Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting rifle weight and body weight

You are barking up entirely the wrong tree I assure you...

agreed. It’s not hard to resist commenting unless you have some experience in the area being discussed. It’s ok if backpacking isn’t your thing and other things are. Myself, I love packing up
and spending weeks after game on their own turf, weather, suffering & all makes the whole hunting thing complete for me. Others have more experience otherwise and that’s cool too.

Personally, I try to lower weight everywhere I can (without compromising safety of course). The more weight I can save the more food I can carry to stay out longer and the more weight I can pack out when successful. I also find this important as I am a solo hunter and can’t share the load. I don’t really have weight to spare off my body so gear is where I can save the most and a rifle is an easy place to start, though it’s far from the only place to cut weight. My heaviest rifle is a hair over 7lbs, I no longer carry a stove, fuel, utensils or pot. I’ve traded in my tent for an ultralight bivy… the list goes on. As I mentioned before, I don’t have much to spare when it comes to shedding body weight. With that being said I generally lose a pound a day on a trip while maintaining a 4000cal diet.

Not an M1, but a fully kitted M4….


I agree though. I wished it was a 6lb Kimber until I needed to use it

We were talking about ditching stoves and eating cold freeze dried the other day. That's a tough one for me... Not sure I could do it for long. A lot of morale in that coffee and one hot meal a day.

Well yeah, but with a 60# backpack on?

The thought of cold freeze dried makes my stomach hurt…..

Never carried a back pack while hunting, but did have a Army Surplus, gas mask bag for all my stuff, it weighed maybe 10# loaded.never owned 60#s of hunting gear and never needed it. Rio7

RIO my man, yer’ killing me, just killing me here…..

alpinecrick, Sorry not trying to/ Rio7

True Dat

I stay away from cold freeze dried. A good mix of bars for variety, home made trail mix, jerky/sausages, and a chocolate/coffee protein shake to start every day. The biggest morale killers are heavy rain and not seeing rams.

Fog is the worst for me, especially after you've committed the time (and pain) to get up into the mountains and then can't even glass. But if I were living out of a bivy, rain would be more of a problem.

Glassed 22 different rams this year, and couldn't make a single one legal. Still worth it to be able to watch them, and there should be some good hunting there in a few years.

Sounds like you have a good spot. Seeing rams and just being in the mountains calms the soul.

Thankfully, fog is generally not a problem here. Wind on the other hand is a constant SOB and has ended hunts for me. I can’t complain too much I suppose as I was able to sneak in to 60-70 yards and get my ram this year. I was still scared to take that close of a shot in that kind of wind though.

You're good RIO.....

Back to the OP.

Just my .02c.

Yup brown bear hunting is not the same as mountain hunting.

The 375 H&H is the perfect brown bear rifle (unless you're a guide most of whom prefer the 458s or 416 Rem) so weight is really a non issue.

You can stop reading now, but here are some pearls I've learned over the years of BB hunting:

1. You can't train for climbing through the alders. Nope. Nada.
2. You will have shed all the weight you need to in your tent before you even go out. Even if you decide to go hike for a glassing hill farther away.
3. The only weather worse than on Kodiak is on the peninsula.
4. Good thing you eat natural plant fiber- don't wear any on Kodiak.
5. Avoid Gore Tex it's a sponge.
6. Avoid the semi sponge Sitka/Kuiu rain shells. After a couple-three days they're done & you can't adequately dry them out until they've been in the tent for a couple-three days (and burned up too much propane to do so). H/H is the only gear that will repel water day, after day, after day.
7. Buy small dry bags for your lighter layered outers and the heavy coat that you'll keep in your pack. You will need both.
8. Contractor trash bags to put your pack in while it rains.
9. Rubber orange crabber gloves for glassin in the rain. (Liners are nice but not necessary).
10. The easiest way to shed weight on a BB hunt is to not bring a spotting scope.........but that requires someone else will need to have one.

Have fun. Brown bear hunting is a blast. I have a love/hate thing for Kodiak.

Cold food is a hard pass for me. Even out with the scouts I've got my coffee maker 😄

Just got back from 5 days of Colorado 1st season. Season is only 5 days long so you hunt 5 days....

An observation to consider: resilience and stamina, or endurance, whatever your parlance. It's not hard to drag a fat ass, 10 lb rifle, and a 40 lb daypack up a steep slope to 10,000+ feet - on day 1. The true test is day 3-4-5. Can you do 7-10 miles/day every day for multiple consecutive days? Alot of guys, myself included in the past, could go for a couple days then need a day off and 25 Advil to keep hunting.

I guarantee, not my opinion, a lighter body, less weight on your feet and back, equates to greater stamina/endurance over the long haul.

As to bodyweight and BMI, I tend to agree with jay - my BMI is "overweight" and in past years I've been borderline obese. No one has ever looked at me and said I could lose some weight. BMI is a basic measure that needs tempered with reason. But - how strong is strong enough to haul 60-70 lbs of elk off the mountain? For 3-5 trips up the hill? Over 1-3 days? This is the realm of stamina/endurance.

I learned this the hard way over the years. I actually am carrying less muscle than in past years for that very reason. I can still squat 250, bench 225, deadlift 300 for 4-8 reps depending on the exercise. The central question: does benching 300 lbs, deadlifting 400 lbs, squatting 300 lbs make me a better mountain hunter? Am I able to maintain an acceptable level of effort over multiple days? To me, once a certain level of strength is achieved, aerobic capacity, both aerobic and anaerobic, need maximized. You get resilience from being strong but you get aerobic and anaerobic capacity from training your muscles to do repeated heavy work over long periods of time. An example: stepups with 60-80lbs in your pack for 2-3-400 reps while keeping your heartrate below ~ 150 bpm. IOW at a rate of about 1 step every 3-5 secs and slow down when HR gets close to, or exceeds, 150 bpm. This type of training sucks. Sucks bad. But I've found it to be the best training I do.

As an aside, elk won this year. I mmm, mmmiss, mmmiissseeedd one..........their were intervening factors (unforeseen tree branches) which I didnt see in the last 10 mins of shooting light. Shooting over my pack at 125 yards is not much of a shot. Except when things are in the way.

Brad;
Good afternoon to you sir, it's been too long since we've said hello and I hope life's been treating you all well in the years in between.

We've tilled this soil a few times before I believe, but for sure I'm still with you in that about 7lb is as light as I can do good work with in a cartridge that develops much recoil.

Its interesting to read your comment about weight forward balance too, as that's more or less where I'm at as well. When I had my walking around rifle as a .270, it was 7lbs on the nose with 5 rounds in it. The barrel on it now as a 6.5x55 is 4oz heavier and of course puts all the weight there - but here's the thing, I definitely shoot it better off of improvised rests.

Photo of said rifle in the current color - it's going to change at the end of this season as the Krylon is gone in increasingly more spots.



You're still doing really well to do the 20 mile trip, I'm sure that'd be beyond what I'm able to do this year at 59. Somehow my feet are giving me issues this year after about 4 hours hiking.

Oh, I finally took your advice on boots and mostly have been running some Zamberlans which are about a pound lighter than my old Meindl boots and you're correct, I can feel that.

Lastly, to anyone who is getting close to Brad's and my age, I'll heartily endorse a telescoping walking stick or trekking pole I guess is what I've been using. I prefer the adjustability of them as I'll run it shorter going up and longer coming down if that makes sense? It's kept me from ending up on my back a few times, which is a nice thing as the mountains somehow got harder about 5 or perhaps it was even 10 years back now.

Since I live in the mountains, all my hunting is there, but admittedly there's days when I go much more up and down and sometimes do my level best to stay on the level of the elevation we start out at.

All the best to you and your family Brad, good luck on your remaining hunts and good luck to the OP on his hunt too.

Dwayne

mr. tony soprano: Great info you shared. I've been on kodiak twice so know exactly what you're talking about. I haven't used those gloves you mentioned but will look for some. And those guys who do 20 miles in the western mountains just don't know what climbing up thru alder patches is like. I'm with you on Kodiak: a love and a hate.