There’s still a little bit of elk season left, as long as you have the right license. And even if you don’t, you only have to wait another 300 days or so for the next elk season to come back around. OK, so that didn’t sound as encouraging when I said it out loud as it did when I only thought it in my head. Sorry.
But the point is, if you’re an elk hunter, and if you don’t hunt with a bunch of your buddies or have a herd of horses to help you get your elk out of the hills, packing out the meat is a major chore.
That’s especially true if you hunt by yourself. If you get one on the ground, you’re going to need to take several trips to get all that meat back to the truck.
But you can cut those trips in half with an ingenious gadget made by an elk hunter from Idaho. Chris Peterson is a guy who lives in Middleton, Idaho, and he’s been dragging elk out of the mountains for decades. Back in 2003, he watched a neighbor kid wobbling down the street on his bicycle, carrying his entire paper route’s worth of newspapers in a saddle-bag-style bag. He got to thinking something like that might work to pack an elk out.
So his wife got to work sewing a bigger version of the newspaper carrier bag, with a big pocket in front and another on the back, but with extra straps to help pull the load in tight to the person wearing it. Now he can carry half an elk out of the woods by himself, and the pack is small enough when it’s not being used to stuff into a cargo pocket on a pair of BDU pants.
Now the family manufactures and sells them. They call them Pack Out Bags, and they’re available in camo or blaze orange. They cost $90 plus shipping.
I hope my wife’s reading this post, because I’d love to have a Pack Out Bag show up under the tree this Christmas.
