You have entered a more dangerous zone than Remington SUCKs vs. Kimber Roulette vs. carry a big pig Marlin 45-70 lever action.
Most of us have 5-20 backpacks.
From ones found in dumpsters/lost and found to custom bespoke McHale packs that cost 2000.00.
I will tell you some things.
Stay away from a pack made in a foreign country unless it has been on the market for more than 10 years.
Old School Rules. A K2 Longbed from Ebay is going to be better than a Badlands/Eberlestock from Cabelas.
The president of Sitka gear was not using a Sitka model backpack on his backpack sheep hunt.
Stone Glacier($600+) vs. Kifaru Bikini Duplex T1($700+) right now is the emerging tech domestically made packs of choice right now.
A lot of people will tell you that a Barney's Pinnacle Hunter for about ($700) will be the last pack you will buy.
I have many Dana Design K2 Longbeds. They work great and are durable. I also have many other systems but not Kifaru/Stone Glacier yet. They are pretty spendy.
Do not buy Tenzing they are still working out kinks. Designs are good but zippers are not up to snuff yet. I used a TZ6000 this last season and it was ok. And perhaps carried pretty well but two zippers went south on me on first trip. This is inexcusable.
I have heard zippers going south on enough of them that it wasn't just me.
I have several Gregory and Lowe Alpine backpacking packs and they don't cut it with weight. I have heard that the big Ospreys are better. However, the more I get into this stuff the more I would say.
Get a good Kelty Cache Hauler. Get two large Silnylon Drybags 50L. Get some small bungie type cords. Bungie the drybags on the cache hauler and get used to carrying lots of weight both up and done hills. When you are carrying 80-100 lbs for 1 hour workouts then understand that a big packout could be 20-30 miles with 120lbs. You won't have that with your elk hunt but you will be getting ready to get into big country and you can use a window mount tripod for your spotter. Just lash it onto your packframe.
Marines have a decent pack made by Arcteryx. It probably would work for you as would a Just One Pack by Eberlestock. I have seen far too many Eberlestocks give up the ghost to recommend them for deep country. I experimented with the Eberlestock rifle scabbard on my K2 Longbed and I found that it would not hold the rifle and the seam separated down at the bottom near the crown of the barrel. I wouldn't recommend it. It was nifty idea but in reality it just can't handle abuse.
The Badlands Ox is a decent concept but I just feel that it doesn't have the ventilation that the other solutions I have mentioned have. It might be that I haven't tried one in the mountains yet.
Bullpacks look good but they are heavy. You start going towards an 11lb pack and that defeats the whole purpose.
So in the end I would advise you to find either a good Camptrails Freight frame pack or a Kelty Cache hauler and start from there.
Good boots that fit your feet are more important than spending thousands on packs. The other thing I would advise is that you can find lightweight solutions that aren't fancy but good but you have to be willing to be a bit miserable. Don't worry. We have all been miserable one time or another on the mountain.
Don't let not having very expensive gear keep you from spending as much time as you can in the Mountains. Your energy will more than make up for expensive gear.
Sincerely,
Thomas
