Breaking Rules, Tack, and Everything Else: My DIY Horseback Hunting Chronicle

[yycyak]

Sounds like she needs a few months of isolation.

send her buddy to a neighbors and let her pout.

That's exactly what needs to happen. Might send her to a cowboy friend to visit for a while.

 

[missjordan]

Some of the nonsense the mare is throwing in the round pen will go away with consistent work and firm boundaries. If your work schedule doesn’t allow you to do that then some help will speed things up for you. Really this applies to both horses. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish over the long term with some basic groundwork.

The herd bound problem is a lack of self confidence in the horse. Which also can correct itself too with consistent quality work and boundaries. Eventually she will see you as a leader and have the skills to emotionally regulate herself too and it’ll get better.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[huntsman22]

Life is too short to deal with mares......

 

[yycyak]

No real updates other than admin.

Have a trip locked in for first week of May. Going spring bear hunting, although I think it'll be more camping/horse stuff as I shake things down vs hardcore hunting, but we will see. Farrier is booked for next week. Might be a solo one, as my one hunting pal can't get the time off.

Been doing some gear repair and reading in the mean time. Really enjoy Joe Back and Smoke Elser's stuff, and re-read them frequently, but a lot of it is over my head. (Smoke sure does love his manty's...) Speaking of books, I was excited that I managed to get my hands on the following:

So this George Bettas book was a good read. One of my takeaways was that the "Classic" books seem to be written for guys who want to be packers first. I don’t. I want to hunt first, pack second. That doesn’t mean I don’t take care of my horses or enjoy them, because of course I do. But the horses are there to help me hunt, not to run some kind of freight outfit. So it's sorta like the difference between running an 18 wheeler vs a minivan: Both haul stuff, but the approaches are slightly different.

Which is why George's comment here stood out to me:

https://imgur.com/XcohaU9

So at the risk of sounding like an industry knob, I'm trying to focus on creating my own sorta "system" (because everything these days is a system...) focused on hunting, and not being a packer. First step will be avoiding the yard sale gongshows that I created in the fall every time I went out. So at the suggestion of an earlier comment, the goal is EVERYTHING packed, weighed, and prepped at home. Then staged in the truck in a way that I can almost immediately hit the trail.

Or that's the theory. But like Mike Tyson says: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

 

[bmart2622]

Thats what I do. Another little tip is to make a list in your phone or laminated hard copy that you can keep of the contents of each manty that has nonconsumable gear in it. That way when you go to back up to come out you will know you have everything balanced

 

[yycyak]

My Note: So straight up I realize that by documenting this here, I'm about to get absolutely shredded by the guys that know what they are doing. And it's deserved. Like they say: Reality is the graveyard of the Good Idea Fairies. And this last week stacked up a body count.


The Trip
For context: Loaded up for a 3-night shake-down trip/bear hunt. Had gear, dog, rifle, horses. Off we went. I don't want to turn this into a gear review thread, so I'll keep comments brief.

So I started off the trip excited about all the Good Ideas I'd accumulated during the off season. (So many Good Ideas!) I'd left the house in a bit of a hurry, and most of my pack gear (panniers and such) was at the trailer, and I wasn't able to pre-pack/pre-weigh anything. So once again, it was a yard sale at the trail head. But that didn't bother me too much this time. I was in no rush, and wanted to make sure my packs were properly balanced, and that I didn't forget anything critical.

Pack horse was loaded and rigged with my patent-pending NRS-Strap "barrel hitch" around the panniers, and cam straps over the top duffles. "This works slick" I said to myself. **Morgan Freeman narrator-voice: For those of you who know what you're doing, you can already see where this is headed.**

So with that we hit the trail. It was mostly up-hill, and uneventful. I did a mix of riding and walking, and then we got into scrub poplar. It sucked. Trail saw came out a few times. Panniers got a nice intro to semi-mountain country.

We did some ridgeline cruising for a while, and then made it to the north side timber, which was all spruce and fir trees. More walking through timber (limbs too low to the ground to ride), with Molly The Pack Horse (MTPH) smacking into trees with the panniers.

Water
The whole time I was generally headed in the direction of water, one valley over. I'm told that without water, you can't really do this horse thing, so you're always keeping water for your critters in the back of your mind.

So we continue down the north side of the ridge, slowly making our way down to the creek at the bottom of the valley.

But, even a newb like me can tell there isn't a creek here. It's just dried up dirt. Drought has been a thing where I'm at for a while now, and winter didn't do much for moisture this year. "Hmm, okay, this sucks, but we will figure it out."

This is about the time I feel the pack horse lead rope start to slide in my hand. Slowly at first, and then it becomes an immovable object as my riding horse keeps going forward, and the pack horse doesn't. I look back, and there is MTPH, four feet planted, and her whole load rolled onto her side...

Holy F***
So pucker factor goes to 10/10. I know what happens at this point. The pack horse explodes, your gear gets destroyed and thrown all over the mountain, and you pray that your horse doesn't get hurt during this process.

Call it beginners luck, but MTPH just stands there, eyeballing me and waiting for me to fix her situation. She doesn't blow, stomp, dance, nothing. Just stands there. WTF.

Anyway, I manage to start popping cam straps. Or, try to... Hmm, suddenly the Good Idea Fairy doesn't seem so smart: These are hard to un-do under tension, and that's if you can even get at them. And if I had a horse that was flipping out, instead of just standing there judging my soul, I wouldn't be able to un-do those at all. (More on that later.)

Anyway, short version is I get everything undone, re-rigged, and we start walking to valley bottom. Yes, walking. I was a bit adenaline'd up after this whole thing, and wanted to take things easy for a bit.

Camp.
We walked up over a small draw, and found a stock tank. Horses weren't too sure about it at first, but figure it out and drink their fill.

We continue another 30 min down to the bottom of the valley, where there's supposed to be a decent creek. But unfortunately for us, no creek. The good news, though, is that there is another stock tank (well, tractor tire this time), so we do technically have water. It'll have to do. I set up the high-line (this was a first for me), get the horses and horse gear organized, new tipi tent and aliexpress titanium stove set up. All the usual stuff you have to do.

Then, I enjoyed a short evening of observing elk, having some beef jerky, and drinking tea subtly flavoured with hints of stock tank water...

Morning After
I didn't sleep worth a crap, as the tea had caffeine in it. Smart life choice. But it was cool listening to horse bells all night. You pros are right - You start to *want* to hear those bells, as it means all is good. Silence becomes a bad thing.

It's one thing to still hear those bells in the morning, but it's another to open the tent flap and see this:

Great feeling to know you're not stranded.

Dilemma
So the night before, as I'm untacking the horses, I see that MTPH has rubbed the hair off a small spot on her withers. 100% this is a function of me being a shit packer. So I make the call to cut the trip short, as I feel this has now become more of a "How the heck do I get out of this valley without causing MTPH more problems and rolling more packs."

I could ride her out, but with the pack roll from the day before in my head, I'm not confident I want to put that contraption on my rookie riding horse. If that rolls on him, I'm very confident the outcome will be very different (and very bad for all involved.)

So, time to pay the Mountain Tax. Panniers are strategically cached, and I'll go back for them in a week. They weigh about 17lbs each, so dropping them saves 34lbs right there. I doubled the grain ration that morning (extra feed wasn't needed since we were heading back to the truck), so that dropped another 8lbs or so. The thought here was that by lightening the load, the easier the ride out will be on MTPH.

Modified Gear
My "top pack" duffles now become soft panniers, and get filled with everything. My day pack now becomes the most embarrassing and dumb looking top-pack for stuff like sleeping bag, extra shirts, all the light and fluffy stuff. OP Comment: I'm cringing including this picture, cause it's ******* janky and embarrassing, but it's here cause I guess I want to be transparent about the lessons learned.

Pack Out
Again, I'll keep this short by saying the ride out went well, until it didn't.

Dropped my phone without noticing, so tied up horses to go find it. (Started backtracking and eventually found it - That's why there's all these pretty pictures here.)

But the biggest (and sketchiest) issue was rolling packs. I weighed the shit out of those duffles for the ride out - They were exactly 44.5lbs each. I wanted to be extra diligent that everything was balanced, given the previous day's jackpot. And on the up-hill ride out, everything mostly worked. The visual wasn't pretty compared to those sleek and sexy "real" outfits I've seen here on the Slide, but we got up out of the valley without an issue. I even got to enjoy a bit of the "This sure beats hiking" feeling.

But, once we were up out of the valley, and on the downhill trail back to the truck, problems started. Skipping the fluff, the pack rolled twice. (Not to ruin the ending, but "why" this happened has been subsequently been sorted out thanks to some post-trip help by an outfitter friend.) But it's a god-awful feeling when this happens, and scary as ****. Lesson learned: You HAVE to be able to get your packed stuff of a horse FAST. (More on this in the next post.)

All I can say is I'm incredibly grateful to MTPH who, instead of bucking and trashing gear, just stood there and waited for me to fix the shit-show (Instead of stomping me and my gear into oblivion like she should have...)

But after about 9km of riding, we made it back to the truck. Gear and horses were loaded without incident, and we made it back home.

RIP Good Idea Fairy - May 2025.

***

Summary: Trip was a failure as a hunting trip. Trip was a failure as a "horse packing" trip. But I suppose this trip was a success from a "learn stuff in a safe-ish environment". Happier to have this disaster of a trip happen on a casual, fair-weather, glorified camping trip vs. in the fall on a sheep hunt.

Some adjustments to gear will be made, and another trip in similar terrain will be attempted.

 

[yycyak]

LESSONS LEARNED

So I'll just say here that I got darn lucky this trip, and am very grateful that it's mostly just my ego that got bruised. But some takeaways:

#1 - You Need An Ejection Seat
Yes, NRS cam straps work. They actually worked way better than I thought, were super convenient, and you don't need to know any knots. Perfect for a rookie, right? I had spent the winter thinking I'm so clever, because I tested this out a bunch in the round pen, and it worked great.

And, even when we got to the woods, my loads were bashed through nasty poplar and fir stuff, and didn't move or come undone. They functionally work, and are really rugged. I'm so smart, right?

But, you can't get those straps undone quickly. And, that was with a horse who was calm. It became glaringly obvious that when something goes sideways, it happens fast, and usually in the worst spot possible, and you need to be able to dump your cargo fast. Otherwise you're likely going to hurt your horse, and probably badly.

The other issue with the cam straps was "Order of load": I pack the off-side first, then the on-side. If you're trying to get off-side stuff off (Because it's the safest/most accessible or whatever, ask me how I learned this...), you can't - The lashings etc are trapped by your on-side stuff. Out comes the knife.

So you need a sort of "Ejection Seat": A way so that when SHTF, you pull a thing, and poof: Disaster averted (ish.)

For what it's worth, I can now throw a decent basket hitch and barrel hitch.

#2 - Tighten Your Latigos
So this is more applicable to the pack saddle setup that I run. I've started calling it "Yukon-Style" as that's how a good chunk of the Yukon outfitters run their tack.

What I mean by this is that there is no britchin or crouper or anything like that. Instead, it's a breast collar, front cinch, and rear cinch. But, the rear cinch is really, really wide (think oversized roper style), and run across the curve of the belly, sitting about mid-way. (Don't make it a flank strap though.)

The key with rigging things this way, and most likely where/why I got in my wrecks, was I didn't have my cinches/latigos tight enough. The rear cinch crept forward on the belly on the down-hills, which let the tree slip forward, and then everything rolled. (Side-note: Thank goodness for those breast collars, because otherwise I'd have had a full-on saddle-under-belly shitshow.)

I can't articulate "how tight" to do them, as this is more of a feel thing. I have been shown The Way by some more experienced people since this trip, and will report back on how things go.

But in summary, if you're a newb (like me), you probably think you've done the cinches up too tight (especially the back cinch) when you likely don't have them tight enough. Give them an extra tug.

#3 - Slick Nylon Rigging (Bad)
The nylon rigging I used for my pack saddle works. But, the kind I have is the slippery kind (bad.) If you're running nylon, you likely want to run the gritty/rough feeling kind. In terms of this trip, running slick nylon rigging paired with a quick-release latigo knot, my cinches likely started to work some slack into them.

Fun fact: The NRS straps I talked about earlier? Yeah, they have the Rough texture you're looking for. Mine have now been cut up and repurposed for rigging. They appear to not slip compared to the red stuff you see in the pictures

#4 - Wood Panniers
These work, but if you're doing any brush-busting, I'd suggest doing a leather edge or aluminum or something on the leading edges of your panniers. They take a beating.

 

[yycyak]

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

So to try and keep spirits up, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly from this trip.

The Good
-- Rokslide Special scabbard. So I don't like the giant TrailMax scabbards out there. They work and I have one. But I don't like them. But I've had a bear of a time finding a scabbard that fits the old Tikka + SWFA.

Short version: I took an old leather scabbard, soaked it in the tub, wrapped my rifle in saran wrap, put the rifle in the scabbard, and let it soak over night. Those giant SWFA turrets now fit just fine.

Streamlined, low-profile, perfect fit. (Also, don't rig your scabbard to your latigo keeper like in the pic below.)

-- Silky Katanaboy 500mm. I got the knock-off Amazon version of this. It worked awesome, and I have no doubt the real Silky version would be even better. Highly recommend one of these.

Pro-tip: I had an old lever-gun leather scabbard sitting around, and these saws fit perfectly inside the levergun scabbard. I rigged the saw on the off-side of my riding horse, and it worked super slick.

-- Collapsible water buckets. I had 2x 20L bright orange buckets this trip. Very handy for camp water. Fill them up (hopefully with fresh mountain water and not trough water) and walk them to camp. Poof - 30L's of water on hand for water you need. (Yes, 30, cause you're spilling the rest)

-- Aliexpress titanium stove. It worked really well. But the hardware it comes with is half-assed. I'm glad I did a shakedown at home, as it showed where the issues were. Short version is drill these holes larger (red circles), get new beefier wing-nut hardware, and loosely put the stove together. Then it'll come apart no problem post-burn.

-- Highline. I used an old 1/2" climbing rope, some seatbelt material for tree keepers, and a 2" ratchet strap to tighten everything up. Paracord prusiks attached to swivels and steel rings to tie the lead ropes to. No issues with the setup, other than it's maybe heavier than some commercial setups out there.

The Bad.
-- Trough water. Try to confirm water sources before you head out. Because although trough water is kinda gross, if the troughs weren't there, me and the ponies would have been in a really bad spot.

-- Coleman white gas lantern. I had visions of sitting around camp with my dog using this thing. And it never came out of the box. It's heavy, has the potential to leak gas, and to be honest, I'm surprised it survived the trip in and out. I think if you're running multiple pack horses, this would be useful. But for one pack horse, it takes up a ton of space in your panniers, and I didn't feel it wasn't worth it.

The Ugly.
-- Pack saddle. Pack saddle setup wasn't up to snuff. Got lucky that this trip went how it did.

-- Dropping phone. This was such a stupid mistake. Either lanyard your critical gear, or put it in a secure pouch.

-- Learn some basic packer knots. I'm in no position to tell other people what they should/shouldn't do, but for me personally, I now really appreciate a way to quickly get heavy gear off a pack horse....

 

[yycyak]

So with the trip report out of the way, here's a question for the Packer-Meets-Well-Known-Rokslider pros:

Sanity check: WTF is the deal with hard panniers?

One of the things I pondered this trip was hard panniers. Hard panniers (Plastic, wood, whatever) typically weigh 15-20lbs each, or at least that's sorta the average I'm seeing listed from all the manufacturers out there these days. But the point I'm getting at is that with hard panniers it means you're running a minimum 30-40lbs "backpack weight", in Rokslide lingo.

And when you're limited to about 110lbs of gear, I'm wondering if it makes sense to use up ~35% of your load capacity on containers...

My gut tells me that this is where the culture differences run into each other: If you have a string of 8 horses, who cares. Bring ALL the gear, and live like a king in the backcountry.

But with a single pack horse, the math says your limited in weight. You have your "regular" hunting gear, which is the same load-out as what we all throw in our Exo/SG/Kifaru packs. So you're starting with around 35-50lbs of standard hunting gear there (We've all seen the Lighterpacks). Then you have the horse gear (highline, brushes, rations, hobbles, etc), the titanium stove, the hot tent, etc. So you're pretty much flirting with 80-90% of your solo pack horse's capacity used up already.

Maybe I'm missing something, but (shocker) @Pony Soldier 's earlier advice to ditch the hard panniers is likely making a lot of sense here, just strictly from a logistics standpoint. I'd rather have 30lbs of gear/food/useful stuff than 30lbs of wood/plastic container...

For you guys that know what you're doing, am I misunderstanding something here? I guess hard panniers are simple and likely protect stuff better, but I don't know if those factors are worth the 30-40lbs trade-off...

 

[Pony Soldier]

If you spend a lot of time in the timber, mannie up a couple bales of hay and load them horizontaly. Lash cinch them down with a double diamond. Then go and bounce them off the trees. It's amazing how fast a horse can learn to not hit trees.

It will save your panniers.

 

[pbroski]

Very interesting read! Thanks for sharing.

I think the center of gravity of the panniers might be too high. I bet if you get them lower, the load would stay put.

You could load more for sure by using manties. I like the plastic boxes for the ease of packing, because they're waterproof, and they make a good place to store gear while out there. These are the ones I use. The large size weigh15.3 lbs each with ropes, but you can get a lot of stuff inside them. When loaded with gear, they end up weighing about 48 to 50 lbs each. They are almost indestructible.

https://custompackrigging.com/products/plastic-pack-box-large-size?variant=50612337443047

Also I'd recommend a crupper or breeching for the riding horse, if you don't already have one. It's necessary in steep terrain if you have your rider loaded with meat on the way out.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

Newb here… you said don’t tie your scabbard that way but… why not?

 

[yycyak]

I'm obviously not an authority, but:

That keeper is usually just held on to your saddle via your saddle string's blood knot. So it's not exactly what I would call structural. And say your horse gets excited and starts screwing around, that saddle string will tear, and then your rifle falls off, and then it gets more exciting... (Ask me how I know...)

The guys I know who do this stuff for real usually run the scabbard strap around the tree, via the gap under the saddle horn. Just make sure your straps are long enough for this.

Newb here… you said don’t tie your scabbard that way but… why not?

 

[Pony Soldier]

A typical latigo string is around 1/4". Most scabbard straps are 5/8" to 3/4". My front straps go around the pommel while I usually build in a D-ring off the base of a rear latigo strap or the saddle skirting for the rear strap. The front one takes most of the stress.

This horse stuff usually means you have to learn some leather work skills at some point in a society that seems to think everything is made in China. Growing up everything seemed to be made in Japan or at least the most breakable stuff.

 

[cshire]

First - thanks for sharing all your learning experiences.
I'm a midwesterner looking to do the same things.

I'm not seeing any of the photos from your trip report, post #106 on 5/12.
I'm logged in. Not sure if problem on my end or in the posting?

Nevermind - I can see them on my phone, photo hosting site must be blocked by work firewall.

 

[yycyak]

General Update
Nothing too exciting here. Have a daytrip planned for this week (hopefully) to shake down some tack, and then a few overnights planned later this month.

Farrier + Heel Length On Shoes
So I lost my old farrier a few months back, and had to go shopping for a new one. So I wanted to share my experience on being a newb and the whole "shoeing a trail horse" thing.

I'm not an expert. I don't know "Sh*t about f*ck", as the line from the movie goes. But I've talked with enough guys that do this trail stuff to be informed that you don't want long heels on your trail horse's shoes: They trap rocks, and make it easy for a rear hoof to catch the front shoe, and pull it off.

Well, I got a new farrier, and being a newb, I just did the usual "Hey, you're a professional, you handle a ton of fancy jumper horses, I'll defer to you on what to do here." I didn't think my talking to other trail-specific horse dudes really put me in a position to say how I want things.

Long story short, my paint horse lost both fronts, and the mare lost a front-left. So that sucked.

Newbie or not, I'm now going to be a hard-ass about "No shoe heels extending outside of the hoof." I got lucky that the shoes coming off didn't chunk-out a bunch of the hoof wall.

Farrier comes again Friday, so I'll be a lot more particular this time.

If anyone wants to comment on this, and the "right" way to do trail shoes, I'm all ears.

 

[mntnguide]

General Update
Nothing too exciting here. Have a daytrip planned for this week (hopefully) to shake down some tack, and then a few overnights planned later this month.

Farrier + Heel Length On Shoes
So I lost my old farrier a few months back, and had to go shopping for a new one. So I wanted to share my experience on being a newb and the whole "shoeing a trail horse" thing.

I'm not an expert. I don't know "Sh*t about f*ck", as the line from the movie goes. But I've talked with enough guys that do this trail stuff to be informed that you don't want long heels on your trail horse's shoes: They trap rocks, and make it easy for a rear hoof to catch the front shoe, and pull it off.

Well, I got a new farrier, and being a newb, I just did the usual "Hey, you're a professional, you handle a ton of fancy jumper horses, I'll defer to you on what to do here." I didn't think my talking to other trail-specific horse dudes really put me in a position to say how I want things.

Long story short, my paint horse lost both fronts, and the mare lost a front-left. So that sucked.

Newbie or not, I'm now going to be a hard-ass about "No shoe heels extending outside of the hoof." I got lucky that the shoes coming off didn't chunk-out a bunch of the hoof wall.

Farrier comes again Friday, so I'll be a lot more particular this time.

If anyone wants to comment on this, and the "right" way to do trail shoes, I'm all ears.

You want the heels of the shoes to cover the entire hook area of the back of the hoof, for the fronts you dont want them to extend much, but I always shoe mine with shoes extended some because it protects them in rocky terrain. You can put a slight upward hook on the very back to try and prevent them getting grabbed if they extend to far, but the right size shoe should be the main focus. But if your horse is catching the front shoes with their back hinds, then they are not stepping correctly already and the actual hoof and how long they are in their toe or heel, is what needs to be looked at because they are compensating and over-reaching when they step. I dont consider myself a farrier by any means, but Ive put on far more shoes than i can count through years of guiding and personal. Sometimes you just get unlucky, and you pull shoes due to terrain etc, but from the sounds of your scenario, somethin else is goin on for sure.

 

[robby denning]

....

Maybe I'm missing something, but (shocker) @Pony Soldier 's earlier advice to ditch the hard panniers is likely making a lot of sense here, just strictly from a logistics standpoint. I'd rather have 30lbs of gear/food/useful stuff than 30lbs of wood/plastic container...

For you guys that know what you're doing, am I misunderstanding something here? I guess hard panniers are simple and likely protect stuff better, but I don't know if those factors are worth the 30-40lbs trade-off...

thansk for sharing all this.

Soft panniers for me all the way for 25 years now. Hard back in they day was good for packing eggs, laterns, etc, but got away from all that and don't see myself going back. Less rope slippage on the soft too

 

[yycyak]

So yesterday I bailed on the office, and headed out to the mountains for a last-minute day ride. Horses are still barefoot, so didn't want to push it too much. We covered about 6 miles, and got to test out a few things, so in no real order:

Turnout Kit
I've complained earlier about my lack of organization, and me turning the trailhead into a yard sale... Well over the last month I've been re-organizing my gear around the idea of a "Turnout Bag", similar to what firefighters run. Except mine are ghetto $8 army surplus duffle bags, and stuffed with hunting crap...

I bought about 10 duffles, and starting "bundling" my stuff into semi-broad categories: Hunting clothes, riding clothes, horse spike camp, food, and "Core Kits." Kits are just the small task-specific stash bags that we all have: Kill kit, cook kit, repair kit, possibles kit, etc.

Anyway, long story short, this was easily the fastest I've been loaded. Grabbed the appropriate duffles, tossed them in the truck, done. You know that when you get to the trailhead, all the gear you need is there, and you can fine-tune as needed.

I'm not saying this is The Way, and youl need to put stuff in the right spots (saddle bags, cantle bag, panniers), but this was a noticeable improvement vs how I was doing things before. Combined with a checklist of the basic to-remember's that I always seem to forget, it worked pretty well.

River Crossing
So I had originally planned to ride north from my spot, but two other dudes were there, and also with horses. And they were heading north. So rather than ride up their butts, I figured I'd go south up a valley. Only catch was south meant a river crossing. Usual mountain river, about 20m across, water maybe 2ft deep in spots.

Channeling @Jordan Budd again and the lessons from last year, this went mostly without drama. Gelding didn't exactly want to cross, but I kept his nose pointed the right direction, and kept forward momentum (not really giving him too much time to think about things.)

The first 6ft in was a bit of a fight, but once in we crossed without issue. Definitely stoked about this one. (Wish I had pictures, but I didn't have enough hands. Pack horse makes things a lot harder.)

Pictures of the general trail:

Lead Rope Saddle Ring
I picked this up from Smoke Elser's book, and it's been really handy. It's just a $1.99, 2" ring from Home Depot. I always ride with a halter on, so I've found this to be really helpful and efficient. Loop your lead rope up through the ring, tie a quick release, and done.

Silky Saw
So I picked up that knock-off silky saw. It's been a good piece of gear, and I had to use it a few times this trip. Remembered to take some pictures this time. The cool thing is this saw fits perfectly in a levergun carbine scabbard, so it makes for a really tight way to pack your saw and still have easy access to it, without having to get any custom leatherwork done.

Lash Rope / Single-man Diamond
So I stopped with the death-wish and ditched the ratchet strap nonsense from last time, and picked up a proper lash rope. Did my best impression of a single-man diamond, but definitely needs some work.

Pack Saddle
Happy to report no rolled packs this trip. The re-rigged nylon latigos worked well (not as slick), and I made sure this time I cinched the hell out of the back cinch. Obviously the pack horse's load of a single 40lbs duffle bag this trip is very different than hauling a full 100lbs of gear. But for this trip, on the downhill stretches there was no noticeable shifting of the pack saddle, so I was happy with that.

I did pick up a britchin too, but haven't had time to rig that up. It wasn't used this trip.

***

So yeah, quick trip, but was a good way to spend the day. Have a few longer trips planned for soon.

 

[rayporter]

you will find out if you have things done right when going down hill. a britchen [breeching ?] is a help but that back cinch is extremely important.