Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Solo backpack hunts?

On an early winter predator hunt in the Canadian Rockies, I drove 30 miles up a side road, starting from a logging road branch an hour and a half from the nearest town. After five miles, no wheel tracks marked the snow and I drove another 25 miles till deeper snow forced me to turn around.

That evening I told my wife where I�d been and that with the heavy snow falling, I was probably the last wheeled vehicle up that road until next spring�s snow melt.

She said, �30 miles up a snowy winter road in the middle of nowhere that nobody else drives--- and you think you are normal!�



Added later: this humour intended tangent is not as far off as it might seem. Our discussion here shows that none of us on the backpack forum are "normal" as would be defined by the huge N. American majority of treestand whitetail hunters. Also, another five miles beyond where I turned around on the day hunt mentioned above is where some of my toughest backpack hunts left the road.

For me, I'm not afraid to go alone, and do so most of the time. It's difficult to find hunting buddies who want to pack in.

I carry a SAT phone, regular cell phone, GPS and sometimes a SPOT. I've been thinking of bailing on the SPOT and getting a PLB instead since the SAT phone does what the SPOT does already (albeit on a different system). Before anyone jumps in and says it, yes, I know that SAT phones and SPOTs and PLBs have technical limitations that I understand through field practice.

I've seen first hand and studied a number of cases where a simple problem or accident or mistake at the wrong time turned into a life and death situation. I had two close family members require airlifts out after injuries in the backcountry - one head injury, one shattered femur. Both happened in good weather, both were basic short falls with some back luck added in. Both would have likely been fatal if not for the fact that we were able to activate a rescue on relatively short order.

The head injury inspired me to learn/prepare more for backcountry medical situations and I got WFR certified and volunteered on a SAR team. When the shattered femur occurred, the training kicked in and I knew how to manage and get my dad to definitive care as quickly and safely as possible.

I respect the personal choices of others like Smokepole who want to do without it, but for me, the comm equipment is a reasonable precaution to take to ensure that my wife worries less, that no resources will be burnt in a search for me if I'm late, and could save my life if circumstances align themselves against my safe return home.

as always YMMV.

I did my 1st solo backpack trip when I was 12. Three days in the Scapegoat Wilderness. I caught fish to eat (allegeric to fish now unfortunatly,)cooked them on an open fire and bushwacked my way back to the cabin.

I have been doing solo trips in the 43 years that have followed including solo hunting trips of a week to ten days.

Nothing better than a good partner and between my wife Deb and my hunting partner Levi, I feel I have the best, but if I can't go with a partner, I go alone. Ok my Lab Gunr is usually along.

I do sometimes carry my cell phone so I can let Deb know when I'll be back or if I killed something. She doesn't worry about me and I don't worry about her when she is in the backcounry with only the dogs for several days at a time.

I have had my share of getting "temporarally missplaced," had a torn up knee on a solo backcountry ski trip, etc. But so far, I have always come out alive.

Question to see if I have this straight.

A SPOT can be had for around $100-$150 and requires a yearly subscription of about $100. It can send a text or has a SOS distress button.(It also has a function to send a non-emergency "help" request to a friend) Each year's use requires a $100 subscription fee.

A PLB seems to run in the $250 on up range. It is only for SOS rescue but doesn't have a yearly subscription fee. Once registered to you, you're good to go from then on.

Do they both send a satellite SOS with GPS coordinates? Or does the PLB just send a "beacon" for rescuers to home in on?

SPOT uses the GlobalStar satellite phone network which isn't the best. If you go to their site you can put in your location and it will tell you when you should have satellite coverage enough to make calls on their phones. Also, for best chance of a lock on their satellites, they say you should have 80 degrees of sky. I don't know how this affects the SPOT, I believe they optimized SPOT to deal with the issues with the SAT network. If you activate the Emergency alert, the message goes to SPOT's command center and they contact the jurisdiction you're in with the GPS coordinates of your location. One nice feature of the SPOT service is your checkins can be viewed on a map so that buddies/spouses can see your progress especially if you're doing something like a through-hike.

the new DELORME unit uses the Iridium network which is better for coverage. It basically works the same way but you have fuller texting capabilities.

If you want a comm device and you're only out in the backcountry where you might need this a couple times a year, I would rent an Iridium phone. I've used phones not only for emergency communications but also to find out the situation with forest fires when I can hear choppers and smell smoke but have no idea where the fire(s) are. California regularly catches on fire and I have wondered more than once if I was going in the right direction away from a fire.

PLBs are more the hail-mary-pass of emergency comm. They broadcast to a multi-national satellite network that monitors all beacons - planes, boats and personal. When you set off the beacon, your location is picked up and sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Air Force Rescue Coordination Center in the United States. From there, they contact the local authorities. You can buy a cheaper unit that is just a beacon that will get searchers close and then they may have to use handheld directional receivers to triangulate your position - it's an artform to do that well and I've seen searchers completely f@#$-up this task in training and practice so I would opt for the slightly more expensive unit that also transmits your GPS coordinates.

I believe (but don't have stats) that PLBs have a much higher probability of working than the SPOT or Delorme units. This is not a system that was built for weekend warriors - It was built as the multinational emergency alert and beacon system. This is a system for life-threatening trouble only. They will get testy if you use it casually. Arm caught in a rock and you're going to have to saw it off to get free? Ok, good call. Sprained your ankle in moderate weather 2 miles from a trailhead? You might get some grief.

Htr3,
Good info! Thanks for taking the time!
To clarify, I would suspect activating either the spot or a plb over a sprained ankle may result in some s&r guys being a bit ticked upon arrival! I understand they're both for a life or death situations only! Which would my only purpose for carrying one.
In that respect, a sat phone would be more useful for a non life threatening emergency where self extraction isn't an option.

No problem. I've learned a lot on this forum and like to contribute when I have something useful to say. I don't want to over-emphasize this part of your overall kit because I think that skill/sense/preparedness/etc are ultimately more important. I wouldn't encourage anyone to just wander out without a clue assuming a SAT phone or beacon is going to pull their fat out of the fire.

Yes, much easier to manage semi-urgent support with a SAT phone. You can even manage your own extrication for something like a badly sprained ankle by getting ahold of an outfitter service and having them bring in a horse or mule for you to ride out. I know some people like Cameron Hanes of Eastmans recommend pre-arranging for horse/mule support if you get an elk/deer down in the backcountry and the outfitter may double for this kind of help.

I think of phones/beacons as complimentary because with a phone you have to be coherent enough to make a phone call and read someone your GPS coordinates or describe your location, etc. The two family members I mentioned in an earlier post would not have been able to use a SAT phone to get themselves out. One of them certainly could have used a PLB, the other might have been able to when he regained consciousness after being knocked out with a skull fracture/brain injury.

Also you need a much cleaner satellite-device hookup with a phone than with a PLB/SPOT

One last comment, if you get a PLB, you HAVE to register it. If you do not, it could delay or cancel (depending on the jurisdiction) a response. If they do come and get you anyway (in the US this would be the typical response), they may file charges against you for illegally using the PLB.

hntr3, yes, good info. Thanks.

I just looked at the SPOT site, and saw a thing they call SPOT Connect. It hooks a smart phone to a satelite and looks like it allows the user to compose and send a text message from anywhere the SPOT works. Vastly more versatile if I am correct about how it works.

I am a tech dinosaur, so hope somebody like hntr3 will check this thing out.

I really enjoyed the various opinions expressed here. I imagine that I am fairly typical of most hunters. I dream of these kind of hunts a lot but honest personal assessment would show that I do not currently have the backwoods skills to do anything too extreme.

I have gone on various mountain goat hunts, sheep hunts and moose hunts but all with a registered guide. There is certainly danger in all of those but I always knew they had my best interests in mind and didn't put me in situations that I could not handle.

I think the most important message I have learned is - Know your own skills as well as your limitations - and enjoy life within those. But continue to grow and learn so you can do more.

There are some rather lengthy and in depth reviews on REI's site about this device. Not exactly a glowing reviews from those who have really put it through the paces. Apparently, it gives a little more flexibility with the predetermined messages but is more complicated to use, and apparently, not terribly reliable.
It can be used for sending emails and updating Facebook accounts(?). Seems to me it would just use up your smart phone battery for not much gain, especially when using the spot for its original intent(and everyone's apparent intent on this thread, for carrying one, which would be emergency rescue and daily check-in w/family).

Anyway, link to REI site w/review:

edit: Can't get link to work. Go to REI site, look up the product and read the reviews.

I can't give a personal review of the Spot Connect or the Delorme InReach because I've not used either. Based on the Iridium vs. Globalstar carriers, I would think that Delorme is ahead out of the gates. Also, for me the basic concept of the devices lean heavily toward DeLorme - Delorme put in place two-way paging, so you can get confirmation from your buddies that they'll come and get you and you don't need to initiate a SAR operation. SPOT, on the other hand, enabled updating facebook and twitter, so...you can give all 2000 of your "friends" a minute by minute of your death by hypothermia? I picture the guy in Jack London's To Build a Fire tweeting as his fire is put out, his hands freeze to blocks and he slowly drifts off while his dog stares at him waiting for him to get it together.

There is a small twist on the checkin type functionality that you can do with PLB. Some PLBs can do a through-satellite-self-check which basically tests the whole process but the signal is ignored by the monitoring agencies because the signal is tagged as a test. ACR has a paid service called 406link that monitors these tests, sees that it's from you and sends your test confirmation and coordinates to up to 5 emails/sms accounts. You don't want to go nuts with this as you don't want to burn out your battery, but this could easily be used as a checkin function as long as the recipients knew how to interpret it. Could be a "i'm ok, here's where i am" or could be "i just killed a moose at these coordinates and i'm calling in all my favors" depending on how you wanted to use it. For me, I think I'd rent a phone.

LOL... That's funny...

I would add that even if your phone battery dies you can still send an SOS with the spot connect unit itself.It has a built in SOS button.My spot connect has only not sent a signal once while i was in a tight canyon.

I owned an original SPOT (very unreliable) and now own a SPOT II (very reliable). IMO, they have resolved the reliability issues that they had in the first gen unit. I've used my SPOT II since I bought it last Aug several times in the West in TX, NM, CO, MO and CA and its been 100% reliable. Now I don't travel to the ends of the earth with it like some do so I can't comment on how reliable of a signal it will get in Tanzania or Java, but it works in the Western US very well. I've also not needed to use its emergency SOS feature either, so can't comment on how effective their emergency response system is.

The InReach can also work independent of the android phone and you can send three preset text messages with it as well.

I know it's a small market, and not many get to here, but i can say from personal experience Iridium works pretty well in AK, GlobalStar, not so much.


I'm a SAT phone user, have my own, and still pay the $43 per mos. whether we use it or not.

In many days (not enough though, grin) in the back country I've never had to use it for what I bought it for, an emergency.

closest probably ever came to using it was when I was guiding and we were 100 miles away in any direction from the closest village or town, client fell in the lake trying to get out of the raft, waves were breaking at about 3 feet. No biggie, we were right at camp, fished him out and sent him to the tent to get dry clothes on. He grabbed his bottle and proceeded to start draining it. Weather was cool and he was dressed heavily when he went in. He floundered trying to regain his footing, thus the fishing out part.

Getting dry was good, getting drunk not so much. He came into the cook tent to hang out with the rest of us, was retelling his "close call" with his bottle in hand while warming his backside by the double burner camp stove where we had a giant vat of stew boiling in prep for the evening meal. Tipped back his bottle as it was gettin low and fell straight backwards towards the stove!

Missed hitting the stove by an inch or two at the most, if that vat had come down on him he'd have been scalded about his face and neck. It would have been butt ugly. Shook me up a bit. I'd guided for years before the SAT phone technology was available to us.

I've been lucky, while several close calls miles from any help, and a few what could have beens like the one I related above, have never had to call in the Air Cavalry.


even though my SAT has never been used for it's intended purpose, I've never regretted purchasing it or hauling it around.

Not only do I go solo abit, but we've hauled our kids around the back country at very young ages (can't tell you how many 5 gal. buckets of diapers I've hauled clean, in to, and dirty out of the mountains) usually by snowmachine. Believe my oldest kid now 22 was 4 when I first took her 42 miles in country to a beautiful little cabin called Windy Gap.

We took our youngest, now 14 on his first camping trip at two weeks old.

Stuff happens, machines break down, hot stoves, fires etc. and boiling liquids are a constant potential danger. Earthquakes happen, avalanches, fires etc. Know of one guy here that earthquake set off an avalanche and he in his tent went tumbling down a mountain. He ended up with 6 inches of rifle barrel piercing him through the rib cage. Walked out to his truck and drove himself to medical treatment.

I don't mind hauling the SAT, it's insurance, to me, much like having fire insurance on my house. Never used it for it's intended purpose, still glad I have it though.

Will say I need to visit here more often, something about guys that backpack hunt, gives a peace of mind (however they prefer to perform it) to prevent a lot of the ugliness you see in other Forums over differences of opinion doesn't seem to happen so much here.

Kudos to all of you for your efforts in your obvious respect for one another even though for some electronics take away from the experience they seek and for others it enhances their experience.

one last little story about SAT phones and then I'll close, forgive me for the length of my post if you will please.

Solo hunting for sheep, I carried the SAT as a peace of mind for momma even though I really am an ounce counter on sheep hunting.
Hiked in about 12 miles and got weathered in for 3 days, fog so thick you couldn't hunt. (I once spent 9 days in a two man tent high in the mountains the year the Siberian Steamroller came through) Bored outa my gourd.

Called weather service to get some idea of how long the weather system would last. Wasn't a good report. Well heck, had a house under construction, biz concerns in town etc. So I figured to roll everything up and head back to town, had already been up once before with a guy and got smoked out cause of wildfires. So no sheep for me that year.

But before I started wadding stuff up, I phoned my dad at 1.59 per minute. My love for the outdoors comes from my dad (certainly not my mom who raised me) but it wasn't transferred directly my folks divorced when I was two and while I had some contact with my dad not all that much and he left the town we lived in when I was about 12 and the contact became even more rare. I'd gone through all the normal stuff most boys go through without a dad around, bitterness, hurt, anger, etc. and it manifested itself in an emotional distance between me and my father as real as the physical distance that separated us.

We never had the relationship that most desire for father and son, I hear the regret in his voice these days when I tell him what my boys and I have been up to. But we do have that connection based upon the outdoors. I'm so like him in that the woods and the wild places are my healing place for when my soul is hurting. Not much makes me happier than to be headed in to new country with a good rifle at hand.

I believe I was born to travel God's country and everything else I do is just stuff in between when I'm really alive and living.

Anyway I digress, so just for a hoot, I rang him up on the SAT to tell him of my frustration for my season and probably to get either confirmation that I was doing the right thing by packing it in 5 days before I ran out of food or to see if I should wait it out for the weather to clear.

while we were talking me high in the brooks range and him in MO, out of the fog about 25 yards away out walks a young ram, not full curl, but approaching 7/8's.

As I was describing the scene to him, he told me "put down the phone and shoot" I told him "if he'd been legal you'd have heard the shot, I wasn't gonna ask for permission" we had a good laugh.

my dad is too old for us to hunt together, especially the way I hunt and too much time slipped away before our relationship was repaired enough for there to be any desire to do so.

He was an outdoorsman with few peers back in our home woods when I was a kid and too little to go with him and the way he hunted, he marvels at my experiences up here and I know he wishes when he was at his peak he'd been in this country practicing his bush craft.


but for just one moment, he was there with me on the mountain as a ram walked out of the fog, he heard my whispered excitement, my sheer joy of being there in the presence of one of those magnificent creatures even though it wasn't legal. And for a split second he knew we were one.

Our lives are measured in years, but our true living often amounts to seconds, sometimes just a split second. But it is enough, it has to be.

So for all my "cousins" out there that love the lonely places, the windswept ridges, the choked river bottoms, the thick timber that fills our hearts with a joy and peace that only the wild places provide, my salute and my acceptance that what pace you travel, what gear you take what direction you head and who you leave behind to do so are as different as we are as individuals.

and that is fine as we only need to make ourselves happy with our choices


but we're connected, and we connect by being alone

My dad will never hunt the high peaks with me, it wasn't in the cards for this lifetime. But for one moment we were connected if only spiritually, thanks to that new fangled gizmo. I'm grateful for it.

Thanks for sharing that Legit.

I have ok luck with the spot connect. It takes a while to send a message. To save the phone battery, I either turn it off and then on to send messages, or put it in airplane mode and then turn on blue tooth and it will last several days.

Kevin

Legit,

Great post; enjoyed every bit of it.

"Hear, hear..." Legit