Your summer scouting trips are ideal opportunities to give back to the lands that serve your wild needs. Without the pressure to punch a tag or fill a freezer, these forays through your hunting land also offer the freedom to explore other realms of outdoor fun. You may find, as this author did, that hunting for trash as you search for trophies is an entertaining and rewarding way to hone your game
for the upcoming season. Get Hunting Gear for Less
Backcountry hunting may be the only outdoor activity where you hope your pack gets heavier as the trip progresses. When we take a weapon for a walk through the wilderness, we hope to return to camp with heaps of meat from one of North America’s largest beasts strapped to our back. Standard hiking trips do not prepare you for a burgeoning backpack. Those Patagonia-clad trekkers over on the Appalachian Trail can (pretty much) calculate their exact pack weight for each day of their sabbatical — it gets lighter by about a pound of granola per day. Spending a day bushwacking and collecting as much trash as humanly possible can better simulate the demands of a hunting excursion.
