Fall is my favorite time of year, and we get a lot of questions about the gear we use. For this episode of Landowner Insider, I dumped out my gear bag after a little over a week hunting elk in Colorado, following a pronghorn hunt in New Mexico, with a Southern Colorado mule deer hunt coming up. None of this is a paid advertisement. I bought almost all of it at full retail, and hunting has been part of my family of companies and my business for more than 20 years, so I’ve had time to dial in what works. Here’s what earned a spot for next season.
My Favorites This Year
- Rechargeable headlamp: Very bright, with a red light and a white spot. The battery is rechargeable with USB-C, and holding the button locks it so it won’t turn on in your pack. It lives in the bottom of my binocular harness, and it’s great when you’re packing elk in the dark.
- Mobile Starlink: A game changer for our business. I used to carry satellite phones everywhere. Now I keep Starlink on the truck, move it outside the tent with a portable battery, and check in on deals and my family daily. We closed ranches and negotiated contracts from the mountains. I still carry a Garmin inReach for hiking.
- Sitka waterproof GORE-TEX shoes: I wore these every day and packed elk in them. They feel like tennis shoes and handle big miles with weight, and they cost about what a pair of premium running shoes costs.
- Darn Tough socks: Merino wool blend, no blisters, and some of mine are three years old with no worn heels. I also wear merino underwear, which I can wear for days without it getting as ripe as cotton.
Rifle Setup: Light, Packable, and Field Accurate
- Rifle: I moved from a heavy 28 Nosler to a Bergara Premier MgMicro Lite in 6.5 PRC. Without the suppressor and scope it weighs just over five pounds, and without the suppressor it fits inside a pack. My kids can shoot it, and my 12-year-old shoots it well out to 600 yards.
- Removable magazine: Whenever I’m transporting a gun around kids or clients, I want to know it’s completely unloaded.
- Field accuracy: After 25-plus years guiding hunters, I know bench accuracy and field accuracy are different. I look for a raised comb for solid cheek weld, plus a built-in level for shooting prone.
- Scope: A Leupold VX-6HD 3-18×44 on every rifle, with a custom turret built from my ballistics so I dial to the yardage and shoot.
- Bipod: A carbon fiber bipod that weighs about half a pound, slides onto the rifle’s Arca rail, and adjusts from prone to kneeling.
- Suppressor: I run one on every rifle. I ask my local gun shop what to get, and I’m using a lightweight 30-caliber can.
Tripod and Optics
- Don’t go cheap on the tripod: If you have thousands in a rifle and a hunt, the Epic Outdoors Ultra Tripod, at about 4.5 pounds, is worth it. It supports big glass, folds small, and goes flat when you remove the center post.
- The kid-friendly benefit: On her pronghorn hunt, my daughter couldn’t see over the grass kneeling, so she stood and shot off the tripod. She made a good shot on a big buck at 350 yards.
- Spotting scope: A Swarovski 20-60 with a phone adapter.
- Binoculars: Swarovski EL Range 10×42, with a built-in rangefinder synced to my ballistics. I can range an animal and read the exact dial. The app saves the waypoint so I can navigate to where the animal was.
- Bino adapter: A made-in-America adapter slides into an Arca Swiss mount and keeps the binoculars centered. Not all adapters work with the EL Range because of where the computer and batteries sit.
- Bow hunting: I switch to a handheld Leupold rangefinder with angle compensation and old-fashioned straps, since animals see two big eyes looking at them and the electronics can be noisy.
Bow Setup
- Bow: PSE Mach 33, my third in the Mach line. I have a torn rotator cuff, and this bow lets me shoot 72 pounds comfortably.
- Sight and rest: A five-pin Black Gold sight I’ve moved across four bows, and a QAD Ultra Rest. For moving game like elk and mule deer, I want more pins. For whitetail at a feeder, a single pin is hard to beat.
- Carry stabilizer: A Texas-made stabilizer that distributes the bow’s weight so you can carry it nearly hands-free through the mountains.
- Broadheads: I love the Ramcat three-blade, and it’s what I used on my bison, but it’s hard to get out of a quiver for a follow-up shot. This year I switched to Beast Broadheads’ titanium expandables, which have a small cut-on-contact blade and a design that bends around a rib and reopens.
Trail Camera
- Stealth Cam trail camera: Old-school white flash, great picture quality, and text-to-phone capability where it’s legal. It’s legal in Texas and not in Colorado.
- Power: It uses more battery, so get a solar panel and rechargeable battery.
Packs and Bags
- Mystery Ranch Pop Up 40: I found it on Facebook Marketplace. It has a rigid frame and a bag that separates to create a meat shelf, keeping bloody quarters away from the rest of your gear.
- Head and cape bag: A bag from Remy Warren designed to strap a head and cape to your pack so you’re not rolling it on top.
- The daypack switch: Halfway through the elk hunt, my team and I traded big packs for small ones. We were stalking through cedar and brush, and big packs are louder and bulkier. A roughly one-pound pack with a hydration bladder, snacks, a headlamp, and a puffy was plenty, and I take the same setup whitetail hunting.
- Five Owls duffel: Built by my friend Roger Cohen, with removable dividers and built-in stuff sacks, including one for dirty socks. My son took it, and it keeps his bag organized.
Clothing and Layering
- Rain jacket: An ultralight Sitka rain jacket that weighs about two ounces and wads into a pocket.
- Puffy: A lightweight Sitka down jacket and vest. A puffy is cheap insurance, and nothing beats it for warmth per ounce.
- Solid colors: I mostly wear solids now because camo is expensive and I don’t think solids bother animals at distance.
- Merino base layers: They wick moisture and don’t hold odor. They do stretch with days of wear.
- Jetstream hoodie: Wind-blocking, with pit zips and light rain and snow resistance. They only made it for about a year.
- Apex pants: A lightweight fleece pant with built-in knee pads, ideal for spot-and-stalk. I’ve worn them for a week without washing, and blood comes out.
- Everyday pants: KUIU solids for scouting and office days.
- ProSwag performance hoodie: I wore it all summer fishing and as a base layer on hunts. ProSwag in Marble Falls makes our company hats and shirts.
The Budget Gear That Held Up
- Muddy brush pants: My friend Chris Leonard works with GSM Outdoors, which owns Muddy. I wore two lines on my elk hunt and will wear them in Texas brush and on a sheep hunt.
- DV8 line: Their premium line, with sweat zips, at about half the cost of the big-name brands.
- TRX line: A workhorse line with Wrangler-level pricing that’s super tough.
- Retro Mossy Oak: Muddy’s apparel is available in Mossy Oak Bottomland, and I tested their base and mid layers against my Sitka for two days, and they worked great.
- Perspective: You can kill an elk in blue jeans and a flannel. I appreciate nice things, but you don’t need a thousand-dollar kit.
Whitetail vs. Western Gear
- Western kit: Lightweight, breathable, and built for five to ten miles a day.
- Whitetail kit: Whisper-quiet, heavier, and not for walking, because you’ll sweat. Sitka’s whitetail line even has a spot where a tree-stand safety harness passes through.
The One I Can’t Find
- Sitka Apex hoodie: My all-time favorite mid-layer, and they don’t make it anymore. It’s stitched from different panels of merino, fleece, and synthetic to dump heat where you need it. If you know where to find a large, tell me, because I’d buy more.
Watch the Full Episode
This article is based on my gear dump on Landowner Insider.
What’s one piece of hunting gear you’d 1000% buy again? Drop it in the comments on YouTube.
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