What I learned on my first backpack hunt. (Cold weather)

[brquail]

Good lesson. Learning from adjusting socks, adding a hand saw, and packing the right amount of food is part of the journey. The BRS-3000T stove and Coghlan's Fire Lighters were really helpful. Gloves, gaiters, and warming water at night made things more comfortable. Thinking about a spotting scope could be useful, even if it means carrying more weight.

 

[Bert01]

The saw is a good thing, we use these,

Sven-Saw | The Famous Campfire Folding Saw

Sven-Saw is the perfect folding saw — perfect for camping, backpacking, hunting, and yard work. Proudly made in Minnesota.

svensaw.com

I use Gatorade single bottle it's a good middle ground between nalgene and Walmart.

 

[chav0_12]

I managed with bino's just fine but with a spotting scope it would have been easier to tell if a heard was worth getting close to or not, still not sure if I'd want to carry the extra weight.

I think that's a hard thing to determine. For me it's more than 4lbs if I take my spotter and tripod. If it's glassing intensive my tripod comes no matter what, even if it's just for the binos. I rarely will carry both on something like an archery elk hunt but for deer it's nice to have the spotter.

I over packed food, I now know what amount of food I will need to keep myself fed for this time. The other crappy thing is in these temps unless your adding hot water to a freeze dried meal your gonna have to warm the food up by the fire for a bit. Cliff bars are awful hard to eat when they are frozen.

I'd be careful packing too little food too. I know there was a time when I though I had enough, but it wasn't and I was getting very cold at night and couldn't keep my temp up on my own, even in a good sleeping bag. I know that I need around 3500-4000 calories per day just to keep me warm at night. Not even close to the 2500 that I as eating before. I have a system that has me to around 2lbs of food per day. It adds up quick on multi-day trips but at least you know the majority of that weight doesn't come back with you. Throwing some food in a pocket during the day might make it easier to eat if you're able to keep it from freezing.

Lessons learned are the only way it seems we can get better at this stuff. Then you start spending money on the things you wish you had last time too.