A fly-in hunt is different than a western backpacking trip, since you don’t have to hump everything to your camping spot (unless you camp a long way from where the plane drops you off – we try not to do this whenever possible). So, there is room for some minor luxuries and items that help the hunt along! Here are several lightweight additions we have made to our camp over the past 2 decades of remote AK trips:
Cheap, lightweight silk long underwear top and bottom – to sleep in only. It’s refreshing to change out of your hunting clothes when you go to bed, and sleep in clothes that don’t smell.
Lightweight camp shoes or crocs – to change out of your boots or waders when the day is done, and for those late-night bathroom runs.
Cut-resistant gloves – to wear over your nitrile gloves when field dressing game – protects against cutting fingers. Keeping cuts clean in the field is a pain in the ass.
Trekking poles – a HUGE help when navigating uneven terrain with a pack full of meat.
8-10 Rings (1.5 to 2” diameter) used to partition game bags when you put multiple pieces of meat in the same game bag. Put a piece of meat (neck meat, backstrap, etc.) in the game bag, slide a ring over the bag to create a separate section that holds only that piece of meat. Put another piece of meat in, and repeat. Helps keep meet cleaner and dryer, which helps reduce any spoilage in the field. I used to just tie knots between the separate sections of a bag, but knots take up a LOT of the bag’s usable space.
Tyvek Meat Tarps – Cut an 8’x8’ Tyvek sheet, and soak it in the clothes washer for a few hours. Then run it through one wash and rinse cycle, the soaking and wash/rinse will remove the annoyingly loud crinkly noise. You will be left with a cheap lightweight tarp that can be used to lay quarters and other pieces of meat on when you are field dressing an animal, helping to keep it clean and dry. We have each hunter take one tarp in their backpack; that way if we shoot a caribou a couple of miles away from camp, we can use the multiple tarps to set game bags on as we shuttle the animal back to camp in half mile increments or so.
We also use one Tyvek tarp under the tent, and one inside the tent, as support to the thin groundcloth that comes with most tents these days.
Empty 32-oz Gatorade Bottles – 1 for each hunter to use as a nighttime piss bottle. Beats getting up in the middle of the night to pee outside when it’s raining and the wind is blowing!
Large Unscented Trach Bags – We use these when we are packing meat, to keep blood and meat off of our packs to the extent possible.
Newspaper – Take a full sheet of newspaper, compress it just enough to shove inside your boots at night. In the morning, your boots will be dry when you put them on.
Hand Sanitizer – Who doesn’t have hand sanitizer these days? Use before preparing food and eating, or after field dressing or deboning animals.
Baby Wipes – An 80-120 pack should work for 3 hunters. Nice to wipe hands after a restroom visit, and also nice to wake up and give yourself a quick once over with 1-2 baby wipes before getting dressed in the morning.
Electric Tape – To place over your rifle muzzle, lots of little twigs and leaves in the AK backcountry.
Glow Sticks – 1 per night. If an animal happens to wake you from a deep sleep, it’s nice to have your bearings within the tent as opposed to waking up in the pitch dark. They don’t give off enough light to disrupt sleep in our experience.
Pocket Shears – To help clear away small branches and bushes as you are clearing a spot for your tent.
