Hunting Utility Kits With MeatEater's Janis Putelis

It is a good idea to build and carry useful equipment for hunters. Today I'm going to go through mine and show you basically what the basic gear is that always travels with me, whether it's fishing down the river, they have big game seven days. a backpacking trip or a day chasing squirrels, it's almost always with me, so I'm going to go through all the items I have in my general

utility

kit and then talk about a couple of items I could add to my kit when I go big game

hunting

and then I could add it to my kit when I go

hunting

small game first you will need to choose a container or bag for your

utility

kit.

I use this one from Outdoor Research, it's called their backcountry organizer lots of room lots of pockets I've often thought about removing a couple of pockets. It's slimming down a bit in weight, but it works pretty well as is and my total weight here is less than a pound, which is pretty heavy. by many lightweight backpack standards, but again, this is more of a hunter gear that has a lot of additional hunter type needs, so I don't mind using a little bit heavier gear with a stick because all of these things have at a point it's useful If I carry any of these things for more than one or two trips and haven't used them, I usually take them out of the medicine cabinet and leave them at home, so I have my first aid kit to start with. which I built from scratch so it's thinner, it's lightweight and one point I like to make is that both my emergency survival kit and my first aid kit are in these heavy duty AK zippered plastic bags that work great to save these things. dry, my emergency survival kit has fire starters, a small fishing kit, some cotton balls and starting fires with an emergency blanket, but also a couple of things I use most often are a spare patch like a gore-tex patch.

So in case I have a big tear in the rain cover I can easily fix it in the field and I also have a sticky target there so if I hit my scope with a spot where I'm using a rifle I can easily stick that target on any dead tree and check the zero and recite it on my rifle if I need it to start shooting right now. I'm using fuel cubes, it's actually a fuel use for a backpacking stove. I do not do it. I don't use a stove system, but for starting the fire they are amazing, they burn very very hot for about 12 to 15 minutes and you almost burned me with wood with one of these pieces, a lighter wrapped with duct tape, a bug spray I clean. license tags on one back a plastic bag to keep them dry gold bond powder half of here medicated powder great for irritation or if you get blisters on your feet you put it on your feet it blows them out really well and creates an environment where your feet can begin to heal faster than if they were just sitting there soaking wet, so it's worth having the same with Vaseline.

It is an item that has multiple uses. I use it in place of lipstick and can also use it as a fire starter. Along with my cotton ball water purification tablets because I wear contact lenses, I always have an extra set of contacts with a mirror in my kit. I like having that mirror there because it could be used as a signal mirror and also as headlights. I have two. There one that will do started the hunt, immediately migrated to my cargo pocket and then I have the backup light source of my headlamp there as well as a small multi tool with a knife, 50 feet of nice heavy duty paracord cable and a whetstone. and cable ties that pretty much round out what's always in my general utility kit.

If I'm hunting big game, I'll add maybe some surveyor's tape to mark a trail if necessary. I'll have an extra one. lens cloths to keep my optics clean, some type of all-weather grease, either to grease a firearm or maybe help loosen a stuck part of the firearm and I'll have a boring snake with me, without having to stick some remains in my canyon. I need to clean out that barrel and make sure it's clear of obstructions for some small game again. I'll be carrying the grease for the firearm and really just a choke key and an extra choke, as you can see my general utility kit doesn't change. a lot, it has my first aid kit, a survival kit, a few other knick-knacks that I'm almost always going to use and then I can modify it a little bit if I'm going to hunt big game or small game.