My First Year With My Exo Hunting Pack

The Evolution of My Hunting Pack

This is painful to admit, but I haven’t always used a backpack in my hunting life. In fact, until 1996, when my dad and I went to Wyoming to hunt elk, I didn’t even own a pack other than a book bag! At that time, I picked up an external frame Coleman Peak that I figured I could use to pack meat from the mountain. Sure, I threw raingear and some water and food in there and lugged it all around the mountain, but I used it just in case we needed to pack out meat. My progression into backpacking my camp into the backcountry was years and years away!

I was taught the credo “if you can’t drag it to the truck, don’t shoot it” when I was very young. We only hunted deer and pronghorn then, if that sounds silly to most. The first animal I had to pack was a ginormous cow elk that I killed a couple of miles downhill from my truck. My wife, dad, and I split the loads up so that my daypack made two trips (Dad and me) and the Coleman also was down for a pair (Tammy and me). We shuttled, rested, cut meat, and basically coordinated. I figured since I killed the damned thing so far from the truck, I had to make two trips to their one each. Only fair, and I was so grateful for Dad cutting up the carcass and Tammy taking a heavy load out.

My First Real Game Pack

Sometime later I bought an Osprey backpack that was ultralight. After an antelope and a couple of mule deer, I realized that the pack was topped out somewhere near 50 pounds and that was a painful load in the ultralight pack. By sheer luck, my name was drawn at the local Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation dinner some years later. What do you know but I was now the proud owner of both my first pair of Kenetrek boots and an Eberlestock “Just One” hunting pack!! What a massive haul that elk dinner provided me.

The Eberlestock and I have become close friends over the intervening 8 years. It has packed bull and cow elk (many cows), deer, pronghorn, and desert sheep. It is rugged and strong and can carry more than I can. I absolutely love that hunting pack. It does have one drawback; it tips the scales at just under 8 pounds. This works pretty fine for day hunts and short overnighters, but it chaps my butt a little to start out empty at just under 8 pounds (Eberlestock claims 7.5). I love the built-in rifle scabbard, many perfectly placed pockets and side pouches, and it expands to carry too much venison for my hips and back! I’m not ditching it, just adding another pack to our arsenal.

A Small Problem

So the day my son killed his wilderness cow, I had a pretty darned good hunch before we started that he’d tag out. It was less than a three mile hike from the truck to the area we’d start hunting, so I gambled. I brought barely enough food and water for the day, only one each of: binoculars, rangefinder, and rifle (I later found out there was a stowaway pair of binoculars smuggled in by a nameless member of our three-person party). My intention was to go in as light as possible and bring the cow out in one trip.

Well, all went to plan and my son had his cow on the ground about 25 minutes before sunrise. Perfect, and now we just had to get her home to the freezer. I loaded my Eberlestock heavy and the Coleman barely less so. I set my son up with the Coleman and fit the remainder into Tammy’s Osprey. Everything just barely fit. In hindsight, I should have given my son 10 more pounds and taken 5 from each of my wife and my packs! He killed the damned thing, after all. What we learned on that trip is we could really use one more strong pack as the Osprey was not up for it.

Where to Start?

I looked at all the big names in hunting packs. The new hunting pack had to be capable of 80 or more pounds of payload. I also wanted the lightest pack possible while holding that bar high. Finally, if the pack isn’t comfortable, it is a near waste of time to dwell on all the fancy stats. Pain is pain, and I knew it would come down to that most of all. I only hoped that I had enough good packs to choose from to find the most comfortable one for me. Also, it had to fit my wife who happens to be ½-inch taller than me. That way we can swap between the Eberlestock and new pack as needed.

When it comes to mountain packs, Exo Mountain Gear, Kifaru, and Stone Glacier sit at the top of the heap. They sit there with, Mystery Ranch, Sitka, Eberlestock, Kuiu, and even Badlands. I’m sure I’ve left off an option or two, but these are some of the heavy hitters. By all accounts, the EXO is capable of 100-plus pound loads. I turned to weight and comfort, since this would be plenty for me. My EXO K3 4800 weighs in at a pretty sweet 5.25 pounds without the top bag. This is only a few ounces heavier than my ultralight Osprey backpacking rig. The Stone Glacier Sky 5900 comes in at a 5.5 pound threshold, with the top bag…and the EXO top bag brings it to 5.6 pounds. Even-Steven as they say, with the Stone Glacier adding some volume.

Why Exo Mountain Gear Hunting Pack?

I had eliminated most of the other packs either due to weight or comfort. It really came down to the Stone Glacier or the EXO packs. Both are stout and light and both can handle everything I’d need of them. Mystery Ranch, Kuiu, and Kifaru didn’t quite pass the “lightness test” for me, although they are all great packs, and I wasn’t sold on the Sitka system. You can take exception to my thought process in selecting down to the EXO and the Stone Glacier, but this is how I arrived at my top two contenders. If one of those wasn’t comfortable, then I’d be diving back down into the other brands.

When it came to comfort, for me the EXO was nearly perfect. There is no doubt that my Osprey backpack is the most comfortable pack I’ve ever owned or tried. Unfortunately the suspension isn’t up to hauling 100 pounds of meat! The EXO is the second most comfortable pack I’ve ever tried on. Combined with the titanium frame, massive adjustability, and thoroughly designed meat hauling system, I knew the EXO would work for me. Also, because EXO sells their packs directly to consumers, there are less markups en-route to the consumer. Does that equate to higher value? I don’t know, but they claim they pass on the extra value to the customer.

My First Year with my New Hunting Pack

The EXO hunting pack saw use in the field on day trips only in 2020. I never had the chance to pack any meat out with it so it was relegated to carrying my bow, rifle, or spotting scope setup along with food, water, and some important gear. I never had the pack over 20 pounds in 2020 so it is pretty hard to judge. It never caused me any discomfort as I logged maybe 40 to 50 miles in it. I left the top bag at home and kept the pack as light as possible and it did exactly what I wanted from it. It made it through two mule deer archery seasons, one rifle cow elk season, one archery bull elk season, and some limited use during muley rifle hunting. Not a rigorous workout, but enough to appreciate the warm-weather performance and the light weight. Sweat is always an issue in warm weather and this is where the Stone Glacier lumbar support left me concerned.

I suppose I should consider using the EXO on one of my backpacking trips, but the darned Osprey works so well and my multi-day trips average around 26 total pounds, with water. One thing I noticed is I could cinch this pack down on my hips to exert extreme pressure there. While that helps with bigger loads, I finally relented and loosened the hip belt for comfort. The pack comes with shims for the lumbar support and I may try dumping one shim this coming year. Maybe people who do big-pack many-day trips could use this pack to really amp up your load without having to have a system over 5.6 pounds? Not for me, but worth a thought for many, I suppose.

Recommending the Exo Hunting Pack

So, do I recommend this EXO K3 4800 to others? I don’t know about recommending anything to anyone…seems like too much pressure to me. I know I absolutely believe I chose the right hunting pack for myself. It is light, massively stout, and super comfortable as it fits me very well. The 4800 allows you to open a zipper into the big main compartment and I love that. It has several pockets and well thought out places for your Nalgene bottles, a waterproof membrane between the pack and the hydration bladder, and options for bow or rifle carriers. I used the rifle pocket to support both my bow and my tripod-mounted spotting scope. The between-bag-and-frame meat packing system is a MUST. It is similar to others except you can access it without undoing the load lifters…pretty cool.

For me, this pack just works. I absolutely love it. This pack carries 120 pound loads, if third-party accounts can be believed. I can’t even imagine trying a load like that, so I seriously doubt I can push this system to its load limits. All of that and it is super lightweight and comfortable. I’ll say one final thing: this hunting pack is made of fairly beefy fabrics. It is not a flimsy fly-weight pack and it should withstand tons of drops, scrapes, drags, and falls over the years. I’m sure this pack will outlast me. Put simply, I’d buy it again if I lost it.