We ask the question, of "how this?," or "why this?," all the time. I would love to hear stories on mistakes that lead us to all these conclusions. Sometimes the best learning experiences are our mistakes.

I will start off with one from this past season. I changed pads halfway through my hunting season, from an Alps Mountaineering to a Thermarest. My Dad was coming with me, and I needed two. Of course being the gentleman that I am, I got the new one.

I have a habit of cooking seated on my pad in the tent. With the AM pad there is a layer that stops you from sliding all over, and it also works well for a level surface to set hot water on in the pot. The new air pad, not so much. I forgot that it did not have the top on it and poof!

Lesson learned, be very careful with heated objects around the air mats.

I was backpack hunting with my bro up at timberline last year and ran into some other hunters that killed a bear... I learned not to eat undercooked bear meat..We all got Trichinosis from it, it almost killed me (respiratory paralysis)....I'll never eat bear again..

That is brutal! Haven't eaten bear yet, but that doesn't encourage me to.

During archery season dont leave your sidearm at camp, no matter how heavy it is.

I only did this twice in a 20 year span and as luck would have it, I ran into a bear both times, the second one got the point across REAL well, it was a grizzly at 15 feet.

+1. My exact reasoning was "it's too heavy and I'm just too tired to carry anything extra today". My first mountain lion experience. We were told that we'd never see a lion and the black bear would be scared of us, so we werent too worried about it. In fact a gentlemen who we talked to later said that he had hunted the area for 20 years and he'd never ran across one in there. We walked up a steep ridge and when we got to the top, there was a mountain lion 20 yards away staring at us. After a brief "holy chit!" moment, I slowly reached for my pistol, which then I remembered was nicely tucked away in the tent. The nice lion turned and trotted off thankfully. I'll never leave my sidearm again. It all happened quickly, but we stood there for ten minutes afterwards replaying the situation not believing what just happened.

Another one, dont wait until the first week of october in the Sawtooth wilderness to test out your gear, crappy tents at 8000' feet are not fun to deal with when it starts snowing.

Don't butcher your deer in the field, put in game bags, put game bags in PLASTIC bags to keep pack clean, then seal it all tightly while hiking out, then load closed pack in car and drive home...

...without first cooling the meat and/or taking the meat out of the pack upon arrival at the car.

I now keep a cooler in the car when hunting. Also probably a good idea to bypass the plastic bag and just wash the pack out later, especially if it's warm. Don't seal up that heat!

Gonna take this to heart! Hope to try out a Golite SL3 in that region this Fall. Hope it's up to the task.

do not leave your gear outside and go to sleep. you might wake up and have a foot of snow.

to go along with this take your water inside and put it under something to keep it from freezing solid.

Do not take off your boots to cross a freezing cold river thats running high from spring run off and get to the other side to then realize you left your boots back on the other side of the river. So you have to go back accross to get your boots then accross again, making that crossing number three.

Point of the story? Double check to make sure you have all your gear before setting out to cross a river.

When you are field dressing an animal and making that little slit up the belly towards the sternum, don't use your fingers to guide the blade of your knife. I stopped a friend from doing that when he was dressing out an antelope. Three weeks later he was dressing out an elk and I wasn't there. He cut his finger to the bone.

Don't leave lubricant in your rifle bolt in super cold temperatures. Otherwise it will freeze the firing pin inside the bolt and it won't strike the primer hard enough to fire the bullet. All you will get is a click. For the same reason, if your rifle gets wet make sure you dry out the bolt real good.

KC

Developed camp sites are not always good campsites. I chose where people had been camping one time on BLM before it tarted raining / sleeting and then snowing. It was horrible. There were good camp sites within 100 ft. I later looked at it and said no matter what tent I had it was a bad spot so why did so many choose it ? The view was better.

Sometimes when butchering and animal it's just best to get it quartered with hide on and get to a better cleaner spot nearby. Between two giant logs and under a tree isn't a place to get fancy.

Don't try to crap in bibs. Spend the time and take them off first. All you have to do is land a turd in them once, and pull them back on to get the idea you should never do it again.

That's not completely true...took me twice

**** there went another keyboard

same thing goes for a dufold union suit. the escape hatch is never big enough.

I swore off the union suits decades ago after an early trout fishing trip with snow on the ground. Didn't want to "get nekkid" to take a crap and try as I might just couldn't maneuver. Time ran out as things reached critical mass, if you know what I mean. In a panic I pulled out my knife and, well, made the escape hatch "more useable". They weren't much use for anything other than dust rags after that.

Never wore another union suit. Sad, they were a nice red color too.

Don't wear non hiking shoes in the car ride to the trail head and expect to put on your hikers when you get there...If you do, make sure you didn't leave them at home...4 hours away..

When fly in a bush plane 100 miles into the Alaskan bush, don't leave your rifle sling in the pilot's office.

KC

Never leave your backpack behind.

It costed me my Dall sheep ram two years ago.

Never again.

I could write a book on how to screw up a hunt... here's a few "boners" I've pulled over the years.

1) Never set up your bivy in the middle of a well established pack trail, even if its the only flat spot you can find on the side of the mountain. Woke up in the middle of the night a few years back, squirming in my bivy, couldn't get the zipper open, poked my head out to see a horse standing over me spooked and rearing up because some giant green worm (me) was quirming and thrashing in the middle of the pack trail... thought the outfitter that was on the horse was going to shoot me... I would have.

2) Make sure you have the right fuel for your stove, canister fuel does not work on a liquid fuel stove, and visa versa... remember that when you swap out the stove in your pack, you have to do the same with the fuel. Mountain house meals are pretty crunchy when eaten un-hydrated.... and talk about constipation!

3) NEVER prime/pre-heat a liquid fuel stove under your tent's vestibule... yes the fabric is flammable, and yes it burns fast. The warning on the label is their for a reason.

4) Make sure you have an arrow nocked on your bow string before you draw on that bull...

5) Mice LOVE the taste of Wilderness Athlete berry flavored drink mix, especially when they have to knaw through your bite valve to get to it.

6) Pull the ivories out of your elks skull before you take the last 5 trip back to the truck...

7) Side arms are nothing but dead weight if you forgot to put the bullets in it before you left the trailhead. Although the butt of the grip does make for a fine hammer to drive in tent stakes.

8) When you are squatted down trying to stalk in on the herd you've been dogging all day long, and you get the urge to fart, just be careful that's all you do because that position puts a little extra pressure on the bowels and you may get more than you bargained for.

9) Make sure to stop at the nearest stream crossing to clean up your arse after you had to wipe with dry spruce needles a few hours earlier high up on the mountain... otherwise extreme chaffing and sphincter irritation will plague you for days. Note to self- always remember the toilet paper.

10) And last but not least, NEVER and I mean NEVER lock your car keys inside your vehicle when you're trailhead is over 12 miles from the nearest town, and you don't have cell phone service...

Good times...

Once your pack is loaded at home, don't assume you have everything, go to another room, empty it, and check the checklist one more time.

Don't forget your bug spray.

If you're packing fishing tackle, don't forget your reel.

Bring BOTH socks.

Tent pegs are useful.

So are the poles. Otherwise it's a sack with a zipper. That sweats.

After breaks, check your pack for rocks. Hiking partners are evil.

You need 2 more packages of jerky than you realize. Another box of matches and s' more toilet paper aren't a waste either.

When you warm up water for a shower, do enough to get the soap back off, too.

Funny stuff there. I'd love to share a campfire with you, and listen to more...

This is turning into a cool thread, in fact it could turn into a pretty fun book.

Good lessons learned here! Funny sh*t, too!

check you pack one more time for your silverware. i hate loaning out my spoon.

and you hate loaning me your coffee cup.

even if you dont oil your bolt and trigger check for function after a wet snow anyway. i had to hold the action over the stove for an hour to thaw it. [ glad i checked cause it did go bang when the time came ] ya cant be too sure!

tell me again how warm that water was when you cleaned up

Funny stuff there. I'd love to share a campfire with you, and listen to more... [/quote]

Those are just a few of the funny ones that were really just an oversight or inconvenience. I've got a few that could have had much more serious nature... like a pack string and a jeep rolling off the mountain (in the same trip), or a deep hand laceration from boning a mule deer with frozen hands and rushed/bad judgement when using a sharp object (thank God for duct tape), or tying your rain gear around hanging quarters to try to keep the bears off overnight, then have it start raining (the slushy semi-frozen kind) a couple miles down the trail and ending up hypothermic since all you have on is an underarmor heat gear short sleeved shirt... or leaving your late grandfathers buck knife on the hood of your truck only to remember it the next day 8 miles into the back country, worrying about it for a week, then getting back to the truck at the end of the hunt to realize your worst fears came true and someone swiped it! The worst was having my teenaged son become hypothermic way back in the backcountry because I packed too light to save weight and didn't put any cold weather clothing in our packs... had to teach him about sharing body heat to save his life... and about being stupid just trying to save a couple of pounds in the pack...

Great thread!

Don't head out into cold weather with nothing but food you have to cook. Being hypothermic and stupid in the snow is not the time to be HAVING to get the stove lit .

When you crap, always have your bow or rifle next to you.

When you stalk and take a shot at an antelope, then head back to your pack for the rangefinder after you miss, don't lay your rifle down in tall grass.....

Don't let a stranger that you're helping touch any of your gear. Two things happened here:

a. This guy shot an elk and had "back problems" so when I went up to just help him gut and quarter he suddenly couldn't carry anything. You guessed it, I carried out that stupid mother@$*@)'s elk for him. (Of course, he was probably telling his buddies at home that he got some stupid mother@)$*@@ to carry his elk out for him.) Anyway, I wanted him to contribute in even a small way, so I strapped the head onto my packboard and made him carry it - small raghorn 3 point - while I continued to work on cutting up the rest of the elk. He swore it was over 80 pounds (probably 30 pounds TOPS), started across a hillside and did a HUGE flop bouncing down through the timber with MY packboard attached to him. And I mean he was yardsaleing with all his gear ripping off. I guess that was kind of gratifying but I wish he didn't have my pack on when he did it.

b. Got the last quarter back to his pickup and was going back to retrieve his pack and left my packboard there. His wife was in the pickup and, being helpful, decided to try to get the blood off of it (it's a packboard and it's SUPPOSED to have blood on it.) She disassembled it in such a way that it took me two hours to get it right again. She was annoying but ingenious, I guess.

Honest to God, the guy sounded like Elmer Fudd when he talked, as well. Lazy, uncoordinated, a braggert, horrible stutter - someone probably should have put the brakes on when they were issuing hunter's ed cards. But he did have a kind, well-meaning wife (uglier than sin, though)

When you are hunting elk only shoot one at a time, especially 3 miles back, and no horses.

I came across a goofy looking bull and his cows fairly late in the season after there had been a pretty good snow. Well I had two tags in my pocket and thought it would be a great chance to make use of said tags. Made for a long pack out the next day, especially when my buddy who was helping me pack mine out found a bull to shoot as well. 3 elk in two days was a LOT of work.

Oh, and to make matters worse (almost forgot this part) I had a puppy at home that I'd feed in the garage. The packboard was sitting there and the dog ate the fricken' straps off of it. I guess that lady must've not gotten all the blood off afterall.

I don't mean the dog chewed them up, I mean she consumed them and pooped out packboard straps. I just threw the damn thing away.

Never, EVER lay your shotgun, rifle, flyrod, or ANY other gear on top of the car while loading other gear, dogs, etc. into the car You WILL drive off with something on top. Not a matter of IF, just WHEN.
I've driven off with a shotgun, a flyrod and various travel mugs, sunglasses and other assortment of smaller gear.

"I just threw the damn thing away"... Which one,the dog or the packboard?..lol

Both.....

Yeah, wanted to but I still have the dog. Danged thing eyeballs my backpacks all the time now - I can't trust her with them. That was a few years ago and I guess she's smart in a dumb kind of way.

not really pertaining to hunting but this happened outdoors. me and a friend were early scouting. when you're 40 years old and 6'6" 260, the fun you used to have riding trees down isn't the same as when you were a kid. i told my buddy watch this(famous last words) ran down a steep ridge jumped and grabbed a sapling tree. that thing bent then snapped and i looked like the old skier on wide world of sports rolling down the hill.
man that hurt.

I understand the same thing is true of your boom box you're using for an electronic predator call.

... I won't name any names but if you're paying attention, you know you.

But I guess I could say I found out the hard way 'bout binoculars. I needed new ones anyway (TM).

Don't hunt the morning of your wife's very first Lamaze class that she expects you to attend, 'cause you might just get your deer. Nothing like a long run through the woods with full gear.

Don't forget to dig a small drainage trench around your wall tent when rain is coming. Unless you like living swampy I guess.

Definitely don't forget to look for cactus before you sit down. I had some interesting skin geometry for a while, there was a nice safe rectangle from my hunting license inside a large angry red patch of prickles.

Do have a backup travel plan. And when your travel plan depends on others, make sure they have a backup plan. We got stranded in the Weminuche Wilderness on a short backpack trip getting dropped off the D&SNGRR. Mudslide covered the tracks. They did eventually fetch us, but we were prepping for a really long walk and an extra day off work. Long version here:

https://davestories.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/wilderness-hobos/

sd

Obviously - you didn't need it, and it might have gotten you into trouble if you'd had it...

Never hunt solo with only one knife and one compass.

Huge +1 on that.

Most miserable hunt I had was when I was first starting out. Took a buddy with me, who was also green. We stomped up to alpine and doubled up on bucks. I had my knife, no sharpener. My buddy lost his knife on the way up the mountain. Had it in his pocket and it fell out apparently.

I dulled my cheap knife on my buck, boning it out. His buck was pure misery to be quartered and boned. It sucked.

Now I take 2 quality knives, and a small sharpener.

I've gotten in trouble for not enough food/water. I've drank some suspect water, but haven't gotten the Beaver Fever yet. Brutal pack outs without food sucks, especially once you hit the wall. Now I take extra foods. A few salty snacks too. Salt pills help too.

Dave, I liked the story, and the blog as a whole!

On one of my early backpacking trips as a teen we got rained on pretty much the entire way to the lake we intended to fish. We got camp set up but didn't realize we had set our tent up in a depression of sorts. The water bed concept with condensation is not fun....

Don't island camp on the Colville River in Alaska. There was light rain where we were caribou and moose hunting, but it must have deluged upstream on the North slope of the Brooks Range. Three of us were trapped on a 100 yard long island for a few days when the river rose about 5' and went into full flood. To top it off we had a sow and cub grizzly on the island with us one night sniffing the tent. We were bowhunting, but did have an 870 with slugs along. I didn't shoot but sure as heck used a lot of adrenalin up that night with them circling the tent. One of my hunting buddies never slept a wink in the dark the rest of the trip. At least we had a guard who kept the meager willow fire tended.

The drop camp operator finally delivered by super cup drop a small weather checked raft that we used to go to shore to hunt caribou. We did miss the main migration that swam by us crossing the Colville on the days we were trapped on the little island. One had horns with giant red star shaped tops that still come to mind as I type this!

Ive had other encounters while armed and didnt "get into trouble" with those. In this case I got lucky, very lucky and will not expect to get so lucky again.

I have said time and again, the best bear defense is your brain, eyes and ears backed up by a weapon you can shoot well.

While you may feel otherwise, I have my preferences and will continue to use them as I see fit.

Don't tease moose during the rut.

Little brother had a habit of using a sock when he needed "TP". After coming home with a cold foot a time or two, he started carrying the appropriate paper product.

Well....

He also learned that holding on to a pine tree to take care of said business was bad news after spending the rest of the day picking toilet paper off his hands.

No matter how much water you need to carry in waterless country, don't leave the minimal, core survival kit behind...even if it's a "cakewalk" day hunt.

That was a long, cold January Idaho night for me, my 12 year old son, and my hunting partner.

1) just cause the twigs snapped when you breaking them, doesn't mean they will fire up in a kifaru stove.....water soaked frozen wood don't burn
2) if it took a GPS to get your azz in, it'll take one to get it out (fresh batterys, don't drop GPS into a snow bank)
3) good idea to top off the tank before heading into the woods
4) DO NOT share a tent with a dog that may have eaten chocolate
5) Never climb into a treestand that you didn't put up, and never fail to use a harness
6) never head light a string of half wild tied up pack ponies when you leave the tent for natures call in the night, that outfitter is still cussing me
7)Account for every round of ammo BEFORE you attempt to board a plane home after a hunt, TSA has NO sense of humor
8)drying out boots or socks by campfire is tricky, likely to result in destruction of said items
9)if you are fishing ANYWHERE in ALASKA, the game cops are watching you, read that whole damn book including footnotes
More will come to me,
Don

If you carry a mountain house and stove, don't forget the necessary stove to boil the water. Cold mountain houses are great.

BBerg:

I'll go you one better on that. NEVER LET YOUR BACKPACK GET OUT OF YOUR SIGHT. There are many situations where the gear in that pack, or lack thereof, can mean the difference between life and death or more commonly the difference between a casual-comfortable outing and a miserable experience. For the same reason, I always carry minimum survival gear in the pockets of my pants; fire stuff, Swiss Army knife, foil survival blanket, etc. , and I never leave camp without rain gear.

KC

+1

or put your hand down on the ground, or crawl through the grass on a stalk.

I wonder how many times I've regretfully forgotten that?

KC

I just went and threw all my bib overalls in the trash. ROFLMAO

Don't set-up your backpacker tent next to a corridor that's being used by generation after generation after generation of bears that have never been hunted. Tim Treadwell and Amie Huguenard can attest to that.

Don't grab Devil's Club.

It's better to fall 100s of feet than arrest yourself with DC.

Laffin'! My first experience with the stuff was in a self arrest. I agree!

Panic will do that!
lol....

Always have a backup to your water filtration. On a trip in Arizona over the fourth of July my pump broke miles back in a wilderness area. What was supposed to be a relaxing trip turned into trying to boil sludge green water with a jetboil two cups at a time with a small canister of fuel. Needless to say it worked and I made it out... Lesson learned.

Yeah, isn't it funny how panic kind of ruins a guy's day? Ditto with me on the devils club experience. I hate that stuff. Not even the cholla patches of Sonoran compare with the jungle cluster of devils club distributed among dense alder.

There's a canyon in Unit 7 that used to hold some huge Dall rams and probably still does, and the whole way in to there is a literal jungle of alder and devils club with only bear trails for access. Horrible hike, that one is.

Don't assume that other people understand that once you hook a winch to them they stay hooked up.

I ran into a kid stuck down a snowy road 50 feet from pavement. He had been digging for a while and was eager to get out before someone spotted him I guess. I hooked up to him and pulled him back to the road. I'm about to get out and unhook him when he decides that he has traction now and takes off down the road, still tied to my winch, with me honking and hollering trying to get him to stop. At least I was able to get the Jeep out of park and into neutral before he hit the end of the cable.

I now have a little more discussion with folks before I pull cable.

Really secure water to your backpack. I made it ~ 2/3 up them moutain with 6L of water on a high country mule deer hunt where water would be an issue. Very disappointing to take the pack off at the end of the brutal hike and realize our for-sure water source was gone. No idea how I didn't hear that thud. Scraped old snow off the ground in the shade on the north slopes for drinking water - lots of extra grit and work required. Not recommended.

When the oil service truck driver that runs the soggy forest service road everyday tells you to bring out your chains, you really need to put them on(make sure you have a set). Things are about to get ugly on the road and 4WD won't save you.

When the lines are close on the topo map, the terrain is steep. Hunting new units every year to date, my scouting is done primarily from afar. The initial hike in always sucks as I relearn map reading 101. The silver lining is I usually don't see other (idiots) hunting near me.

Bring both boots.

a .270 and a .280 are not interchangable no matter how far you have driven or hiked.

Make sure any connectors needed for anything are actually there, especially gas stoves.

When your cheap azz range finder starts to slide off of a rock and over a steep cliff a 20foot fall is not worth saving it.

When you do chase your range finder over the cliff a loaded Kifaru pack does a great job at cushioning your fall, plus its comforting to know you can still eat lunch when it takes you three hours to figure out a way back up the cliff.

Check your emergency baby wipes to make sure they are not dehydrated.

Dont eat a whole bunch of mountain house meals without drinking a ton of water, your colon will thank you later.

Sleeping like a burrito in a tight bivy tent sucks.

Surgical gloves left in the pack for a year or two will totally shred when you pull them on.

Pigs may not actually be dead despite not moving for several minutes, they might just be saving themselves until you pull out the camera and grab the head to pose them.

Dont leave your clip at home (that second shot you wont get could miss you your best muley to date)

Learn to shoot on steep uphill/downhill (the first shot might not go over the back of said "best muley to date")

Dont forget your raingear when hunting the West Coast

Check for cactus around "groin" level when gettin prone for shot

If your goto knife has a camo handle, dont put it down in the dark

Don't hold on to a hemlock for stability when taking a dump in steep terrain. The sap superglues the toilet paper to hour hand.

Remember to take your rifle with you on your pre-daylight hike in to your stand site carrying all your gear. It is a critical piece of gear and won't work left back in the car.


Also, breathable raingear doesn't.........breath that is. At least not on a 2 mile hike UP the mountain. It will rain INSIDE the raingear.

Don't pee right where you're getting ready to sit on the ground. Yeah, I know, Duh...

Don't Guesstimate yardage on the only elk you have seen all day, take the extra 2.5 seconds, pull rangefinder out, and use it! Just sayin...

Helps to read this thread where others are as brilliant as I am. Like last year where I liked twenty miles into a glacier and found the only canister I carried for my stove was empty. Another time I drove two days to my hunting grounds to find I forgot..... the tent? still dont know how that happened. This year I shot a caribou and pulled out my game saw to find out it was missing a bolt to hold the blade on and wouldnt work. Thankfully I had a small sawblade on my skinner that I managed to use. Never have forgot the TP though. Some things are just to important to forget...

This thread has been a fun one for sure.

Back in the early 70's my brother and I packed into Icicle Creek and after struggling the entire day from the old Homestead Lodge at the end of Eagle River Road - where the visitor center now sits - to a little shelf in the alders right alongside upper Icicle Creek, and we discovered that my brother had forgot to tie his sleeping bag to the bottom of his packframe. Even still, we toughed it out for 16 days while trying to kill a couple of B&C rams that were hanging in the cliffs above Icicle Glacier.

Don't buy the mittens that have the little magnets that hold the finger flaps back just because they are quieter than the velcro ones. It turns out that while handheld GPS units use satellites to determine your location, they evidently are equipped with magnetic compasses to determine your direction. I was not aware of this. Knowing your exact location on earth without knowing which way is which is a very special way to get lost. I figured it out about the time the sun came up. Later that day, after the sun went down, I learned that my GPS unit's compass, much like a regular compass, also doesn't work properly if you hold it out in front of you pointing up. Like when the batteries get low so the backlight shuts off to conserve power so you hold it up high in front of your headlamp which is partially obscurred by the bill of your ball cap which you put on to keep the snow out your eyes. Long day. Moral of the story is that it's ok to trust your GPS, just know its limitations. And make sure you choose a hunting partner that is good with directions.

I cannot agree more. Same thing happened to me. Now I never leave camp without it, not even for number two at night. Last time I got bluff charged

Snubbie Said: "Don't butcher your deer in the field, put in game bags, put game bags in PLASTIC bags to keep pack clean, then seal it all tightly while hiking out, then load closed pack in car and drive home...

...without first cooling the meat and/or taking the meat out of the pack upon arrival at the car.

I now keep a cooler in the car when hunting. Also probably a good idea to bypass the plastic bag and just wash the pack out later, especially if it's warm. Don't seal up that heat!"

Excellent advice Snubbie!

When you decide at the last moment to take your partner's vehicle instead of yours, along with all your other "stuff" it's best to remember your rifle.Figuring this out a few hours later upon exiting said partner's truck (opening morning) is less helpful!
Remembering "lots" of TP is better than sacrificing large chunks of your tshirt (which is always noticed by your partner back at camp).