I think with a, with all my water, well with, I think it was roughly three liters of water on my back i was chasing elk around with like a 55 to 60 pound pack very quickly like after the first morning i was like i need to change i need to like figure out a different system because when you're like you're chasing a bugling bull and you got 55 pounds on your back you're not like you're not the same hunter as you are if you have a little day pack on your back it's a big difference you know your legs are getting smoked because in your mind you're like oh

my gosh beetle and bull run run run run run and then an hour later your legs are like dude what's this all about yeah i know that's that's heavy but i think a lot of guys like just i don't know i feel like some guys just like overdo it and think about it. They do. But again, we can go down this rabbit hole and go on forever. But if you really want to chase elk with your camp on your back and be able to stop at the end of the day and then just be there and not use the time and energy to go back to camp, you have to be fairly light all right

so got your socks and undies we got that far now so you might bring some sneakers or and or is this and or or you're running like mountain hunting boots i think i'm gonna go and and this is a place where it's gonna be be extra weight. But these high top sneakers, I figure for my size, I think they – I just looked up the weight. They're like 14 ounces for a pair of nines. Okay. Okay. So under – I'm sorry.

Yeah, they were under a pound. Yeah, but you got like – So for a pair of 12s, I'm looking at probably a little bit over a pound, right? There's not that much more there. And you want them for sneaking up? A things like i've got um morton's neuroma in my feet which is like morton's neuroma i know you got feet problems i don't know what the name is yeah it's basically like nerves getting um agitated by metatarsal bones and it creates like after a while usually around five or six miles it

can create some immense pain to the point where you just like want to stop walking and take your shoes off eat ibuprofen it's bad the softer the midsole is in a pair of shoes the longer i can go without getting to that you know like the stiffer that midsole is the more quickly it starts to agitate and it hurts so having an extra pair of sneakers especially if i'm on a trail say i'm packing in or packing out i'll carry my heavy heavier you know mountain boots on my back even though that's you know four or five pounds back there because i'm no at some point i'm gonna be running across the side of a mountain on some shale and and I'm going to want those. So I can just bang out five, six, seven miles on a trail quickly, comfortably, and not have my feet hurt.

And then you put your baritutes on. And again, oh, something we didn't talk about is I'm going hunting with your brother, right? So we got llamas. So he's already in the woods. I'm going in there to meet him. I need to be self-sufficient just in case I, for whatever reason, we don't come together. I need to be, you know, prepared. Um, but something like this, if I was only going by myself, I might consider just not bringing my, you know, mountain hunting boots and just be going in my sneakers. But knowing that once you get way back in there, you might hook up and put some shit on the llamas.

Yeah, so I don't have to carry quite as much food in because he's already carried some food in. Obviously, the llamas, if we kill, they'll be packing meat out, so I won't have to carry as much out. So if I was in your situation, depending on the weather, I would be running my Schnee's Beartooths. And if it was really cold, I'd bring my little down booties.

My little down, it's kind of like a sock, kind of like a thing for at night if you want to stretch out. But this time of year, I would never bother with it. Right. Yeah.

And then a merino wool t-shirt so this is all for your so just for like one's body on a mixed climate hunt yeah a base layer t-shirt a base layer long sleeve that's right which is going to be the chama hoodie from first light and no beanie cap because that son of a bitch has a hood yeah not only that but i'm also going to have my for my insulation i'm going to have my this is something i wanted to discuss and talk about because over the and again we get so much experience by shooting the show that we get to try a lot of things and really you know when you're just on long hikes back to camp you're thinking about okay you know my beanie's in my pocket i

haven't worn it for two days and i realized that that was happening a lot to me where i'm just like i'll con because sometimes you get that like earache you know you've been wearing a beanie too long and uh yeah i just wasn't using it because like like a lot of our gear has hoods on it. Right. So between like the, the wool hoodie on the Chama hoodie, then the Uncle Progre jacket, which has the insulated hood and then a rain jacket, which has a hood. I figure in some pretty darn right, shitty cold conditions. If I put those three hoods on, I'm going to be pretty comfortable. Yeah. And I know that the beanie is, it's ounces, right? It's probably a quarter pound, but yeah, I'm leaving it. You know what I flirt back and forth with is running what I call the Remy Warren,

which is a baseball hat, and then you just put the beanie over it. Yeah. Because Remy has a trick where he doesn't always run a tripod with his binos but he's got like like the remy warren the move that i call the remy warren is a three-part move once the insulation move you always have a baseball cap on and you pull a large beanie over that to keep warm but then when he's running his butt when he's using his binos he holds his hands around his binos and grabs the bill of his hat right and it's if your hat's tight and you're grabbing your binos and the bill of your hat it works good it's stabilized yeah i think he also he carries a hiking pole a lot doesn't he and uses

that to stabilize that too yeah but like i can't do that but it's also kind of uncomfortable. Yeah. The hood, the ball cap, beanie combo. For a long time, a lot of times I wear that first light brim beanie, but that's not a rigid setup for stabilizing binos. No, that wouldn't work for that. I feel like the one thing you're getting from a baseball hat right is basically shade for your eyes and some sun protection for your eyes which is crucial you got to have something that provides you that but the fact that most baseball hats are cotton i feel like it's a pretty big yeah they always they make them all out of goofy shit

well yeah i mean now they have like technical fabric baseball hats. I shouldn't say all, but yeah, there's a lot of bad material baseball hats out there. Yeah. The mesh stuff that chafes your ears. Right. Yeah. But I think since we're on hats,

I'm also not bringing a baseball hat. I'm going with a, it's like a like a lightweight breathable it's a boonie hat is what you call it right it's like a bucket with a i don't know it's probably like a three inch brim that goes all the way around yeah boonie hat boonie hat yeah very lightweight very packable uh would dry super fast but it goes all the way around and i've noticed especially when we're sitting around in the sun glassing it's nice to have that protection not only on over your face and your eyes but now my ears are covered part you know hopefully at least part of the back of my neck is covered um and for me it's more comfortable yeah i've never been a boonie hat guy i don't like the feeling of that back brim

rubbing against my backpack i don't like when I'm leaning against stuff, having that thing. Yeah, I never liked them. But you got a Patagucci boonie hat. Yeah. And again, I'm hoping... I got such a love-hate with that organization. Right. Yeah, I love a lot of...

Yeah. Anyhow, so Yanni's got on base layer... So you got your base layer t-shirt, layer long sleeve in this case a chama hoodie with a hoodie in place so you don't need to wear a beanie then a third layer is you got a halstead fleece which is a fleece shirt quarter zip yeah quarter zip fleece shirt and that'll cover you for like unless it's raining out that covers you for a real wide array of temperatures exactly yeah especially with the fact that you can you know the chama and the the halstead fleece you can zip them down to like just stirring them or even a little bit lower really opens it up and lets you get a lot of

heat out you know if you need to dump some heat oh yeah i find when i'm going up a hill and you got that on i think just rolling my sleeves up to my elbows and then unzipping those couple zippers, it makes a huge difference rather than stopping and taking all that garbage off. Yeah, and another thing with the hood and not having the hat, it's when I'm climbing up that hill and you're trying to dump that heat, just ripping that hood off, uncovering your head, there's no better way to dump heat than just getting everything off your head. Takes a big, deep breath.

And then the obsidian field pants, are like not that synthetic-y stuff. No, no, no. They're made out of the same material as the Kanabs were. They just have a few extra technical pockets on them around the legs. They don't – like the Kanab kind of has that cargo-y pocket that sticks out a little bit more. These are a little bit slimmer. Slimmer profile. Sleeker profile, yeah. They move them off the side. The Kanab's got the pocket that kind of has that cargo-y pocket that sticks out a little bit more. These are a little bit slimmer profile. They move them off the side.

The Kanab's got the pocket that kind of sits up front. I've always liked them. I like those pants. Right. Yeah, a lot. So, yeah, it's a merino wool with like a ripstop material in them. And then a couple like the crotch, the of the uh bottom of the pant legs where your feet can rub together there's a little patch of uh synthetic material to give the pants a little

bit of stretch and a little bit you know wear resistance in the high wear areas and i those pants are good for again huge temperature ranges yes like running some running some LJs with them, you're good for like in the freezing, below freezing mark. Yeah. I think where a lot of people mess up is they start to think about, and I did it for a long time and I actually learned this from skiing

when we used to sell ski clothes, is we advise people to, hey, when you're in the lift line at eight o'clock in the morning, start cold. Yeah. Right? It's the same thing when you're in the lift line at eight o'clock in the morning, start cold. Yeah. Right. It's the same thing when you're like at your tent eating breakfast, it's okay.

Be a little bit cold. Like, especially elk hunting, it doesn't take but a hundred yards and like, that's the temperature you're going to be working with, you know, and your body temp that you're gonna be working with for most of the day. Right. So start cold, start a little bit uncomfortable. And don't bring that extra layer of clothing, the big down jacket, just so you can have your coffee comfortably.

I think people, in place of the down jacket, if you think about it, you could just stay in your sleeping bag a little bit longer. Eat your breakfast in your sleeping bag. Then get out, get dressed, and go. Well, we've done in the past too to because you already you know you got your sleeping bag with you yeah i've spent a lot of time on glass and tits in my sleeping bag yeah you know whether like weather depending if it's just like cold and windy and just kind of miserable i'll oftentimes hop in my sleeping bag when i'm just posted up somewhere watching. I'll just do that to stay warm. Or like I said, just keep your sleeping bag wrapped around you and eat your breakfast.

And then if you're carrying around a giant puffy, like a giant down pants and down jacket for those moments in camp, save that and just use your sleeping bag as an insulation layer. Right. Instead of having all the more garbage with you. But at the same time you gotta be super careful that you don't get your sleeping bag wet you know even you know it's like yeah down a wet down bag is real bad a wet synthetic bag you still got good insulation but it's just uncomfortable it doesn't work as good and it's uncomfortable so you gotta like keep your bag dry

but it is it's got to be really extremely cold before i start bringing uh like down like down jackets and down pants and stuff with me i mean like way cold hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

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So we got the pants, a couple of accessories that I have. I won't be wearing them, but I'll at least have them in my pockets at all the times, and it'll be a pair of work gloves, style gloves, and then a Merino liner glove. And the liner glove is probably more for like a, you know, just to kind of take the chill off. Or if I feel like I'm getting really close and I just want to cover up the shine, the sheen in my hands. Yeah.

You know, something to do that. So do you practice shooting in those gloves then? Yeah. It's a way different feel, man. That's a good thing we should talk about because in general, I didn't shoot enough with sort of like, like I'm always wearing my bino harness. I never shoot without my bino harness on and my range finder.

I try to just like wear the hat that I'm going to be shooting in. But over the last week, like a few days prior to leaving on this last trip and then the last couple of days, I started putting on like a 20-pound pack with my 44 on my side bear spray on my side You know the gps hanging off of me wearing the shoes i'm going to be hunting in and just really You know zipping up like doing things like uh Putting the hoodie on and zipping it all the way up and then shooting that feels a lot different Like I have a kisser button on my string now

And when I have a hoodie on a lot of times that kisser button doesn't hit anymore. You know, just that little bit of extra material, it feels a little bit different, but I've shot it enough to know that, you know, at 50 yards, even if I'm not feeling that kisser button, as long as I'm, you know, lined up through my peep and everything looks good, you know, I'm shooting fine. But yeah, that's very important to do is that all this stuff you need to be, you know, at least hopefully towards the last week before you go on the hunt is be shooting, wearing all this stuff, you know, especially the backpack because it feels different. And you really want to make sure that you're just not impeding like the string, whether it's on the draw or the shot itself.

Yeah, you're talking about a binaural or bulky sleeves. Right. Yeah. You got to experiment with it all. So that's why you're wearing the merino liner gloves and then you got like a pair like a pair of hybrid shale gloves which are kind of like a not kind of like they have like work glove elements to them yeah heavy duty leather palm you know breathable back breathable wool back yeah good like pretty versatile glove then i always use one too net gator i love those things yeah i like items that have as i was

building this list i was thinking about how many items i have that have like our multi-purpose and i was thinking you know what that net gator if if i just well i'm like all right i want to be wearing a beanie. You can wear that thing like a beanie and sure there's a hole in the top of it, but you do it sometimes. You walk around with your neck gaiter on your head. I use mine for all kinds of things. So I use it for its intended purpose as like a warmth device. Yeah.

I use it so you're not burned in the back of your neck because it's amazing how many times, like you can burn your neck five times a year right like it doesn't get you know i mean just like it doesn't like tan up kind of like how your lower arms do where you just like eventually it's become like impervious to burn so you can even be out you can even be out in october and like bake your neck all over again right or your ears so i'll just use it like that um well warmth sun protection sometimes i put it up on my hat when i get like when your hat just gets uncomfortable i'll put that thing on for a while and then the main thing i use it for is especially hunting in alaska in the early season when you have some when you have like 20 hours of daylight or 18 hours of daylight i'll use it over

my eyes to sleep and for nappy time too so i'll just take that net gator and it's i just kind of fold it up and wear it like a eye piece and allows me to it allows me to conk out and sleep good and then i do it enough for if i wake up and it's kind of like an emergency situation in the middle of the night or whatever i'm not like confused about like i just noticed like right lift it up you know yeah um and it really helps me get uh helps get those 20 minute naps in and it helps at night especially if you're in the area when like this time of year in alaska you have these very prolonged periods of like kind of duskiness it can be hard to sleep so i was like

to block my eyes so i could sleep yeah so i use it for all that it's not uncomfortable to have on because it doesn't add a lot of heat to you when you just run it around your eyes. Yeah. But I think like with these lightweight merino net gators, the weight to like gain ratio. There is no weight. Yeah, there's almost no weight. And what you're getting out of that as a piece of warmth, I've had two instances I can think of in my head where I was like in like a very cold state and it's like a very important part of the hunt where there's like animals nearby or I'm

having to like glass it's like see where an animal's going but you don't want you like you need to be staying there but you're like very cold like shivering cold like it's coming and I've remembered I've had these gators in my pocket put them on and put that on your neck and I think it's almost like putting a beanie on like just

insulating your neck keeping that blood flow you know warm as it's going to your head and back big difference huge i also the main one i wear i got a hole i cut in one part of it so when i'm turkey hunting smoking cigarettes no mouth calls so the hole you never even notice there it's a really small hole and i usually keep it in the back but when i spin that thing around and pull it up like if i'm hunting turkeys when i got when i'm trying to like work a bird oftentimes just pull that net gator up over my nose right for camouflage and i got a little hole cut so i just swing that hole around over my mouth and i can take diaphragm calls in and out of my mouth or blow calls whatever and put it up in that hole and use it and then when i'm done i just drop the thing back down on my neck and spin it around

but fishermen wear the same thing now right the buffs yeah so it's a it's a synthetic material but they wear the same thing now because people realize you shouldn't just be like scorching your skin all the time yeah sunscreen or not yeah so pull that thing up to block your ears it's a great it's like a thing that not many people use but it's like a real gem of a of an item and you're not running any gators no i wouldn't either in that area one is it's for that kind of stuff it's too loud yeah usually gators for me are like a uh deep snow yeah when i When I say deep, you know, if I know I'm going to encounter six plus inches,

I'll probably put on gators. Or if you're in an area that's just like tons of creek crossings or lots of like mucky hell holes and stuff, they're pretty nice for that reason because when your pants are all wet on the bottoms, it just gets annoying and if you want to climb into your sleeping bag,

you got all that extra water. So when you do it like in wet snow, when it's all just caked in, it's nice to take that off and have dry lower legs and just slip in your sleeping bag at night and not have to worry about taking your pants off. Yeah. And that's a good point to bring up too. Something that I'm going to start doing is if I'm, cause I'm just going to have rain pants, right? So if we do have like a super dewy morning or if we get that six inches of wet, shitty snow that you were talking about, when I'm putting on my rain pants, I'm going to go out in very wet conditions. I'm going to make sure that my pants are rolled up, tucked up, the pants underneath my rain pants somehow. Because I feel like what happens is that that moisture hits your cuff like you're talking about, and it wants to travel.

It wicks up. Yeah, it wicks up. And so then it goes to your socks, and you're talking about. And it just, it just, it wants to travel. It wicks up. Yeah, it wicks up. And so then it goes to your socks and your socks wick it. And all of a sudden that, you know, even though you're completely covered, that moisture is like going up your pants to your socks and then down into your boot. Yeah, it moves. I never enjoy having gators on. Like when I put gators on, I'm only, I'm playing the long game.

Right. Like I'm always annoyed by them. You know, I'm annoyed by the way they feel. I'm playing the long game. I'm always annoyed by them. I'm annoyed by the way they feel. I'm annoyed by the noise. But in certain situations, it's so nice to pull them off and have your legs dry from the knee down when they would otherwise be full of mud, snow, whatever. I tend to carry them more than I put them on.

It's one of those things at the last minute. If I'm going somewhere, I got my duffel and my gators are in it. At the last minute, I'll oftentimes leave them in my duffel and they don't make the final... I can't trim them out in my garage.

I can't cull it in my garage, but I can cull it at the last minute before I load my pack. I look at them like, really? And a lot of times I'm like, no. Yeah. It might be something that I have in the truck too. It'd be smart.

I mean, I know what the weather's coming up, right? I've got like a couple sunny days, and then we have some rain days, and there's actually now they're forecasting a snow day. Not a lot of accumulation, but there's definitely going to be some moisture. But yeah, if I knew that I had to hike in whatever, two, three hours, and I'm looking at doing that through four, five, six inches of snow, it might probably be worth it. Even if it was a couple inches of snow, it might be worth it to put them on. Yeah.

Just for the long game. All right. So your pack, you got a pack. This will give you a sense. This sounds like a lot of stuff that we're gonna be talking about but it's not because you got a a 3300 pack explain that whole deal yeah it's the same pack i used last year i know i know it works for this so um the pack is a stone glacier solo 3300 i believe is the name and um so it's 3300 cubic inches um it's slim trim tidy um the pack itself only has one pocket built into it and then you can customize it by adding their little pullout pockets that come in different sizes so there's little attachment

points like on the backside of the, it opens like a clamshell. And on the backside of that, there's a couple attachment points. And then on the, what would be like the, what faces your back, the back panel on the inside,

there's a couple attachment points too for these super lightweight, what would be the fabric? Oh, the little nylon pockets? Yeah i guess right and um yeah ultra lightweight you know it just gives you a little bit of organization um but uh for a couple little like loose things and we'll talk about that later but uh anyways yeah it's not big um the way i can do all this is that all my gear will fit into the pack itself, and then they have that system, the load shelf system, with their dry cell bag that fits in the load shelf, which basically fits between the pack and the frame, right?

Yeah, it's like a little bag. It's not quite like a dry. It's not like a submersible dry bag, but it's like a... Yeah, I think the only reason it's not submersible is because the seams aren't taped. Okay. Right? So there is some breathability. Yeah, definitely like a rainproof...

Yeah. Like a rainproof bag, but not like a rubber... We're not talking about... What I'm trying to say is it's not like a rubberized dry bag. No, no, no. It's light. It's like pack material. Yeah, with a roll top. Yeah. So what I'll trying to say. It's not like a rubberized dry bag. No, no, no. It's light. It's like pack material. Yeah, with a roll top. Yeah. So what I'll do is on the way in, all my food will go into this dry cell bag between my backpack and the frame.

And I'll pack it in. And what's nice about that is as soon as I get to camp, just grab my P cord, pull it up into the tree, and it'll act as my bear bag for hanging food until hopefully we get a kill and we have to use it to pack meat out. So once I do that, also probably if we're hunting, like if we're going to be coming back to camp,

I'll dump all my camp gear, my cooking stuff and whatever. And then that 3300, it cinches down so nicely that all of a sudden you go from basically carrying in a whole camp and you cinch it down to where it looks like a kid's school day pack. That's the key about these packs. If you're ever trailing a bunch of elk through timber let's say you're trailing you got like five six elk going down through timber and you notice that one of those elk keeps peeling off away from the group and then coming back into the group and

peeling off away from the group that's a lot of times a bull who knows his antlers can't fit through the gaps in the trees so all the cows can go screaming down through and he's always like planning ahead about where he can actually go and not go with a rack that's like the widest part of his body i've used a lot of packs there's like a lot of packs i like but a problem with pack like i don't like a pack for for unless i'm hunting like open open country i don't like a pack where the pack is any wider than i am yeah because you just never unlike a bull elk you never get used to having things on you that are wider than what you're used to it's so you want to make a lot of unintended noise going under logs through

stuff and you're just banging that thing all the time not just banging it but hanging it up and these packs are actually like if you got a dude like like the way the stone glacier packs are if a guy's wearing one looking at you you don't see the pack when it's snugged up but you don't see the pack bulging out in weird angles no not at all so it allows you to kind of move through without having to constantly be like remembering what the hell's going on in your backpack yeah and like this pack like i said there's only one pocket there. There's no lid. So there's nothing flopping. Once you cinch it down, it's just slim, trim.

Nothing's going to snag. There is nothing to snag. There's a lot of good packs. No pack is absolutely perfect. But I do like these freaking packs a lot, man. But yeah, the pocket thing, when it's all snugged up, you like, you love looking at how tidy it is, you know, but it's like this, like these trade-offs, you put these big sleeve pockets on the outside, everything. It just, you get like a bulkier pack.

It's more stuff floppy and hangy. It seems like you're organized, but again, the trade-off is when it's all loaded up, like how tight and confined and quiet is that thing? I remember reading a book about the LURPs in Vietnam, the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrollers, and it would say that before they would go out, they would load all their gear on and then jump. Right. And you would keep jumping, and then they would use electric tape to tighten things up and keep things so they didn't rattle or bang.

They would keep jumping until they could jump and make no noise. And with these kind of packs, once you snug them down, you can achieve that noise-free jump that you're never going to get with a lot of loose, floppy pockets all over the place. Yeah. So, again, you've got to kind of rethink how you organize your gear. If you're like a big-time pockets guy, you got to rethink how everything's going to go. And the thing I find with backpacks, too, is I'll use a backpack for a couple years,

and then my whole system conforms to the pack. Yeah. So then when I try a new pack, I might recognize some things I like about the new pack, but then I kind of dislike the pack for a minute because I got to redo my whole system. Right down to when I go to brush my teeth at night, right? If I've been using the same pack for a couple years, I just know toothbrush, toothpaste, or whatever within it. Here's where my – if I've got a paper map, where's that? Where's all my stuff?

And then I get a new pack, and I get frustrated, and I blame the pack, but really it's just getting a way to get dialed in. That's why I hate – one thing I hate changing around, a lot of times I hate changing my pack all around. When I need a new pack, I'm trying to find a pack where I'm like, this is going to be my pack for years, and I'm going to hunt everything with this pack, just to have it be that I just know where everything is, you know,

where it all goes. No, there's a lot to be said for that because it turns into efficiency you know and if that means if it costs you the it might cost you just 30 seconds one time when you're going to pull out your spot and scope and your tripod but all of a sudden that animal walked over the ridge you know and all of a sudden all you needed was one glimpse to be like yes that was a bull or it wasn't a bull yeah we're not going over there. Yes, it was. We are going over there. And yeah, having that system dialed, there's

times when it's crucial. All right, let's go over to packed clothing. So you bring socks to put over your boots. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do this year. Over your mountain boots? Well, the mountain boots especially. I probably wouldn't need them.

Stalking socks or socks? They're basically just a giant pair of wool socks. Not with a stalking pad or a fleece pad on the bottom. I'm just going to pull them over. Have you tried it? A long time ago, yeah. Last time I went quiet, we used those, what are they called? Sneakies, I believe.

It's like a ninja boot. Yeah, it's a thick fleece kind of sole with basically just bungee cords going over the top of it. You put your foot into the bungee cords, cinch it tight. Oh, those things. Those things are incredibly quiet and soft. I just feel like, again, the trade-off it's only going to be used

for when I have something bedded and I've got to sneak in. If you like i have something like bedded and i gotta like sneak in if you were stalking something on a gymnasium floor those are great exactly they suck when it gets has if you're on a yeah you're on a 45 degree pitch full of a bunch of rocks and stuff they are not stable right they're not stable yeah and it makes a huge huge difference um we've talked about this before but in arizona it's like a lot of times you're chasing um this is down in uh unit 10 where i had this experience but you're chasing elk across stuff that has you know because millions of uh like pebble-sized rocks that sort of just like rub against each other yeah they look like is they look like pumice

yeah they're a pumicey volcanic rock that's like hunting on cornflakes exactly it's like it's like the cornflake version of rocks and when you're in a heavy-soled mountain boot like i think for humans it's sometimes imperceptible but i noticed that like one day i was like you know what i'm gonna my my feet is it it was a i'd been in the woods for a while and my feet were starting to hurt. I'm like, I'm going to go hunt in my running shoes today, like some trail runners. And I just remember like coming in on some elk and be like, Oh my gosh, like how much quieter am I right now? Just cause it was like a soft, malleable soul that was sort of sucking up the rocks as opposed to pushing against them. And that same morning i noticed i'm like i think what

happens out there is that the bulls keep bugling right like they've managed it to the point where like it's like very hot good rutting action because it's very even like numbers like bulls to cows right they keep bugling but as hunters are moving around and closing the distance the mass of bugling sort of just kind of keeps this buffer away from you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, the wind's good. Everything's fine.

But I think there's just like that little bit of noise where they're like, whatever that is over there that's making that walking noise that doesn't sound like us on the rocks, let's just slide over a little ways. And as soon as you take that away, whether it's by going running shoes or putting on some sneakies or those socks over your boots, I think it makes a difference. What I'm thinking about trying in the future is I'm thinking about trying just minimalist – I think they're actually called minimalist – minimalist sneakers. Because there you could walk on a steep pitch and have a lot of agility it's not like running around and like like those things that go over your boots that are unstable it's like walking on tussocks almost yeah but yeah i might try that in the future or those little ninja boots

not the bungee kinds with little ninja socks you know yeah no i think those little minimalist shoes would work well for stalking yeah i feel like I feel like that might be the way to go. I'll probably bring those down to Old Mexico and try them out because that's a lot of that gravelly crap down there too. Right. Okay. So you run a dry bag to keep all your extra gear. Yeah.

All your packed clothes go into a dry bag. Yeah. Like a super lightweight. It's basically a stuff sack but it's waterproof um and in there will be an extra pair of socks a pair of base layer bottom one pair one extra pair of socks so you have on you a total of two pairs of socks for one week of hunting yeah yeah if i had to i mean if they got so crusty and crunchy, because I feel like that's what happens after a while. They get slicked up, yeah.

Yeah, if I really had to, I could probably wash them in a stream or something and hang them up, and in a day they'd be dry. Hang them off the back of your pack when you're hiking around. Yeah. And they get back nice again. Yeah. And I feel like if you do the right things, like take them off at night, put them into the bottom

of your sleeping bag so the so your sleeping bag sucking the moisture out of them don't just roll them up and stick them into your boots which have a lot of moisture in them that you're that should be you know coming out keep that whole system dry and you're gonna get a longevity out of it you know before it's those socks start to get slicked up, crunchy, like not comfortable anymore. And then to keep in mind, if you're hunting an area where you got to cross bad creeks, bad, you know, fast, slick rock creeks, put your extra pair of socks, take your boots off and don't cross barefoot though because, you know,

you slip on the rocks and bang your feet all up. But cross in a pair of wool socks and then hang them up to dry out. But that way, it glues you to the rocks, man. It's like wearing felt-soled waders. Yeah, it protects you. Yeah, I mean, it lets you stay on top of the rocks instead of having your feet slip down between the rocks, getting all messed up.

Base layer bottoms, maybe. Yeah, I think they're going to go because i'm looking at the weather and it's looking like it could be cold enough where i could be hunting in those like actually wearing them you know i don't want to again like you're saying i don't want to have those clothes that are just for a few minutes or they're you end up packing around the whole time but i feel like the base layer bottoms it could be cold enough and what i was thinking about is if somehow my regular field pants get soaking wet and I need time to dry them out, you can wear base layer bottoms and your rain pants,

and that's a very comfortable system to go out and do your thing in. It's not as quiet as just wearing your field pants. But to hike out that way, you can vent your rain pants if it's getting too hot, but it's a comfy way to go. And I'm old enough too now where if I had to, I'd probably just skip the rain pants. Just wear your long john bottoms and go hiking like a Kiwi. Yeah. That's how New Zealanders hunt. Yeah.

Shorts and long johns. Yeah. That's how New Zealanders hunt. Yeah. Shorts and long johns. Yeah. So puffy pants, like a synthetic puffy pant. If it's super cold, you'll add a synthetic puffy pant. Yeah, so I'm not bringing it on this trip. It's just not going to be cold enough. And then a puffy jacket. Mm-hmm. Yay or nay?

Oh, yeah. That's coming for sure. And then you got the Boundary Stormtight rain pants and then the lightweight rain jacket. Yeah. So like a light, thin layer rain jacket. Yeah. That's a risky move,

but they do pack up real nice and tight and small, man. Oh my God. And if you're on the fence about a rain jacket, rather than go no rain jacket, go the lightest little rinky-dink rain jacket you can the rain go with like rather than go no rain jacket go the lightest little rinky dink rain jacket you can find yeah it's a bold move to go no rain jacket for a week yeah super bold you know you're gonna have you're gonna have to do something whether it's an umbrella or a tarp that you're constantly setting up but yeah it's a very bold move because all it takes is one storm and it's like sure you're like oh i'm gonna go underneath the tree but yeah it's a very bold move because all it takes is one storm and it's like sure you're like

oh i'm gonna go huddle underneath the tree but if it blows and starts coming on there sideways you're gonna be miserable and then uh one thing i don't see here you don't use a pack cover oh you do you you're oh yeah use pack yeah that'll that'll be in there for sure like a fitted like a fitted pack cover from the manufacturer of the backpack yeah yeah um no tent no just tarping it just tarping 10 by 10 tarp 10 by 10 tarp keep in mind when you're sleeping under a tarp if you're six feet tall don't be like oh i need a six foot tarp you got like a 10 by 10 tarp once you put a pitch in it it's still like there is not a ton of room to be off center under that tarp if it gets bad if it gets bad yeah and i like i like the whole bushcraft of

using the tarp like i've got a couple pitches down i set one up last week to cover up our meat and um we had some amazing wins i mean we definitely had gales that were hitting, I don't know, at least 50, maybe 60 plus. And what ended up happening is this new, it's a Colorado, I think it's called Colorado tarp from Seek Outside. But it has like the little tighteners already built in. Yeah. So you don't have to run like knots that, you know, you used to tighten. And the cord that I had was just a little bit too skinny. It was holding just fine when it was blowing 30 and 40,

but as soon as the hail hit it with 60, I think that the line just slipped through the tensioner itself. I had a 2 mil cord just trying to be light. I think if I just bump up to 3 mil, it would take that, but I'm not expecting that kind of wind on this trip.

Two thoughts on when you use a tarp instead of a tent. What I do that no one agrees with me on is I make a six-inch loop of bungee of small shot cord on every corner, every guy point on the tarp. I put a bungee in there. The reason I do that is I'll use mine a lot. If you're perched up somewhere glassing for the day and it starts raining or snowing, I'll often just put my tarp up just to give a comfortable place where you can stay dry and warm under there. I put bungee on all my corners because I can just wrap those bungees around little branches,

chunks of brush, rocks, and set it up very fast without running around trying to find stuff to tie off to. The other thing is when I do tie it off i tie to the bungee and that gives it some you can pull it tight but it still gives a little bit of flex which keeps the fabric from giving out and tearing or other problems you might have with trying to keep it tight and nice and it keeps some of that flap noise down when you got a little bit of stretch in there so i like to do it i try to turn everybody else on to it. No one else runs them, but I always put the bungees on mine. And when you do pitch out a tarp to sleep under, keep it low. You don't need to have your tarp. Like if you're sleeping under, not like a hangout tarp,

but a sleeping under tarp, you don't need to have it way up in the air. You should crawl into that thing like how you crawl into a tent because then you don't have stuff blowing in from the sides. Right. Yeah. No, I think if someone else and me, if I and someone else were under the tarp together, you'd probably have to go to an A-frame style pitch, right, where you have a ridge running from one pole to a tree or between two

poles, just to give yourself the room. But if it's just me, I'll run what's called like a diamond pitch. And so I'll run off of one of my tracking poles or a tree is even better because you can get a little bit higher and then basically run like a diagonal ridge from corner to corner to the ground. And then your two other edges just sort of like come in and conform to the ground so you've only got one end that's open and so as long as you pitch properly and don't have that open to the wind you know you've got amazing coverage and you can throw a fire you know right there if you want to and stay dry and nice like you're always going to be open to the elements you know from some angle um there actually are pitches where I think you can completely close off of the tarp.

I've just never done it. Oh, yeah. There's like, yeah, there's like a, if you have a huge tarp, there's a way that you're laying on the tarp. You got a back wall. You're laying on a little bit of the tarp for ground cover. You got a back wall that comes up. It goes across the lid and drops down as a as like a wall yeah but that's

a huge tarp yeah you see it in old-timey books and you still have two open ends though wouldn't you yeah still got two open ends but you position it for the wind because here's the thing people don't like when you're rigging up like for instance all of us merrick's got took a picture of it when i drew my Copper River Buffalo tag years ago, I remember I had a setup where I was sleeping under a tarp, and I was actually burning buffalo chips in a little fire. And I remember reading about that when you're setting a tarp up and you're actually heating, you know, you make a fire for warmth.

In the old days, you didn't make it be that your tarp shielded the wind. You want to draft through it. Right, so kind of across. So you could get heat under there, but not trap all your smoke in there. Right. And I remember getting up and thinking how much I liked the looks of how I had my tarp and my buffalo chip fire. I snapped a picture, walked over the edge, and shot a buffalo.

After really coming to grips with the idea that i was not going to be getting one um but yeah that's that's like a you know even like uh when you're reading really old shit about like old pioneers and old explorers i mean they use tarps all the time that was like their their tent right material and they got way ways of pitching them um there's a book. God, what's that River book? River. No.

Son of a bitch. You know the author? No, but it's a guy in Canada. I can't remember. Hunting book? They do a lot of hunting hunting a lot of trapping river deception i can't remember anyways there's a great book where these guys it's in the 1920s and big fur boom going on and they're trapping in canada and working the rivers trapping and they always got to get to their site because they're out in the

middle of the winter and he describes their tarp setups they got to plan two hours every night to get their tarp setups in such a way that they can survive the night yeah using not using tents but making making setting up tarps in a way that you can burn wood to try to keep from freezing to death. And you always had to plan on that two-hour setup. And these guys weren't running around with headlamps. Yeah. So it really cut into your day. Right.

But I do like tarps. There's like a tidiness to it that you just kind of like, man. Yeah, and a versatility. And again, you got to be ready for... It's, it's fine and dandy when it's, you know, 70 during the day and it's like a starry 35 degree night with zero wind. It's like, who cares? Don't even set the tarp up. You can just like sleep out, right? Yeah.

Get your head into the hood of your sleeping bag, but if it blows and then there's moisture coming in, um, yeah, you better like have like, like some experience and a plan. And one of the things that's going to, that's allowed me to do this is I'm going to use a, um, Nemo sleeping bag that has basically like a, um, like what they call like a bathtub floor in a tent it basically has that built into the seat and back so you don't have to bring a ground pad it's built in or i'm sorry a ground sheet or tarp that's built into the bag and then it kind of curves around your feet so a lot of times like especially tall guy like me you know your feet are sticking out of the end or whatever or even if you're in a tent your feet are are touching like the, the tent wall, which can cause moisture to come in and get your bag. Oh yeah, man.

So that sort of is protecting me from, you know, the, the moisture that you didn't plan for. Um, and there's also a, uh, the, the, the sleeping bag system is built so that you can slip your pad into the sleeping bag. So it kind of sits between the bottom insulation and then that bathtub floor that I was talking about, the waterproof floor, which is pretty slick. Keeps you on your pad. You don't slide off. Final thought on tarps. If it's bad mosquito time, like, you know, yeah bad mosquito time, if you're hunting spring hunts

or you're hunting late summer hunts, you got to plan on that too. It just doesn't give you a break. If you got bad black flies, bad mosquitoes, and you're going with a tarp, sometimes when it's so bad, particularly in Alaska and other places too, it just gets so bad,

it's hard to maintain your sanity. The bugs and it is nice to have a mesh just something to now and then get a break from that shit yeah when we were up at bucks we slept out a bunch my brother and i believe were sleeping out and uh well worked pretty good and i was and again had it been too hot to sleep up to sleep to zip up the sleeping bag, it would have sucked. But we were just zipping up and then basically putting on a head net, and that worked. I had a thermosel on that trip. Oh, you did?

Yeah. But you still need something to control. Well, it depends on how windy it is. Yeah. Here's the thing I don't agree with you on, but I know you like to use them, is you use trekking poles. Well, again, a couple things I need them as you use trekking poles well again a couple things i need them for right um need them to build to pitch a tarp possibly use them for hiking

especially when i got meat on my back i think it you know saves your knees saves your back takes stress off your joints um and i'm not bringing a uh tripod so i'm gonna use that pole for one of the poles, for glassing. Yeah. That's what Callahan does to you, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then, so we already covered this.

You got a Nemo insulated pad, 10th or 20 pad, and a Nemo Argali 15-degree bag. Mm-hmm. No ground pad because your sleeping bag has a waterproof membrane. You bring your little blow-up pillow? Oh, man. I would not. Yeah. No, I'm not going to.

I would not. But I got to say, we use these. I think it's called a philo. I'm guessing they took fleece and pillow and made up this word called philo. Dude, it's a dream come true. Oh, it's so nice. But it's just like on a backpack trip. No, exactly.

And again, it's ounces. You're probably looking at, I don't know, not a half a pound. It's bigger than your fist. Yeah, barely. No, I think when you put it in the stuff sack, it's about your fist. It's bigger than your fist. Steve's giant fist. It's bigger than a powerful fist yeah uh i love them

don't get me wrong it's like phenomenal um i hate myself for getting to that point in life where i where i have like a little pillow a blow-up inflatable pillow but in this case i'm not that old yet no if you have to carry around all in your bag. It's a base camp thing. Yeah, and this is what I do. This is how I build my pillow, which was nice to have the Nemo pillow because I didn't have to spend the five minutes, or maybe it's only two,

building my pillow. It's just nice to get in your bag and just go to bed. You don't have to make a pillow. But what I do, and it works good because it's as I'm taking off my layers. I basically would take my puffy jacket, cross the arms, fold the hood in, and then sort of roll it up so you kind of have this like long rectangular roll. And then I take my next layer off, which is usually my fleece,

and I slide it neatly into that fleece all the way up to where the arms come out, like to the shoulders. I flip it over, and then again, cross the arms or no, I'll flip over the bottom of the fleece so that now you've, you know, just kind of repeated that rectangular roll, but the arms are still sticking out. Then I'll fold the arms and put like a one overhand knot, try to lay it as flat as possible. And that sort of contains the puffy jacket inside right and it's comfortable on your you know face because you're not sleeping on that nylon and then i'll flip it over so that the knots on the bottom and then that gets kind of tucked into

the um the hood of my sleeping bag and it works fine pillow making pillow making it just like yeah if you it's it's a luxury for sure to not have to do that and to have your you know bitching little backcountry pillow but i'm gonna leave those four ounces behind game calls game you're on a game call intensive hunt yes definitely i mean it's one of the reasons i'm going on this hunt because i love to you know call elk um phelps bugle tube four diaphragms and um really two of them are extras but i'll bring two that are you know sort of softer latex you know you know for sweet little cow calls and then two that are double triple reeds that are stiffer for bugling. You know, I bugle as such with, you know, loud, a lot of intensity that even those,

you know, triple reed diaphragms, when you've been blowing on them for three, four, five days, a lot, if you're really bugling a lot to, whether it's to get responses or to get a bull fired up or whatever, they can start to soften up over a while. And, you know, you hate to have one that starts to break or something, you know, as you're bugling. So as light as the diaphragms are, you know, four diaphragms weighs nothing. Uh, the call I'll probably use the most over the course of a week is an external read, uh, type cow call. Uh, Phelips is called the easy estrus and um the reed sits on a on a board and then there's a little uh castration uh band that holds the reed to the board and then there's the

um i guess like the the tone chamber the sound chamber that's attached to that and i love those because like you can make them loud. I mean, so loud that I'll use them to locate bulls. Just make one or two big, loud cow calls off of a point, and a lot of times you get a bull to answer to that. And he's just a good American man. Phelps? Jason Phelps.

Yes. Yeah, we like Jason. And then your brother and I decided to bring in a montana elk decoy this year yeah i would probably have not brought it in and again definitely if we weren't using if we didn't if i didn't have llamas waiting for me at the other end because it's it's a couple pounds maybe even a couple pounds plus um and if i was hunting solo it's like I'm not going to deal with it. That's a two-dimensional. Yes. It's basically like a printed picture onto like a stretchy, I don't know, polyester nylon blend or something that sort of sits over this frame that you can just twist down and folds down into a small little 12-inch package.

But the stakes are what have some weight to them. That's what definitely adds a weight to the decoy. But your brother's fired up on using it, so we're going to try it out. And you're bringing some 8x40 Vortex knockers. Yeah, I'm going with the 8s. Tidy little package. Tidy. It's probably not that much lighter if anything than than the

tens uh i mean it's you know could be a percentage of an ounce maybe i don't know i haven't looked into it but i like the larger field of view the steadiness i feel like with you know uh bow hunting you're always in you're like a lot of times you're scanning like 100 to 200 yards of you know looking for elk in the timber and using one hand because you've got your bow in the other hand or bugle tube in the other hand, whatever. But it's just like it's steadier. Yeah.

More steady than any else. Wider field of view. It's not like you're trying to count annual eye on a sheep or count brow tines on some moose two miles away. It's just like bowl or not a bowl yeah exactly or where'd they go oh there's a patch of fur you know their head left yeah um on that note not bringing um spotting scope or tripod and that's a huge weight you know drop that's um i'm probably looking at like eight or nine pounds that I'm dropping out of the kit there. For me, going on this archery elk hunt, maybe it'll change in five to ten years.

But yeah, I'm not even counting points. I'm looking for a bull and that's it. So I need to just find elk, see elk moving. And even with eights three miles away, if I see elk on a hillside i know they're elk you know and you keep and you keep your binos in your range finder in a in a fhf bino harness it's got a little range finder pouch so your range finder sits right next to your range finder sits right next to your bino it's easy to get at it's got little pockets on it so you got some uh a wind a little smoke in the bottle wind detector.

Basically, it's like taking a talcum powder and squirting it out of a little bottle, and it shoots a little puff up in the air, and you can see what's going on. Yeah. Now, invaluable. Yeah. Especially for close range hunting. When conditions are right, it seems unnecessary, right? Because you just take your boot and stir up a little dust and see what it does. But oftentimes, you're spot where you know if you're in an area that's just like pine needle whatever you can't get like a good

wind detector and bow hunting especially trying to walk like sneaking on elk man it's like the wind is the only not the only thing but the wind is like the the main thing you're thinking about all the time all the time and you got to pick your moments it's like a mistake we used to make and this is kind of why i wish i could like revisit a lot of the old go back in time and revisit a lot of the old hunts we used to do we used to just be like too eager to rush in and not like a lot of phenomenal opportunities slip through our hands from not taking time to just assess yeah and be patient yeah wait for the thermals to switch what are the thermals doing right and like all that kind of stuff and just being like well let's take our chances and go or you get into it and you're 90 there and the wind changes and you're like well yeah let's just trust our luck now it's like no

and sometimes you just get a hold of this man it's like everything's been going right for two hours and then there's just one gust that comes up your back and then blows them out but it is nice to have that constant

you know I used to just use dust and seed grass seeds anything like that but in you know another thing I used to do which I actually loved a lot I had done this a long time

I don't know why I used to take a bird feather just any feather I'd find, and I'd take eight inches of dental floss and hang it off somewhere in my bow in a safe spot. The only thing that kind of turned me off to it is you had to kind of manage it. Yeah, because it'll get wrapped up.

Yeah, but man, like... If you're going through brush and stuff, it's going to get eaten down. Yeah, but it used to be like now and then, I just loved that thing because I'd have that little... I'd kind of like pull it out and hang it down. And on the limb of my bow, I had that dental floss and that bird feather. Man, you can get an accurate reading.

But it gets wet. It gets tangled. But when it's like up and running, it was nice. It's just constant information that feather's giving you about what's going on. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

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slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet onxmaps.com slash meet welcome to the onx club y'all and you bring a little cloth for your binos I think that's pretty important oh it is man maybe you're not seeing any less

with dirty lenses but it just is anytime I haven't like it may maybe you're not seeing any less with dirty glass you know lenses but it just is like anytime i haven't done it for a couple days and you wipe them clean you're like ah no yeah it's like if you miss a day of brushing your teeth and then you brush your teeth and you get that same clean cleansed feeling you know same thing looking through clean binos the boys of vortex gave me these things i think i know they're available. The boys at Vortex gave me these things. I know they're available, too, in drugstores. They gave me these little wipe packets. And what I like about those is when you get sunscreen or something on them, it's a way to get them off.

I usually carry one of those in my kit, one of those optics wet wipes for sunscreen or any kind of other grease or any kind of thing that doesn't want to wipe off often. But you can usually, with a clean microcloth cloth you can usually get them clean and back up and running into normal um another thing i like about the little wet wipe thing is when you get a lot of dust kind of in the when the eye cups like spin in and out you can kind of use it to clean everything out and keep them up and running. Butcher and kit. Yeah, I'm going to bring a Benchmade Steep Country. That's the freaking knife, man.

Yeah, we love that knife. That's the only knife I'll be taking. No multi-tool. Yeah, but what do you got with you if you screw something up on your bow and need a monkey with it? Do you bring a little kit?

Yeah, a little repair kit, which will basically have any size Allen screw that's on the site. It's all Allen. Yeah, but I just feel like having a little. The reason I carry it is how often do you need a little pair of needle nose? See, I was thinking that when I was packing. I was like, not that often. Especially when I'm holding that big, heavy

multi-tool in my hands. Yeah. I like it because of the little saw. I don't know. And all my... The Allen's for my stuff, I have an adapter. So all those little Allen's are on my, right. But no, I get it.

I get it. But I just oftentimes, I oftentimes find myself like very happy to have my needle nose pliers. Even digging out ingrown toenails and whatnot. I just use them all the time, man. Well, I mean, that's that's i mean the fun part about this is you know you go out there and if i get worked over because not having my needle nose then next time i'll be packing them yeah but it is it's heavy it's a very heavy little item um you got a little mini sharpener which kind of you don't need because you're only going to be doing an animal.

Big damn animal. Or two. Yeah, that's true. Or two. Two guys. Yeah. Yep. We just did a trip where we chopped up three caribou. It's so small and so light, that little Benchmade mini field sharpener,

that I feel like it's worth it. Yeah. We just did a trip where we chopped up three, like doing a caribou a day, and it was a sizable animal. You're glad you got a sharpener. If you're going out and you're and just like the most you're going to do is you're going to get like a animal you're just going to be doing a deer i don't even you know i don't necessarily worry about it because like if you got a honed up knife it's going to get you through that plus more but it is really small zip ties for what reason they're just nice to have i mean they're in my little butchering kit section because I like to put my tag on with a zip tie.

You know, Montana, it's kind of a big carcass tag, and I think it comes with holes pre-punched. I mean, obviously, you could use P-cord or whatever, but yeah, I just like a zip tie. I carry a couple zip ties in my emergency kit yeah yeah and obviously i mean you could fix all sorts of stuff with a cable oh they're strong yeah you can you can fix backpacks and stuff with them um then tag game bags i used to and i still like some aspects of like there's a company alaska game, they used to use all the time. It's like a disposable bag, and it's like a cheesecloth material, but flies can lay eggs through it. And if you drop that bag in the dirt, the meat still gets dirty.

It keeps out big stuff, but it doesn't keep out fine stuff. But they're inexpensive, which is nice, and they're disposable, which is like, one, it's just part of like the disposable world right everything that just gets thrown in the trash all the time is a bummer but you're not like messing around trying to clean them you're getting blood out of game bags is a chore yeah so yeah now i've settled in on using the reusables the tag bags it's almost like a silky kind of silky feeling material and flies can't lay eggs through it and you could bag up meat and drop it in the dust and the meat doesn't get any dust on

it i think they're reusable i think if you drug them through mud and like we're like you know somehow pushing that through the material you it would permeate and get through. More protection, though. Definitely more protection. Yeah, and reusable and easy to hang. Yeah, strong. And then you got to come home. And I'd come home and I'd take a five-gallon bucket,

make a mild bleach solution. Yeah, soak them. Or take some Simple Green simple green soaked sons of bitches a couple times wash them in the washing machine give them the old smell test hang them out in the sun blood's hard to deal with yeah yeah definitely because you think you got it you think you get it you think you got your pack clean and then it rains and it just reactivates that stuff and you realize you didn't get it clean. Hydrogen peroxide, man. Eats it up.

Yeah. Gets the blood out. That's the key. I don't use it on game bags but on the pack I do it a lot. In a spray bottle? Yeah. Works good? Oh yeah. I hear people talk about it all the time. How much do you got to put on there? I mean just spray it. You'll see it does the foamy thing and then rinse it off.

Really? Spray it, maybe scrub it a little bit. I know you guys are always talking about using hydrogen peroxide to clean blood out of backpacks. I've never tried it. The one thing you have to be careful of, I think, is it could be corrosive to, I think, a fabric. Yeah, you wouldn't want to spray it on there and leave it.

That's why on my backpack, I don't like to use the bleach solution. Yeah. I'm afraid of dicking up the stitches. 50 feet of 3mm paracord. I usually carry 25 feet, but I use that weird, expensive, I can't think of what it's called, but it makes it so it's

half the width now. Dyneema? That's what it is? I think it's something like that. I got some of that. Shit's expensive. That's what it is? I didn't know you had that. Well, I got some of that. Shit's expensive. Dude, but it's like... Yeah.

It's like nothing. For the guy that's really counting ounces. It's like, well, it's extremely strong. Right. Very thin. And I keep... Because the thing is, depending on what kind of stuff I'm doing,

if I'm really weight conscious and I'm not doing like... If I'm doing like a... Not needing to be weight conscious, but in a very place where it's just very difficult to be. And there's a lot of like bushcraft kind of factors at play. Like river trips, for instance, right? Like a river, like a river hunting trip where you're just constantly rigging and fixing and trying to figure stuff out, dealing with big animals. I'll bring extra paracord knowing that I might be cutting it up and doing various things with it

guying out stuff rigging tarps but the reason i bought that that souped up material paracord is i would never cut it it's just like a little teeny 25 foot spool that i keep always in my stuff and then because i know i got one length for like hoisting stuff up or any kind of thing right and if i need if i'm gonna know i'm gonna be using some i'll grab some other like more conventional 600 pound paracord and carry it with me for for for just rigging but i keep that one emergency piece intact 25 feet good plan uh yeah dad i'm forbidden for cutting it up unless it's a life-death situation. Cooking in water, you got a jet boil, one fuel canister. Oh, I thought I have a little pro tip, though.

I want to come back to those tag game bags. Their drawstring is long enough where unless your hanging branch or post is just super thick, I'm guessing like over six or eight inches. But if you've got something smaller that you're going to hang your bag off of, the length of cord is long enough where you can do a, and the pro tip here is that the knot that I eventually found and now use for this,

and it used to kill me, but I never had a good quick release knot for like, you know how some dudes or two people with an elk sometimes are holding up an elk quarter, and then you're supposed to be the guy tying, and then you don't have a plan in your head for the knot to use. And so you think you've got something tied up, and they let go, and the thing just hits the ground.

Or you do a clove hitch, and you've got to get back up in there and take all the weight off to get the hitch undone yeah or you end up cutting it so i found a knot called the uh siberian hitch or i think another name for it is the evank e-v-e-n-k hitch but uh you can tie it i can actually hold the weight as long as it's not like a rear quarter on an elk and hold it. And then the way you tie it is it goes over, and then to create the loop, you basically keep two of your fingers out. And then your tag end goes around the line, and you pull a loop through the loop that your two fingers are making. And then you can just release the weight, and it snugs up. So it's slick.

Siberian hitch. Yeah so it's slick because one siberian hitch yeah you can do it by yourself almost most of the time and then it's a quick release so it needs to come down you just pull the tag in and it's out i like that i'm gonna look up the siberian hitch um yeah so if you got but again if you have a bigger uh you know branch or log you're hanging it off of you're gonna have to add some p cord so cooking the water you got a bigger branch or log you're hanging it off of, you're going to have to add some P-cord. So cooking the water, you got a Jetboil 1 canister, cigarette lighter. I usually carry a regular cigarette lighter and then a mini dinky cigarette lighter that I tuck away somewhere because it sucks to lose your lighter.

Or your lighter bombs out. Yeah, you got to have two. Another thing about lighters I like to do is I like to wrap tape on my lighters. It helps you identify your lighter so it mugs you with, don't steal your lighter, and just gives you a little place to have some tape. Yeah, duct tape on one, and maybe we have this stuff called gaff tape in camera world, and it's super tough, but it it's removable and you can write on it um so i can have some of that stuff you know on it if you use a bright color then you can always

find your lighter yep uh you got your drinking cup long handled spoon now anyone that eats house mountain house freeze dry you need a long spoon if you eat out of freeze dry bags you want a long spoon that way your knuckles don't get all full of uh pasta sauce yeah it's key you can get one i think uh i think it's cetosomic makes it a titanium one that's what i got a titanium super lightweight yeah and in my little kit in my little backcountry organizer like i organize all my small stuff in an outdoor research backcountry organizer and in there there's like almost a spot that looks like it was made for a long handle yeah and that spoon is just barely short enough or the or the backcountry organizer is just barely long enough to hold that spoon and i file two v notches into

the handle of my spoon and that spoon is called d double v notch and that's how i identify my spoon yanni puts a bright piece of tape around his it's kind of a better idea because because titanium spoons are like the perfect camouflage they are man they disappear uh one quart size nail gene wide mouth type bottle so you can scoop up water in it um a dromedary it's like a big collapsible water bag and that's like a really essential piece of gear if you got to go a long ways for your water yeah if you have to haul water at all um if you know you're going to be spending time you know away from your water all day hunting you know up on the side of a mountain um it's key i think this they make a smaller but i think the one i have is four liters and it sounds like a lot but obviously you don't have

to fill it up yeah but the small bag sucks though they make a lightweight small bag but it's not durable it'll burst oh yeah but i think you can get it in the durable version. Can you? I think so. I do the same thing. I think mine holds two quarts. It's like a black material. Very rugged. I don't like

water bladders in my pack that you drink out of a hose. Because the hoses freeze. The bladders leak you got like a frozen hose so you can't drink anyways and then all the stuff in your pack soaking wet because the bladder bladder burst i'd mess around with those i don't like those things i think what happens even more often what happened to me so many times is that like the mouthpiece a lot of them have locks on them you know know, to open and close.

But you leave it open and you set your pack down. Yeah. And the weight of the pack. And that gets all your stuff wet. The weight of the pack presses down onto your mouthpiece and it just slowly leaks out. Yeah. Not only is everything wet, but then you're out of drinking water. Yeah, I'd rather think about hunting and think about that dang bladder in my pack, man.

Yeah. That thing's driving me crazy. Now, the upside is, though, I got to say it's sweet to just always have that, you know, like a sip of water is handy. Oh, listen. Yeah, I didn't talk about the... Everybody knows the

upsides. I think the upsides are obvious. You stay hydrated because you're drinking all the time. That's the upside. It's a big upside. Calling, you know, you're getting dry mouth, you know, and you're just like, oh, a little sip of water. Yeah, you drink away. You drink, taking for granted that drinking water is good,

you drink way more water with a hose. But I've just had too many problems with those things to where I'm like, just don't use them. And I don't drink as much water as most people i find uh stereo pens which is kind of like the only thing we even use anymore yeah we're always packing i think it's aquamirror that makes the tablets so we always have those in case because the stereo pen it's a mechanical device man it's got like it's got a uv bulb it takes batteries but you can keep the thing in your shirt pocket i mean they're

mini but it can fail yeah ultra can fail yeah punk can fail too so always carry tablets if you like having super pristine clean water um for instance this last time we were just on we the whole camp drank out of a uh puddle i mean it was a puddle it's like what would you call that thing it's like like a not a sinkhole but a little hole in the tundra with some water in it yeah like a little tundra puddle yeah but like bushel by basket even Even your kids could probably jump over this thing. Oh, yeah. Small, mushy, muddy bottom, lots of stuff floating in it. So if you don't want to drink water that has floaters, you have to pump. If you don't mind that, SteriPen's awesome.

Or if you're just hunting near creeks and stuff that has clear water. You got a headlamp yeah black diamond headlamp yeah and i was gonna find the name of it and i ran out of time but super small smooth super lightweight only runs on two triple a's it's not like a mega beam headlamp um but it's bright enough where i've run at night with it if I have a fresh set of batteries. But you can dim the light on it. Is it called the Storm? No, the Storm is a bigger one.

Might be called the Ion. You talking your little mini one with the retractable cord? No, that's my emergency one. It's the one that's got the little... It's operated by swiping and touching the face. Yeah. You didn't like it.

No, it's too tricky for me. But it's super small, super lightweight. You can lock it so that it doesn't come on in your pocket, which I like. But yeah, it's nice. And since we're on headlamps, I carry one of those Petzl E-Lights, which is, I don't know. The size of a... Three-quarters of an ounce. Yeah. It's super lightweight. It runs... So if you took a stack of four or five quarters

and stacked them up, that's about how big that little thing is. I keep one in my kit. Yeah, it runs on two CR2032 batteries, and surprisingly bright. Like, I've had... I think you've even borrowed it once. You could use it as your primary light. Yeah.

But now and then you get into, when you're out, you just get into some crazy nighttime situations, and it's nice to be able to, if you need to, work into the night. Yes. And not be buttoned up against the darkness. Then you got an extra release. That's a thing, man like that's a real vulnerability very and those things get lost they do yeah i haven't personally ever lost one but i definitely had

clients over the years that lost them and wouldn't even have a replacement at camp you know i had to i had one time hike out and drive 70 miles to buy a release. Ooh. There you go. Right there. Yeah. Carry the extra release. 70 miles to get a release. And they're not like. And I couldn't find the release I had, so I had to start messing around.

Yeah. Yeah. And shoot it. You know, I was, I put in my notes here to shoot it because, you know, up until a week ago, I hadn't shot my actual release for probably about a year. It feels very similar, but it is different than my regular release.

Here's a little redundancy. You're bringing some bear spray. And you're 44. Each of those things, I see it. Each of those things is problematic anyone who's been hosed by bear spray and a bear spray accidental discharge which i have been done

it's like that makes you kind of hate that stuff but i'd rather get hosed by an accidental bear spray discharge than an accidental 44 discharge guy in colorado was just like which doesn't even have a grizzly so i'll never understand this. Some dude in Colorado that's scared of black bears tripped over a tent stake in the middle of the night. He's going out to take a growler in the morning. Trips over a tent stake and blows a hole through his own wrist with his bear gun.

I don't know. Everybody thinks they're Rambo, man. It's like, yeah. It it is redundant but recently some there was one guy i think two guys from mall they were together yeah bow hunters are a high risk in montana and um i want to say that one of the bear sprays didn't work and that was the guy that ended up getting mauled. His buddy sprayed the bear and eventually got the bear off him, but the guy ended up with some ridiculous amount of stitches.

Yeah, but again, neither of them are perfect. Nope. It's probably good to have a little redundancy. The other thing is, I can't remember the percentage of times, but oftentimes when a couple guys are hunting together and one of them's getting mauled, the other one of them, the guy that's getting mauled, in addition to getting mauled,

winds up getting shot. That does happen. Because people get panicky and they're not trained up in that kind of handgun use. There's statistics. They just did this big meta they just did this big like meta analysis of all these bear encounters over the years and what happened and who did what and what the what and people hate to hear it because people want to think that like people want to

think that handguns are the answer to everything yeah right so when they did this thing and they come out and say like statistically pepper statistically, pepper spray is better. Yeah. People get pissed because they act like you're like people get pissed because they act like this finding is somehow meant to be an attack on guns. Yeah. So people can't even, like, hear it clearly. Right. But they're both imperfect.

They're both imperfect. I don't know that the answer is to have both with me, but they're both imperfect. They're both imperfect. I don't know that the answer is to have both with me, but they're both imperfect. Yeah. And speaking of... I think being smart, trying in addition to everything else, trying to be very aware of your surroundings

and also knowing how to behave in the initial moments of a bear encounter are very important. Like before it comes, before it's where you're shooting spray at them, before it's when you're shooting guns at them and whatnot, there's like ways to behave in that initial moment. Right. And we have a lot of luck. It was like ways to behave in that initial moment. Right. Yeah, I think- And we have a lot of luck.

We got false charged by a grizzly, but we run a lot of bears off. Yeah. I think, yeah, just being aware of the landscape that you're in. I think those tight, close quarters sometimes of timber. If you're near a grizzly bear or something's about to happen, give the bear space to move around you. Don't get caught in that spot, especially if you knew the bear was there, that you're in confined quarters with it.

Obviously, you can just walk the other direction if you see one a couple hundred yards away. Create space. Yeah, create space if it's far away. If it's up close, create space, but not like a retreat. It's like the minute before things are too tight to establish a very commanding presence. Yes. A loud, big, tall, confident. commanding presence yes a loud big tall confident if there's two guys they're standing close

together establishing a very commanding presence yeah you do not want to come here i'm not coming at you like the human is not going at the bear like he's going to go wrestle him the human is not running away from the bear like it's a wounded elk running off through the woods, but the human is being like, I am here. I do not intend on moving. But it's also different, man.

And you talk to people that do get scratched and sometimes it happens. There's no time to think. It's not like they tried this and tried that. It's no time to think. It's not like they tried this and tried that. It's just all of a sudden there's a bear chewing on them. But yeah, so you got your bear spray and your

shooting iron and your bow and arrow and your GPS. I'm still going to carry it. I know that now we can all have our maps downloaded on our phones. I don't like the battery life on phones, though. Yeah, that's the problem with it. If I was able just to pop in a couple fresh batteries into my phone, and again, I'll have the Goal Zero charger, which has two charges.

I know if I run it in airplane mode, I can get multiple days out of it, but I just don't trust it yet. I like being able to take a couple lithium double A's and throw them on my GPS and have that thing on for 48 hours. Right. If I want. You do use a paper map. Yeah, and again, that's a redundancy,

but again, the GPS could go down. You could lose it. And it's nice to be able to sit and plot with someone else. Yeah, and just look at it big picture. Yeah. It does help you get up. It helps you spatially.

Even though you can go look at everything on a GPS, it's spatially, it's sometimes nice to get a big picture view of where you're at. Yeah. And if I was hunting an area that i've been hunting for five years and just like a general zone that where i'd walked you know almost every trail or over every knob and just knew it i wouldn't need a map yeah you know maybe wouldn't even carry a gps no there's yeah there's a lot of situations where i wouldn't but hunting like large new areas i always like to have a paper map where the main place i think I'm going to be hunting, I have it built

as the center of the map. Wet wipes, but no teepee. Yep. Just wet wipes. And actually, what I realized on this last show- I'll tell you why that's wrong. Okay. You can't burn them.

No, I know. I know you don't like that, but I bury them properly. And then you bring a butt pad. They bi bring a butt why are you bringing a butt pad like a sitting pad sitting pad yeah keep my butt dry um and i think it's multi-use you know you could use it to put you know food or you know work some gear out on and you know underneath the tarp it's nice to have like a second place it's off the ground um and then for taking a nap you know you could it's like it's a little extra cushion in the woods if you're in a rocky no i carry one off i just wouldn't carry one on that trip if i was doing a glassing intensive trip i'd like to carry it then it depends on the ground i just had one up in the tundra and i never used it because the tundra is so comfortable to sit on but it was dry right so yeah i do yeah i do like butt pads i like that little outdoorsman's back

that little outdoorsman's butt pad and i got just the place on my pack where i can kind of wedge it in perfectly so you got your hunting license that's smart yeah um smoke in a bottle we already talked about that wind detector you are bringing your phone just for snapping pictures that's right you get a signal on top of the mountain. You can check in. That's right. See how the kids are doing. You got a recharger. How many charges can you get on your phone off that charger?

Two. Personal hygiene. Mini toothpaste. Toothbrush with the handle cut off, which I think is something people do that's silly, but okay. Extra contact lenses, and then a little thing of Bonner soap. That pepperminty Bonner soap, dude, is a, yeah, when you're getting like itchy head and stuff after four or five days, that stuff resets the clock. Yep.

Yeah, you could use it, you know. Or if you had like a major you know like a butchering session. And you're just like up to your elbows in blood and you just want to clean up. Yeah and it's like it's a little bitty it's like a one use

like it's like I don't know it's like cardboard but the inside's lined somehow. It probably has close to a tablespoon of soap in it, which for Dr. B's is a lot. Man, you hit the nether parts in your noggin in a little creek wash. You come away feeling like you've been back home for a couple days. I love that stuff. Then in your outdoor research, little backcountry organizer,

you got a minimal first aid kit. Yep. My general first aid kit is, like my general first aid kit is triple antibiotic ointment, handful of Band-Aids, gauze, and med tape. Yeah, there's only so much you're going to be able to do.

I do have a big wrap in there, and I have some of this stuff called combat gauze, where, God forsake, someone did take a gunshot wound or a broadhead across the arm. Basically, you have just a major, major open wound. It's a gauze that you wrap or you put on the wound and then wrap your bandage around it. But the gauze itself has a clotting agent in it. Yeah, I used to carry the packets of the clotting agent stuff, but that stuff expires pretty quickly.

It does. You'll have it in your pack for a year, then realize it's all crystallized. I had to buy a new one for this ball. If you carry it, you got to keep up on it. But yeah, if you had like a major blood incident, it's good to have. But if you're going to do it, make sure that you're renewing it all the time because they do go bad. Another thing sometimes I have to carry with me just depends is depending on

where I'm at, EpiPen uh, EpiPen. Right. For anaphylactic shock, just because of certain insects and stuff. Uh, good thing to mention. I think there's like the small drugs in that first aid kit or what could really help you and keep you out there longer. Like you the other day gave me,

I had like a, I started to get a sour belly when we were on Prince of Wales and you gave me an Imodium AD and one pill cured me. That's all it took. I carry and I just buy boxes of the little single serves because they've got a good protective coating on them.

I carry a handful of ibuprofen packs. Just little single serving things. There's a pocket in my organizer you wedge them in. A couple packs ibuprofen. A couple packs of Tylenol, an Imodium AD type thing, and then an antihistamine type thing. And then I carry in my kit, too, I was talking about in my little med kit.

My med kit, like I said, it's the size of like, it's much smaller than a wallet. A couple Band-Aids, a couple of gauze strips, a really small thing of med tape, but also carry a handful of alcohol swabs to clean out cuts. And again, it's like nothing. It sounds like a lot added up, but you put it all together. It's like a little teeny plastic envelope.

And this whole thing fits into an organizer that's, I mean, how big is the organizer? It's like a sandwich. Depends on how much you put in there. Big, fatty sandwich. Mine, actually, if I overload it with things like, and it won't be for this hunt, but let's just say for another hunt and put in like a choke wrench and then the boar snake

for cleaning out a gun if you you know, gun, if you haven't jammed it in the mud or something, it can get over a pound. Like it can have, have some weight to it, but for this hunt, it'll be roughly around a pound, you know? Um, but yeah, on top of the first aid kit, there'll be, uh, the emergency survival kit, which Firestarter in there. I have two fire starters, actually. I do have some cotton balls with Vaseline and then I also have these little

one of these. They're called Esbit fuel cubes. The TSA guys will steal those. You got to be careful. If it's your main kit that goes everywhere with you careful. Cause they don't like them. Yeah.

But that thing burns, I think for like 12 or 15 minutes, like it goes, it's supposed to be used in like a cooking system, but it's a little cube and you just sit there and like, I forget like the heat that it produces, but it's a lot. But like in a shitty wet,

you know, fire building situation, you'd have like a flame that just basically sat there for 12 minutes as you tried to like build a fire around yeah yeah no they're nice to have my kit is like i take one of dirt myths uh chew tins and it's kind of dual purpose because i take cat cotton balls rub vaseline to unpack them in there then put a couple cedar knots in there and that's my like fire kit. And you got a little Vaseline backup. And depending on where I'm at, I'll pull that thing in and out,

depending. Just general conditions. If I'm hunting down in New Mexico, I'm probably not carrying a... Right. Right. Because a lighter is all you need. Yeah.

Because you're going to be able to pull it together. If you're in an area that's just impossible, Southeast Alaska, I got a fire kit. So it's just like, yeah, you got a lot of this stuff you just got to make calls on all the time yeah i have like a little there's like a little super mini compass in there um i don't carry a big compass just you know in

my pocket so it's in there um there's like a little lot a fishing line, a hook. But again, it's super, super small. But the other things in the Backcountry Organizer, like my spare lighters will be in there, the stuff called Tenacious Tape, which is basically... I carry a little piece of that. It's like reinforced nylon tape that... It's like a patch for if you rip your like your outer shell or you know yeah i carry the form where it's like basically it's like having a square of paper in your bag it's just one patch

it's like a two inch circle that is tucked somewhere in my little kit and you can fix stuff with it yeah and it's good to have and again that's the kind of thing where depending what's going on you pull it in and out. I do carry a little teeny baggie. You got it here, extra batteries. It's good to line your stuff up, line your gear up that it all is using the same stuff as much as you can. Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't have that. I got AAAs in my headlamp.

I got AAs in my GPS. And then the SteriPEN runs on the uh i think it's a cr1 yeah so i use a cr123 flashlight and then i got my headlamp runs on a cr123 as well so i'm sorry my headlamp and my stereo pen run the same battery and i used to i always try to bounce around and get it right you always wind up with some outlier item that they don't make that way. I generally like to try to duplicate up so I got a couple extra batteries with me

that work for various different things. Then you got orange flagging tape. Again, very small. You take like 10 feet of that and roll it up in a little ball. It's like the tip of your pinky finger. Great to have, especially hunting by yourself. You take a shot.

Hang that tape where you were standing. March over to where you know the animal is standing. Hang a piece of tape. When you find first blood, mark that with the tape. Yeah. And again, it'll be redundant because now I pretty much do all of that with my GPS. But man, is it easier to look over your shoulder and be like, Oh, there's,

especially when you're like on a shitty blood shell and you're trying to figure out like a general direction of travel possibly. And you can look back and say, Oh, I can see kind of like a corridor that the elk could have run through, you know, from where I am now. So,

you know, stuff like that. Yeah. And if you're like, like if you're taking, if you take a 300 yard poke at something and rough ground, you like go running over there, which shouldn't do don't run over there. Take your time, figure out what's going on.

But you go over there, can't figure out what was happening, where it was. And then you realize that you lost track of where you were standing or laying down. That's when trouble starts. Because when you mark your location with something, the tape, whatever you leave there, I like tape a lot, but anything, a piece of clothing, mark that spot. Because then when you go over there and you're like,

oh, I think it was right here, but I can't find any hair, no blood, no nothing. And then you're like, where was I again? If you mark it, you'll go back there and you'll look and you'll remember it was right there. You need to like, you have to plan a worst-case scenario when it comes to reconstructing something. If you got two guys, it's great because one guy stays put, and one guy goes over there, and the guy that stays put can direct you right to where that thing was.

If you're by yourself, you got to have a plan. We already talked about a backup headlamp. And you carry a little mini thing of super glue. Yeah. I just feel like that shit be leaking everywhere. Making my stuff all gluey. No, it's like a, you know, it's always a brand new one. This unopened. Um, and it's like a little mini deal. It's, it says one time use, but I mean, like there's enough in there where you could use it a few times but um cuts man or even like you know when you're working with blood a lot your hands dry out yeah i'll get these just wicked cuts it will not heal and i'll just clean it out and super glue like oh my god the cut i hear around i've never tried it but i know oh man it works oh yeah it works great all right

so run down run down like your food for backcountry hunting. Yeah, super basic. Breakfast is going to be this new instant oatmeal we found called Umpqua Oats, and it's like 100 times better than the Quaker stuff. Oh, yeah. It's not like all nasty, sugary crap. Yeah. The Quaker is like eating like a freaking candy bar or maybe even worse for breakfast. And I always feel like with Quaker, it's like 30 minutes later, I'm like, oh, I'm hungry.

I should eat a bar. These Umpqua oats are legit. You can get ones that have like a mix with like quinoa and other grains and stuff in them. But you eat it. I was skeptical at first, but it's very good man um but sometimes i'll have a bar in there too or i'll have a bar soon on you know in the morning and then the starbucks via coffee um lunch and snacks pro bars and snickers on you first uh for the starbucks via coffee i always like to carry a little non-dairy cream or two. It's the kind of guy I am, man.

Yeah, like your coffee white. Lunch, so I'm not doing any kind of sandwiches. I'm going to have like a sandwich for day one. It's going to be like heavy and packed in, but no real sandwiches. Lunch is going to be very snacky. So I'll have like a little bit of salami, some cheese, maybe like a banana and a baguette for the first day because it's something that's going to be eaten the first day

and it'll be gone. After that, it's going to be bars, jerky, custom trail mix. That's pretty much it. Just going to have to survive on that. Chicken bouillon keeps just for at night with hot water to drink.

Yeah, or, yeah, if it's cold and shitty, middle of the day, yeah, you heat up some water, put a little chicken bouillon cube in there, and it's, yeah, it's very nice. And then for dinner, you're going with house. Going with house. Then you just chase that with a candy bar. And then I've been having a lot of cramps recently, and so I've been, I got this stuff called Noon Electrolytes. It's coming like a handy little vial.

I think there's 10 or 12 of the deals in there. So I'm going to try to drink one of these electrolyte tablets every day. You dissolve it in water. It gives your water a little flavor too, which is nice. But I try to keep my cramps down and my calves. And then a stick of salted butter. I'm packing that. Extra calories, man. There's like a few things that have more calories yeah i like to put butter in

my house yeah and then uh also this time of year you find a lot of bleats and it's nice to have a little butter because you find you find like legit queen bleats out there you know right one of the better mushrooms out um then you got your first day food which is just your heavy junk just start out right yeah so i'll be you know yeah it's like a it's like a heavier load and i think you're roughly looking at two two pounds of food a day to get the calories that you need um so yeah i'll be looking at uh you know 15 pounds of food roughly but yeah that it's nice to have like just normal food one more day until you just go into full-on like barn mountain house mode you know you know and we don't have to get into the depth here but i figured just because

we were talking about all this stuff we're gonna be carrying i'm gonna be carrying in the woods i know people are wondering right what i'm carrying for my bow and archery, you know, other archery equipment. And so it's a prime centergy bow, Easton full metal jackets, very heavy. The total arrow weight for me is like 535 grains, which is, you know, well over 100 grains heavier than a lot of people shoot. 125 grains slick trick broadheads. I haven't even heard of that. What is that? people shoot. 125 grain slick trick broadheads. I've never heard of that. What is that?

What's that? The slick trick? Yeah. It's similar to the muzzy. Gosh, which muzzy is that? But it's basically like a, imagine a field point with a sharp, actually a sharp chiseled point on it, and then's got uh slots cut through it yeah and so you put a blade through it this way you know and then another blade crosses it like there's a slot in

the middle assemble it yourself yeah yeah so which is nice it's got replaceable blades so if i had so i can carry like two sets of replaceable blades which i will and so in case will. So it's a four-bladed fixed. Four-bladed fixed. Yeah, super, super sharp. And that's the nice thing I like about it. If I happen to miss an elk and shot one into the dirt, I could just take out those two blades,

replace it with two freshies, and I've got it super sharp. Yeah, ready to go. Then you got your release. I think it's called the Itty Bitty Goose Scott release. It's old. It's 10 plus years old. Yeah, I used to have those and now I got one of those spot hogs,

but I used to have that. I used to use that Scott release all the time. All right, that's Yanni's backpack, man. Isn't that exciting? It is, man. Yanni's going on a hunting trip. Hunting trip without Steve. I didn't even invite Steve.

That's because I know his schedule. I look at Steve's calendar every day, so I know I couldn't invite him anyway. To bring it full circle, I feel as jealous as when my kid went fishing with another man. All right, man. Thanks for tuning in. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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