Shelter for the Backcountry Hunter, Intro

The shelter category includes sleeping shelters, sleeping bags, pads, ground cloths or tarps, clothing, hats, and underwear- if it adds an element of protection from the outside world, it falls into this category. Circumstances dictate some gear be exchanged for others, as an early season high country deer hunt and a late season elk hunt generally pose dramatically different weather conditions. That said though, the basic set up is the same, and only a few pieces need to be exchanged.

I will be starting with the clothing aspect, and the proper selection of layers that will work under all conditions. Before I dive into the layering pieces though, I want to address materials so the layering plan I set forth is understandable.

The fibers used in clothing are cotton, various synthetics, and wool – each serves a purpose, and some do specific tasks better than others. Cotton is a natural fiber that excels in handling moisture in its vapor form, allowing it to easily pass through.. Cotton postpones perspiration well, but once the sweat starts, it doesn’t effectively expunge the moisture. Synthetics on the other hand don’t handle vapor well, the petroleum-based fibers have very limited ability to absorb the water vapor the body releases constantly, so the body tends to run a little warmer and perspire sooner. Once the sweat begins though, the synthetics acts as a conduit, helping to rapidly move moisture out and regulate temperature. What this means, is that cotton works well in less athletic environs, and synthetics don’t begin to function until they are confronted with intense, sweaty effort. Unfortunately, these two materials both harbor the bacteria that thrive in our salt and fat rich perspiration, the same bacteria that results in body odor.

Wool is different. Wool works as well as cotton at handling water vapor, helping to stave off perspiration longer than synthetics can. When sweat does start though, wool absorbs it, wicking it away from the body, much like synthetics. It functions as a conduit, moving moisture from the next to skin layers, and pushing it to the outer layers where it can then evaporate. Essentially, wool is the mid ground between cotton and synthetics allowing the same piece to function well in both hot and cold weather, not one or the other.

What scares most is that the wool many of us grew up with was itchy and uncomfortable. The wool from those days was a thick fiber, no different than our own hair or skin, with small characteristic scales found on keratin. Merino wool addresses this in two ways. First, Merino wool is a very fine fiber, making it more comfortable right out of the box. Second, companies like Ice Breaker, perform a super wash on the wool, stripping the small scales off the fiber making it surprisingly smooth while retaining its desirable characteristics. As a bonus, wools, merino in particular, shed the bacteria that result in body odor.

But it gets better, refined Merino wools is structurally stabile, making it machine washable. These pieces are exceptionally easy to care for as well; they need little detergent in the washer and then need only to be hung to dry – which happens surprisingly fast. I have a friend that put 30 days in the Grand Canyon in an Ice Breaker top, then he simply rinsed out the salt stains in the sink before wearing it to school. I also recently heard about a through hiker that had gone weeks without a shower, but wore Ice Breakers garments and offered almost no “fresh out of the woods” scent. This means that a Merino wool user needs to take relatively few pieces into the field (and still not stink) a significant weight savings, plus it keeps everyone on good terms in camp as the days add up.

The next post will deal with the actual clothing elements and how to layer them for maximum effect. But I felt it important to understand the back-story that justifies some of the pieces I recommend, and where they fit into the layering scheme. Tomorrow, the blog will address the layers, and links to some of the manufacturers that produce them. As always, if you have questions, please contact me here, or at Babbitt’s Backcountry – I’m glad to answer questions and help point you in the direction of specific pieces.

Water Treatment for Backcountry Hunting

The life support category isn’t complete without addressing the water situation. For some, drinking water is an all day everyday thing, then there are guys like me. I rarely drink anything unless I make a conscientious effort to do so. For me, having things that are appetizing to drink helps me to stay hydrated. But where does the water come from? There are several schools of thought, some ultra-lighters, even some Special Forces guys use bleach or other chemical treatments, others iodine, and still more use filters. If you elect to go with drops, alum – it’s in the bakery isle – helps to settle sediment if you take along a folding bucket (sea to summit makes several good, light options). This trick is also important for those using Steripens, as the sediment can hinder the effectiveness of the UV light to neutralize the unwanted goodies found in the water. Just pay close attention to the method you will be using, read up on how to use it and maintain it.

With that said, there are several options beyond drops and iodine tablets that make water safe to drink. Katadyn and MSR make great filters for backcountry use, but my favorite at this time is MSR’s hyperflow, weighing at just over 7 ounces, it is the lightest unit to ever hit the market, and it flows more water than any other backcountry pump I have been able to find. The reason I prefer filters to drops, tablets, or UV units is time – I know when the water comes out of the unit it is ok to drink, Steripens are the next step, and work very quickly but only neutralize a limited amount of water per treatment, which is actually really quick. I am not going to list a time frame for the use of bleach, because everything I have read about it shows different times and I do get nervous about water treatment. I know a good number of people using it to treat really bad third world water, but personally have no interest. The last two options are Aquamira and iodine, Aqua Mira seems to work faster and have less residual taste. This option works well and is simple to use, it is popular enough now that some stores still regularly sell out of it, so planning ahead is a good idea. Iodine can be found almost any-where, and has a good track record of slowly making water safe to drink and adding a nice greenish yellow color to boot. This option makes a lot of first timers squeamish, as one cannot tell if the water retrieved were green or not, and it has a little after taste that some cannot stand. The only real draw back I find with iodine is that it takes a long time to make water drinkable, a slow torture when all you need is one little sip to un-bond your tongue from the roof of your mouth. Three seasons ago I dropped a part from my old reliable ceramic filter, if I hadn’t brought the lightweight back up offered by Aqua Mira or Iodine, the trip may have been a real wreck.

It doesn’t matter how the water gets treated, so long as it does. The effects that result from Giardiasis or Cryptosporidium can stick with the poor bastard that drank unfiltered water for a long time, and there is nothing desirable about them.

Once the water is drinkable, I tend to add some things to it to keep me entertained. The wilderness athlete supplements mentioned under the Nutrition for Backcountry Hunting category from yesterday see the majority of work in the daytime, with green tea in the mornings and evenings. The warm beverages help to start the days off right and are a nice wind down at the end of the day. I try to avoid coffee, being a diuretic and appetite suppressant doesn’t go well with the caloric requirements addressed previously. If you have to drink it, try Starbucks Via if you take it black or VinaCafe if you add cream or sugar, both are convenient and good.

Life Support, Nutrition for Backcountry Hunting

Life Support

When life support comes up ambulances and hospitals always come to mind, but I like to look at these things as preventative measures rather than consequences. This category of gear is the stuff that not only keeps us alive in the backcountry, but the stuff that allows us to thrive. Within there are three categories, food, water and shelter. Of course, for legal reasons, these are guidelines, it’s your job to further investigate, and if you choose to hunt like a wild man you do so at your own risk – be it of adventure or peril.

Nutrition for Backcountry Hunting

Food, one would think, is pretty self explanatory, but there are a lot of pieces to the equation. If they are put together right, a hunter can go hard for an extended period with minimum weight loss and maximum efficiency, and it doesn’t have to taste bad either. Within this category I break my food into the following sub-categories: meals, trail snacks, and supplements.

Meals, for me, are generally breakfast and dinner, then I graze throughout the day on my trail snacks to keep hunger at bay and keep the influx of calories up for energy. Early on, heavy foods should be eaten first, both for weight savings and they help the transition into prepared foods from a regular urbanized diet. I am a big fan of meats like salami that don’t always require refrigeration- read the packets closely, and make sure they don’t need to be kept cold. These go oddly well with a blue berry bagel, as they both are packed with the crucial resource the body needs- calories. I am not a big breakfast eater, and prefer something light to start out on, so I will generally start with a granola bar for some quick calories then get going to where I want to hunt. When I set up and my heart rate starts to fall, I will bask in the goodness of the salamied bagel while I glass.

Another good alternate for a breakfast is grits or oatmeal, the grits don’t work as fast on the digestive track as oatmeal, and are a little easier to swallow when I’m a little dehydrated. Throw in some single serve fast food syrup for some flavor and a calorie boost.

For dinner, I pretty much always eat Mountain House, the food is consistently good- I had a friend try their stuff before coming on a hunt and he liked their beef stroganoff so much he ate everything he purchased for a backpack trip at home, forcing a second trip to the shop before coming out. I always recommend trying them out to get a feel for the preparation and taste so there are no surprises in the field.

Throughout the day, I am grazing on high calorie foods, I normally find myself with a package of peanut M&Ms or trail mix, two cliff bars or Wilderness Athlete bars and a couple Wilderness Athlete gels to keep the energy level up and support good body function. I look at them each for different purposes. The candy or trail mix I eat one or two pieces at a time, like a slow calorie drip. The bars are something to chew on in the slower points of the day, and the gels provide a quick energy source when major fatigue is looming ahead.

Supplements are relatively new to this kind of travel, but in my own experience they make all the difference. I have been exclusively using wilderness athlete supplements for almost three years now and they always have a place in my pack. I like to mix their Hydrate and Recover with Energy and Focus to make what they call a superman. The energy and focus is a good addition for a morning jumpstart, and helps keep the head on straight when the days start to grind on. Hydrate and Recover plays a more important role in day-to-day body function- when the body becomes dehydrated its ability to recuperate slows dramatically. When I feel my calves or quads trying to spasm or tighten up, I drink the hydrate and recover and feel the problem abate quickly. I have had my legs try to spasm on a stalk, and trying not to move when you desperately need to walk off a charlie horse just plane sucks. They also offer altitude advantage, which helps the body deal with acclimatization to elevation.

The body performs very differently in the backcountry only limited respite is available from the elements. High protein foods take more to process and slightly increase body temperature – a good thing to consume before bed or when the cold sets in. The activity undertaken in the backcountry means the body burns more calories, requiring increased consumption. In addition, the body needs to repair itself, and quality food hastens the process. A good rule of thumb for a backcountry hunter is to aim for 4500-5000 calories per day to maintain body condition. It may appear easy, but the amount of food required can be daunting, and when it’s all done I find myself in line at Jack in the Box with an overwhelming need for any combination of bacon and cheese I can get my hands on.

Backcountry Hunting Gear Intro

Regardless of where or how one hunts, there is a certain amount of utility that can be enjoyed when hunting undisturbed animals, away from competition. My own preference is the places that simply take too long for most to hunt effectively. These places, many far from the boundaries of wilderness areas, are often visible from roads. The main requirement is travel time, if it can’t be reached in a reasonable amount of time it will simply be passed over for more accessible haunts. Think about it this way, if the sun is coming up at 6:00 am, and setting at 7:00 P.M., there are 13 good hours of daylight to work with. The normal hunter goes between 1 and 2 miles per hour when hiking off trail, a real animal can stretch it towards 3, occasionally even 4.

If a place is three or four miles distant, the normal competitor will take between an hour and a half and four hours to get there. And the same to get back. A slow goer will be putting in 13 hours of hunting and at least six of hiking. That leaves five hours to eat dinner, sleep, wake up and get dressed – plus the commute. I know a few gents that are up to this kind of grind, and can do it at an unrelenting pace- but it is something that is relegated to the double tough amongst us. While these guys are tough as nails, they can still be outperformed. For those willing to show up a little early and take a few extra pounds of gear, all the commuting is cut out of the equation. Instead of a grueling hike every morning and night is a cozy sleeping bag and a warm meal, with plenty of time left over to scrutinize the maps for a potential gold mine after the sun sets.

Packed right, a hunter can be comfortable, and have short hikes to glassing points, allowing all day hunting, more rest, and generally more success. A small camp will provide the requisite shelter, and a base to hunt out of for day hunts. This means that just about any hunter can take their time getting into the right country and hunt fresh every single day. So what does it take?

I break my gear into three main categories, life support, navigation, and hunting. Life support items include: clothing, sleep system, tent, food, water, and first aid. Navigation is crucial as it shows how to access the country, how to move within it, where to find water, and for a keen student of maps - where the animals should be. This includes a 7.5 minute topo maps, BLM or Forest Service maps, a compass, and a GPS. Hunting gear being the weapon of choice and extra ammunition or arrows, tripod, binoculars with a tripod adapter, and a spotting scope.

The next string of articles will deal with the categories, and the gear that comprises them, with the potential for some tangents into specific materials and situation specific recommendations. I will also include links to manufacturers that I feel make the right stuff for your further investigation. For many of these items, I can be contacted to round them up, as not only do I eat sleep and breath backcountry hunting, I am in the backcountry gear business.

Back at Babbitt's Backcountry Outfitters

After finishing my undergraduate career I spent the summer in Alaska, sans T.V. and with only sporadic Internet access. Now I am back in Flagstaff, AZ and have returned to Babbitt’s Backcountry Outfitters, one of Arizona’s oldest and best gear shops.

The new position will allow me to share more of the newest backcountry gear with you than I have ever been able to. While I have always tried to turn over new stones, this will allow me to see the gear as, and sometimes even before, it breaks to the public.

I hope that the combination of the backcountry gear side of my regular work, and my experience as a guide, backcountry hunter, and generally inquisitive person will help provide you with more tools to succeed in the woods into the future.

If there is something you are looking for in this genre, please don’t hesitate to call me at Babbitt’s at (928)-774-4775, and I will be glad to help point you in the right direction. If you are lucky enough to be hunting or hiking northern Arizona, stop in and bring your gear in if you are looking to cut weight, move faster, further, or just move better.

I look forward to meeting with you this fall, in the shop, or in the woods!

Writing for WesternWhitetail.com

I am changing the direction of this blog, or rather diversifying my venues. I have joined the guys at Western Whitetail to write a column on glassing and optics. Glassing has played an important part in virtually all of my hunting successes, and while it plays a well-known role in Coues deer hunting, the addition of these tactics to any western hunt produces results.

While I have been a big fan of Coues whitetail hunting for quite a while, the same methods that work well for us in the southwest work well for everyone that is serious about deer hunting. Since this outfit is focused specifically upon whitetail hunting, the articles and posts written there will cater more toward that specific genre. On their sight there are specific categories for Columbian whitetail, Coues whitetail, Carmen Mountain whitetail, and Texas whitetail– they have taken our most readily available game animal and placed the first real emphasis on hunting them in the West.

In the performance hunter blog, my emphasis will remain on general hunting technique improvement, gear selection, or anything that I find to help produce results for hunters in the field.

Westernwhitetail.com should prove to be a resource, particularly for those who haven’t yet learned the ropes in dealing with public land hunting, rules and regulations for access to US Forest Service, or Bureau of Land Management versus private ground like our Texas hunting brethren are accustomed to. The situations in each state are different and this resource for hunting the West - specifically for whitetail deer should prove to be an asset.

While some of my content may go to each location, I will do a better job of keeping this blog up to date with new equipment and effective use in the field, and I will keep you updated with the specific application of gear toward hunting the West for whitetails at http://www.westernwhitetail.com.

The methods you use to effectively glass an area need to be tied to two things, repeatability and the movement of the game. While you probably had a good idea about how animals move, using these techniques there will be some holes in the middle of the day that you will better understand now, and use more effectively during hunts or scouting trips. Now lets look at the mechanics for good glassing. The first thing to get across is that a consistent method should be used, many people call it a grid, the key is to pick country apart in an organized, repeatable manner. There are two primary platforms, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal glassing is akin to reading a mountain like a book, the majority of the movements made with your glasses are left to right or vice versa, with elevation adjustments being made a the extreme right or left edges of the area being glassed. Vertical glassing means the majority of movements being made are on an up and down plane, with left/right adjustments being made at the extreme top or bottom of those adjustments.

Different types of country dictate which method will be the most applicable. All pieces of ground are either horizontally or vertically oriented, for example, a ridge, the feature is wider than it is tall making it horizontal in nature, where a finger in a canyon is more vertically oriented, it is taller than it is wide. In country of a horizontal nature, vertical glassing movements will be the most productive; the shorter the planes of your movement the more apt you are to achieve full coverage and locate more animals. Just remember, all topographic features can be discerned as horizontal or vertical, and precise glassing dictates that your primary optical movements are perpendicular to the nature of whatever feature you are glassing.

Once a direction is established, the next step is to select a starting point, personally I prefer to begin at one of the extremes, top right or left, bottom right or left etc. There really isn’t a right or wrong place to start, but one point almost always jumps out at a you when you are setting up and no two people start at the same place. Once you start glassing, examine a field of view thoroughly, looking at every tree and branch on it, in the shadows, through the brush and of course in the open areas as well. Once you have picked apart that field of view, make your first movement, only ½ to 2/3 a field of view. This overlap ensures that country won’t be missed and is a mechanism to provide for repeatability and consistency. Continue this movement - either horizontal or vertical – until a discernable end feature is reached, be it a horizon, end of a ridge or edge of the basin you’re glassing. At this point make the logical adjusting movement and continue glassing. While one pass will likely yield results, continued, repeated examination is crucial because sometimes animals are feeding or bedded fully obscured from sight. With each pass you increase your odds of seeing everything that is in the piece of country you are examining. So where should you glass from, and what country should you glass?

The first time you glass country the goal should be to see as much country as possible from a single position. This allows you to scout as much ground as possible at one time, maximizing your ability to produce results. As specific areas produce more or better game, you know to hone in on them with future trips, finding glassing points that offer a vantage into a specific area of interest. With each return trip, you get closer and closer to the animals or specific animal you want to hunt and garner a greater understanding of them. With that knowledge you become more prepared for the hunt itself, knowing game movements specific to your area, so when the hunt comes your ambush point or a good glassing point that will provide for a short stalk to a shooting position will be located, making the hunt itself potentially more successful.

In almost every scenario, elevation is key. Some require only enough elevation to get above obscuring brush, others still require more elevation to maximize results. The best glassing points provide a view into the country you want to find game in. When you have a good glassing point, the trees don’t seem stacked upon one another, they appear somewhat spaced apart, meaning you are more able to find what is there. Hunting mule deer in Mexico for example, the ground is extremely flat, and while the 5 or 6-foot tall creosote is pretty sparse, over great distances it looks like an impenetrable wall. With elevation though, you would think that there is nowhere to hide a deer, much less a giant buck. In this country the further you will be looking, the higher you will need to be. On the other hand, when you’re hunting late season elk that are holed up in canyons, a good glassing point will likely be the opposing edge of the canyon, and likely a point on it that gets you out of brush and relatively close to the country you want to look into. The true goal is to find positions that provide a good perspective of ground that you want to look into, positions that limit the screening brush between you and what you want to see.

When you apply all these techniques you will find more game and gain a greater understanding of those animals. The point of all this is to find an animal that you want to take home, learn where it lives and what it does, then get into position for a stalk, and at the end of that stalk be in a position that provides not just a shot, but a high probability shot. Time spent glassing teaches you about the wind, animal movements, the path of the sun and most importantly, the way the country is laid out. This familiarity plays into the eventual success of a stalk. While it is a tool for finding game, it is also a tool for better understanding that game and increasing your odds of putting a tag on the animal that you want. From here, the next step is stalking, in it we will cover some mental elements: preparation and route planning; timing: when to go as well as how to move; and where to stalk to, a bow hunter has to stalk to an animal and a rifle hunter needs to stalk to a shooting position, these all require thought and planning. The better you understand and plan for these situations the more likely you are to be taking trophy photos when it’s all said and done

This is the end of the first big project I have undertaken. At this point, I have learned that the bites may well be better if taken in smaller amounts. Seeing that the late elk hunts on my home turf have already started, I wanted to get the last of this string of posts out for hunters to get to play around with this season. Good hunting!