Call it a character flaw if you like, but I have a thing for packsacks. I love a good packsack. One that is designed perfectly with all the pockets and special features you can imagine. Every now and then I get duped into buying another one that is just one notch better than all the rest. But it’s never perfect enough. If I could design my own ideal outdoor pack, it would be one that is modular so you can add pockets and pouches to suit every need. It would also be made of some kind of expanding and contracting material that would grow or shrink to your daily needs. Perhaps made from the stem cells of an anaconda. Then if you needed a day-pack for your lunch, camera and binoculars - it would shrink to that size and hold everything snuggly in place. But say you found a Chevrolet Duramax truck engine in near perfect condition on the side of the trail, you could slip that into your expanding packsack and hump it out.
But until someone invents that packsack at a near affordable price, I’ll hang on to the ones I have.
As you can imagine I’ve accumulated a number of packsacks over the years. At one point I thought I’d thin out the herd and sell all the substandard packs and keep one or two of the best. I started using one of my favourites for everything - an Eberlestock X2. But what I found is that organizing and re-organizing this pack to suit my daily needs was a real nuisance. If the pack was loaded for hunting and I wanted to use if for fishing, then I’d spend a good hour or more emptying it and restocking it in an organized fashion. After all, cramming everything into a packsack without giving any thought to finding things again is pointless. And inevitably I’d forget one important item each time.
So I decided to dedicate one packsack to each need instead. My X2 remains my go-to pack for hunting day trips - and on a recent trip where I flew to Oregon for two weeks I used that same X2 for my carry-on luggage - without bringing any checked baggage. That’s impressive folks! I wore my boots and warm jacket and stowed my crocks inside the bag for semi-formal dress. I wore my ear muffs, ball hat and toque stacked one on top of the other (quite the fashion statement). I brought a few pairs of dark coloured socks and underwear (they can be worn inside-out on week two) and donated them to a nice charity that sells used clothing before I left (I’m such a great guy).
My red and grey Tatonka Bike and Hike is now my steelhead fishing pack, my tan and black Tatonka Bike and Hike is my shooting pack, my Eberlestock Team Elk pack is my cold-weather hunting pack, and so on. Dufflebags are also organized by activity and season.
This way, if steelhead fishing is on the agenda, I can grab my steelhead pack, my steelhead duffle bag and disappear into the wilds in an instant.
Speaking of which, I think I’ll do that now…
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Tatonka Bike and Hike for steelhead fly fishing
Eberlestock X2 Hunting day pack
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