The Best Hunting Backpack for Elk Hunting

For elk, buy the TIDEWE 90L external frame pack. It is the only pick here built to carry a heavy, awkward load of meat off a mountain, and that — not how much gear it holds on the way in — is what an elk pack is for. If the hunter already owns a frame or hunts elk from a truck and a trail, a 40L day pack is the right second pack and sometimes the only one they need. Both answers are below.

Elk hunting breaks the normal pack logic in one specific way. A whitetail hunter walks in half a mile, sits, and either drags a deer out whole or quarters it near a vehicle. An elk hunter may be miles in, and a mature elk is several hundred pounds of animal that has to leave the mountain on somebody's back over multiple trips. The pack is not luggage at that point, it is load-bearing equipment, and the thing that decides whether it works is the frame and the hip belt rather than the pockets.

That is also why this page is short on brand argument and long on capacity and construction. If you want the category ranked for hunting generally, our best hunting backpacks roundup does that, and what size hunting pack do I need translates liters into trips. Prices below are pulled live from Amazon.

Four things, and the first two do all the work.

A frame, and a hip belt that actually transfers load. Weight on the shoulders is weight the shoulders carry. Weight on a frame with a proper hip belt becomes weight the legs carry, which is where the strength is. This is the single reason frame packs exist and the single reason a soft daypack fails at the elk job no matter how many liters it claims.

Somewhere to put meat. A load shelf, a meat shelf, or simply a rigid frame with compression straps that lets you lash a boned-out load between the frame and your back. Game bags go on the outside of a pack, not inside it with your food and clothing.

Capacity that matches the trip, not the animal.A day hunt is 30 to 45 liters. Multiple nights in elk country is 65 liters and up. The animal does not set the capacity — the frame does.

Quiet, and no bounce. Elk live in timber. A pack that rattles, squeaks or swings on a sidehill is a pack that costs opportunities, and compression straps that pull the load tight against the frame matter more than most hunters expect.

Two notes on reading that table. First, the liter figure is the only hard number here, and we have not invented one for the packs whose manufacturers do not publish a capacity. Second, "carries meat" is a yes/no about design rather than a weight rating: an external frame is built to be loaded, and a soft daypack is not, and no amount of cinching changes that.

The pack-out is the part first-time elk hunters underestimate, and most of the extra kit is about that.

Game bags, more than you think. Breathable bags keep meat clean and let it cool, and an elk needs several. They weigh nothing and they are the difference between meat you can eat and meat you have ruined.

A knife you can resharpen in the field, or spare blades. Breaking down an elk is a far longer job than field-dressing a deer, and a blade that quits halfway is a genuine problem miles from a truck. A replaceable-blade knife or a pocket sharpener solves it; our best skinning knives roundup covers both approaches and how to sharpen a hunting knife covers the skill.

More water capacity, and more layers. Elk country is higher, drier and colder than most whitetail ground, and the temperature swing between a dawn sit and a midday climb is large enough that one jacket is not a plan.

A headlamp, and then a second one. Quartering an elk at last light turns into quartering an elk in the dark, and then walking out in it. See best hunting headlamps and red or green light for hunting for which mode to use on the way out.

There is a fuller list in what to pack in a hunting backpack, which covers the day-hunt loadout the elk kit is built on top of.

Packs are one of the better big hunting gifts, because unlike boots and clothing there is no size to get wrong — torso length adjusts on anything worth buying, and a pack that is slightly off still works. Two pieces of advice specific to elk.

Do not buy the frame pack as a surprise if they already hunt elk seriously. A committed elk hunter has usually already settled this argument with themselves and has opinions about frames. For that hunter, game bags, a better knife, a rangefinder or a headlamp are gifts that land every time.

Do buy the day pack for somebody heading into their first elk season. A 40-liter hunting pack is close to universally useful, costs less than the frame pack, and is the one they will use on every day that does not end with an animal on the ground. See gifts for elk hunters for what else sits alongside it, and hunting gifts under $100 if that is the budget.

No test lab, and no pretending otherwise. Capacities and construction details above are the manufacturers' own published figures, cited below; the rankings are reasoning from how each pack is built against the one job that defines an elk pack. Nothing here has been given a rating, a score or an award, because we have not run a test to earn one. Our method is on the how we choose page, and prices are live and dated.

Best hunting backpacks ranks the field for hunting generally, how to choose a hunting backpack covers fit and suspension, and what size hunting pack do I need is the capacity question on its own. For the rest of an elk setup, best hunting rangefinders and best hunting boots for cold weather cover the two pieces of kit that matter most on a mountain.