Went to Cabela's today with the thought of looking at backpacks in the back of my mind for my rapidly approaching Colorado elk trip... I stumbled across this sucker; man, talk about feature-laden!!!



It's quiet, waterproof, full of accessory pockets and comes with an internal hydration bladder. I also received an extra one free when I checked out due to some special promotion they had going on... The thing I really liked about it was that the bow straps in securely as pictured, leaving your hands free to negotiate terrain when you're trying to cover a lot of ground.

It's got a support belt at the waist, and the shoulder straps can clip together to make sure this thing doesn't slip off or bounce around.

The guy who I'm tagging along with for my first elk hunt said the temps in the mornings are mid 30's and it'll top out somewhere in the 80's or so by the afternoon; that sounds like I'll be stripping out of some clothes pretty fast as the day wears on, so I wanted something I could stuff them into as the sun comes up. The hydration bladder holds two full liters, so that should keep me going easily through the day since I'm planning on returning to camp every night.

I bought mine in the Realtree AP pattern, as it was the most open-concept pattern they had in the store... This thing's features rock!