Ovis Sacks Lightweight Game Bags Review
By Tony Trietch, Rokslide Moderator
Like most hunters chasing big game throughout the West, my field care of harvests consists of boning out meat or quartering game animals. Quality game bags to keep our meat clean, cool and bug free are a must. Old school cheese cloth type bags are a thing of the past. Today we have many options from quality manufactures making synthetic bags that do a much better job at protecting our bounty.
The bags appear well constructed with quality materials
The newest game bag to hit the market is the Ovis Sacks Lightweight Game Bags, by Black Ovis. They come in two sizes, Large and Extra Large. Large Game Bags are ideal for quartered Deer, Antelope, Sheep, Bear and deboned Elk or Caribou. The XL Game Bags are ideal for use with quartered Elk, Caribou, or deboned Moose.
The weigh in: Large kit came in at 16.6 oz, XL at 24.5 oz
The Large kit includes four 16″x24″ bags and one 14″x18″ bag. The XL kit comes with four 22″x33″ bags and one 16″x20″ bag. Both kits come with a roll of flagging tape, two pairs of latex gloves, a plastic sheet to use as a ground cloth and a lightweight mesh storage bag. The kits weighed in at 16.6oz and 24.5oz. That weight may be lower on the current model as they changed the mesh bag and it has more mesh and less solid material.
The bags are made of Taslan Nylon, a breathable and sturdy material that is machine washable. They have a reflective band around the circumference of the bag for ease of location at night. They have a strong draw cord at the open end of the bag for cinching closed and hanging.
The Large kit was used on my 2016 deboned Wyoming archery bull (also shown in lead photo)
My first impressions of the bags were that they looked well-made and very stout. The material feels like slippery cotton. The stitching was clean and the bag sizes seemed appropriate for the task. The gloves that come with the kit were sized too small for my hands but that was no big deal to me. If you are an ounce-counter that backpacks in deep, the plastic sheet, flagging tape and gloves might get pulled out of the kit. It depends on what you deem important enough to haul around with you. For me, they stayed in the truck for my backpack hunts and only saw action on hunts that were day trip types with a base camp.
I was fortunate enough to haul out two bull elk and two mature bucks in the bags this fall. There was plenty of space in the bags of each kit for the job at hand. They sealed up tightly with the draw cord and drained blood while keeping the flies away from my precious cargo. The reflective strip, while it does add weight, was really appreciated on my Montana bull. The pack out was at night and I decided to leap frog the loads the three miles through unfamiliar terrain. The reflective strip would shine brightly when the headlamp cast minimal light on them from a good distance away and made finding the bags easy in the dark. Black Ovis owner Kendall Card told me they have improved it by moving the reflective band up 2″ on the bag so it will stay more visible when the bag is full.
Overall, I was impressed with the bags. They are not the lightest bags I have used, but they are well built and have features that will keep them in my arsenal of game-care tools. They cleaned up nicely in the washing machine and are ready for my next hunt.
You can ask Tony questions or discuss this article here
Interested in a long-lasting archery target? Read Tony’s review on the Matrix Archery Target review here
