Desperation Breeds Innovation
By Buckmasters
They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I’d like to amend that saying to “desperation is the mother of creativity.”
Packing for out-of-state hunts, I normally take a fanny pack for half-day sits and a full-sized backpack for all-day hunts. Somehow I walked out the door without my bigger pack as I left for the recent Illinois hunt I’ve been writing about. This left me with nothing but a small fanny pack for the mandatory all-day sits, the first two days of which were in the rain, and all five days had cold temperatures in the mornings (30s) before warming up to the 60s in the afternoons.
In short, I needed to carry a lot of food, clothing and gear.
Like most of you, I have no problem cinching extra clothing to a pack for walks into and back from a stand, although in this case my extra clothes dwarfed the size of the little fanny pack ridiculously. I’ve also had multiple negative experiences with toting in my clothing this way — I simply hate putting on my outer layers when they’re covered in all manner of sticky, spiky seeds. I swear, I think every state has it’s own variety of these little hitch-hikers.
Fortunately for me, I’ve been using an organization system for several years now that has served me well and it proved its worth again on this most recent hunt. Instead of using large plastic bins, I keep my clothing in several roll-top stuff sacks. I put a piece of masking tape on each sack and list what is inside on the tape so I can easily find what I’m looking for.
Better sacks are scent- and waterproof, so I sometimes just toss them in the bed of my pickup, although it can still be handy to use the plastic tubs with the stuff sacks inside. I also carry an extra sack or two just because they’ve come in so handy.
For this trip I retrieved an extra sack from my truck and used it to carry my extra clothing and food and drinks for the long day in the stand. The sack hung easily from a gear hook and kept everything compressed and out of the way.
What really surprised me, though, was how easy it was to find exactly what I wanted in my pack throughout the day. Without having to dig through layers of clothing, gloves and snacks, I was able to access my calls, binoculars and rangefinder with ease (no, I don’t always keep those on my person ... I’ve had calls and binoculars get in the way when drawing a bow to take a shot). I also didn’t have to worry about my extra clothing getting wet.
I liked the system so much that I’m going to use it from now on. The huge sack got a few odd looks from the guide, but I can live with that.
The thicker, water-proof sacks are called dry bags, while the thinner models without waterproof protection are called stuff sacks. I have a few of each, but the dry bags especially aren’t cheap, so I built my collection one or two at a time over several years. I recently purchased a really nice one on Amazon for about $25, which is way cheaper that most I’ve seen.
That bag is now going to accompany me to the stand pretty much every time. If you want to see how you like the system, get an inexpensive stuff sack and give it a try.