Always Pack Your Pack

I just watched a hunting show on TV where the guide did one of my biggest pet peeves – he dropped his pack before making the final stalk. I know there are many hunters who do this, but I think it is one of the worst choices you can make. I can guarantee EXACTLY what will happen if you drop your pack… that’s right, go back and pick it up! At the very least, it costs you time and effort to return to your pack. At the most it could cost you an animal or your life. Let me give you a couple exampes...

Scenario 1: You’re sneaking up on a big 6x6 bull. His huge back end rocks back and forth as he feeds across the hillside. With just 50 yards to go before the edge of the trees where you can get a clear shot with your bow, you decide to drop your pack. You are one sneaky predator! You make the 50 yards undetected, but by the time you do, the bull feeds just over the hill and his antlers slowly bob out of sight. What do you do now? Should you press on across the open hillside without your pack? Or should you retrieve your pack?

If you move on, you’ll have that much farther to go without your pack, leading into the unknown without your water, your survival gear, your extra clothes, your knives, your GPS, on any of the other tools you carry in your pack. What if you get there and he’s moved over the next hill, and then the next, and then the next? When do you stop to go back?

If you retrieve your pack now, will you miss a shot opportunity as he continues to feed away from you? Will you completely lose track of him? Will you ever find him again?

Scenario 2: After making a pre-dawn climb to your glassing point with your optics, you spot a huge mule deer buck running along the base of a not-too-distant cliff. Did you inadvertently spook him on your way in? He slows to a walk as you focus your spotting scope on him. He’s a great buck, definitely one worthy of the tag in your pocket for this well-known trophy unit. You grab your binoculars, rifle, and rangefinder, and run to intercept him with nothing for warmth but a chamois shirt.

Once you make it around the buck, he somehow gives you the slip, but you know he is right below you so you decide to wait him out. The sun isn’t even up yet, but you’re determined. You sit under a juniper all day, just waiting for the buck to stand. The day only warms a few degrees and there’s a persistent wind blowing. With no coat, you spend the longest, coldest day of your life on the side of the hill. Luckily, when the buck finally shows himself you make the shot, but then your brother, who stayed up on the glassing point with your coat snugly wrapped around his legs all day, piggybacks your pack down to you.

(By the way, this is a true story from my brother’s hunt on the AZ Strip... I was the brother who stayed snug on the glassing hill, not the brother who froze all day! It is one of the personal situations that indirectly taught me the value of always taking your pack with you.)


This scenario turned out okay when my brother shot a monster mule deer, and then my photo of him graced the cover of Trophy Hunter, but my brother still talks about how cold he was that day!

Scenario 3: With a trophy ram bedded just one more ridge away, you stash your pack under the last small pine tree and crawl to the edge. Since the mountain is relatively steep with little curve, the sheep can nearly see you when you crawl so it takes almost an hour to cover 100 yards. Over the hour, the snow really picks up and you can barely see the bedded ram. You wait for the weather to clear, and luckily it doesn’t take long. The ram is in a perfect position for a shot and you make it count—he dies in his bed. You head back to your pack, but slip and roll down the mountain, sustaining a broken femur and a concussion. As you lay at the bottom of the hill with your sheep at the top along with your pack that holds extra clothes, firestarter, survival gear, a satellite phone, and a PLB, you wonder to yourself why did I ever drop my pack? The snow falls gently around turning the world white as you slip off into black…

Obviously, each one of these scenarios could have turned out differently. They each could have had a happy ending without any problems or discomfort at all. However, in hunting as in life, you never know what’s going to happen so why hamstring yourself by requiring that you or someone else return to pick up your pack? You have already determined your pack (and its contents) is important enough to carry otherwise you would have left it at camp. If it is important enough to carry 99% of the time, why not carry it ALL the time? I’ve heard the arguments before: I can’t shoot as well with my pack on (I guess you need more practice), My pack’s too heavy (Get a lightweight pack and take some stuff out of it), I can slip through the brush better with my pack off (Get a smaller pack constructed with quiet material).

I just can’t think of a situation where it is better to leave your pack behind. I feel you should always be thinking forward, not thinking backwards, but by dropping your pack, you are forced to think backwards. On your next hunt, when you are making critical decisions that may lead to success or heartbreak, always pack your pack!


Okay, so I let my friend Matt break my rule when he was hunting mule deer with me, but coming from Ohio, he had never worn a pack in the woods and he had not practiced shooting his bow with a pack on. When he went on a stalk, we agreed that he would feel better without the pack, but guess what? Yep, I had to piggyback it down to him afterwards! I carried the Badlands 2200 on top of the Outdoorsmans Pack.

Close, But No Mule Deer

Overlooking Classic Northern Arizona Mule Deer Habitat

During early January in Northern Arizona, you can rest assured to find the mule deer rut in full swing. Swelled necks, flehming, posturing, and of course the disregard for their own safety marks just some of things you can count on seeing from the bucks. While chasing javelina, my friend Matt (you know Matt from Ohio) [Ohio Homes and Acres Real Estate] and I had already spotted a couple bucks, including a tall, thin 4x4 that I estimated to score about 160”, but neither buck was ever in a position to stalk. After whacking our first javelinas with bows, we headed to a new spot to look for deer.

Perched high over a large basin with our binoculars mounted firmly on Outdoorsmans tripods, we started picking apart the pinon-juniper. Low and behold, I spotted a big fork-horn buck nearly a mile away. As we watched him, we noticed he had a limp; his left front elbow would not bend and he put no weigh on that leg. Since Matt had torn open his hand on a fencepost, and then gotten sick on the painkillers, we thought this would be the perfect buck. A handicapped buck for a handicapped hunter! Matt quickly made his way off our hill and down across the flat as I watched the buck. The buck had moved a few hundred yards so I repositioned Matt and he snuck in to within 75 yards before the wind swirled and the buck took off as if he had four good legs.


Piggybacking Matt’s Badlands Pack on My Outdoorsmans Pack

We tried another spot that evening in the hopes of also seeing some of the elk that Arizona is famous for, but all we glassed up was another fork-horned buck heading the wrong direction, a herd of does, and a bald eagle. The hill we were on was covered in deer tracks, so we probably should have been glassing it!


Matt’s Arizona Sunset

On the last day of Matt’s Arizona adventure, we decided to cover as much ground as possible by driving and stopping periodically to glass. The first couple spots yielded nothing. I finally spotted a lone doe, but lost her around the curve of a mountain. At the next stop, Matt stared intently through my old Leica binoculars. He had readily accepted the value of glassing and after a week of practice had no trouble finding animals. He excitedly whispered to me that he found a deer so I rushed over to him and watched as two bucks slowly moved out of our view. We made a plan to get to a spot where we could see them again and set off with full packs. Once we made it to the next ridge, we spotted six deer in the bottom of a ravine leading down from the next ridge. After pulling out the spotting scope, we counted a doe, a spike, a 3x3, a small 4x4, and a wide, short 4x4 that I guessed would score 160”. He looked a lot different than the first buck he saw, but was plenty big enough for either of us!


A Better Way to Cross Fences

The deer moved north across an open slope before they ducked into the trees and shadows on the other side. We watched for a while but only saw two more does head into the drainage. Keeping the wind in our favor, we walked down, and then circled up and around them. I expected them to bed in the snowy, shadowed north-facing hillside so we slowly crept over the edge, glassing as we went. With no sign of them, we continued to the north and I finally caught a glimpse of the doe bedded on the south-facing slope in the shadow of a large bush at 139 yards. Closer examination showed the large buck right next to her and the spike and another doe just uphill. I stayed put as Matt snuck around downwind. When he got to about 90 yards from the big buck, an unseen doe stood up and busted him. The last we saw of them they were headed north, two ridgelines away…

The success of a hunt can’t be measured solely in inches or meat. Matt never flung an arrow at a deer, but he got much closer than he ever thought possible. It was his first trip to Arizona and he bought the tag over the counter. I don’t think he believed me when I told him we would just glass until we found deer, watch them bed, and then sneak up on them, but now he’s a believer. It was a great week and I’m sure Matt is trying to figure out how to come back later this year to use his unfilled archery deer tag!

Have You Seen a Javelina?

During the first week of January, my friend Matt (you know Matt from Ohio) [Ohio Homes and Acres Real Estate] flew out to Arizona for some warm weather and archery hunting for javelina and mule deer. The weather didn’t cooperate—it was 20 degrees colder in Phoenix than in Columbus, and single digits at my house up in Chino Valley. The first night we found both javelina and deer, including a 160” 4x4. All were too far to give chase, but it definitely proved to be a good omen. We owe debt of gratitude to another friend, Rich, for sharing his spot with us!


Glassing for javelina and mule deer.


High Quality Optics and the Outdoorsmans Tripod

The next morning we saw no deer, but as soon as the sun hit the hillside, the javelina appeared no more than 10 yards from where we saw them the night before. From 3/4 of a mile away, the Swarovski 15’s clearly showed the little buggers. We made our way down to them and with just a few hundred yards to go, we stopped to cross a fence. I made it over with no problem, but the barbed wire broke as Matt perched precariously with one leg over the top and his left hand on the T-post. I was able to untangle his leg from the barbs (he had borrowed my warm pants and was trying to save them) but I could do nothing for his hand. I didn’t realize that the rusty, jagged top of the post gouged a two-inch gash into his palm. I took one quick look as he peeled away his torn glove and we were off to the emergency room for a bunch of skin trimming and eight stitches. Mental note: it is best to go through or under fences, not over them! That afternoon Nichole used her Athletic Training and Physical Therapy skills to fashion a splint for Matt so he could still draw his bow, so we headed back out for the evening but saw nothing.


The Offending Post


The Gash (before)


The Gash (needles and scissors and stitches, oh my!)


The Gash (after)

I awoke early on the second day to find Matt’s face nearly as green as the Realtree Max-1 camo he was wearing. He had been prescribed a painkiller and took one before going to sleep, but reacted poorly to it and was up half the night puking. We stayed home that morning, but Matt cowboyed up and we headed back out in the afternoon. We found the pigs again and gave chase, but the best we could muster was a shot at 62 yards as they paused on a snowy hillside—I missed!

On the third day we found the javelina again and after pinpointing their location headed after them. We circled around, crossed a fence (Matt went under it), and snuck in close. We expected them to feed towards us, but they stopped just over a rise. We stalked even closer until the wind swirled and a pig started to “huff, huff, huff.” I told Matt to move around the oak in front of us. I whispered, “Fast but quiet! Fast but quiet! Fast but quiet!” I think he thought I was crazy, but he made it around the oak and drew on the closest javelina as I ranged him at 17 yards. The arrow struck home so I ran up a few yards to try to pick up a straggler. The only straggler was the pig Matt just shot, so he shot again but missed. We then ran over to the edge of the draw and Matt finished his first javelina off with a Texas heart shot. “From the tooter to the rooter,” as Matt put it!


Matt’s first Western big game animal.


I was able to help Matt on his first successful Western spot and stalk hunt.


Packing Out


Matt borrowed my Badlands 2200 Pack, which made easy work of his javelina.

We had a great lunch at a small café, and then headed back to our glassing spot for a siesta before the evening glass. Late in the day we finally found the pigs—where there once were 12, now there were 11. They were near a herd of does, but too far away to make a play on them so we left them for the next day.

We made it back to our glassing spot before light the following morning to make sure no other hunters beat us to it. After a quick nap, we awoke to another bright morning. It didn’t take long to locate the javelina on the same hill. It’s a good thing they are so predictable! This time I directed Matt to a hill overlooking the pigs so he could glass and direct me to them. He had never used radios, and nearly had a coronary as I snuck in to within 50 yards of the entire herd. The closest pig that offered the first open shot was at 28 yards. I slowly drew, pressed my release, and missed wide to the left. I quickly nocked another arrow, ranged another pig, drew, released, and missed again to the left! With the pigs scattered to the winds, I sat tight as Matt picked them up again. He directed me to them, but his radio died before I made it. The only thing he could do was frantically press the call button, which registered as just a bunch of clicks to me, but made me stop and glass back at him. With archaic sign language he told me the pigs were right there. I moved a few yards downhill and shot the first pig that gave me a chance. It turns out the shot at less than 20 yards was on the pig furthest from me. There were a few less than five yards away that I couldn’t see! I hit her a little left, but she went less than five yards before breaking my arrow and expiring. I finally made my Hoyt Trykon do it's job! Where there once were 12, now there were 10.

This javelina marked my first with a bow. I have now shot them with a rifle, a pistol, and a bow. Maybe next year I'll try with my T/C Omega muzzleloader or my T/C Contender pistol in .30-30. With two pigs in the dirt, it was time for Matt and I to focus on mule deer.


My first archery javelina - with Matt's help!
(Yes, there's a pig in that picture and yes, it's bigger than a dirt clod but not by much!)