When I am hunting, and all I have to keep me warm, dry and happy are the items I carry in my day pack, I want the essentials I will or might need during the day. Since I will be carrying a 7-pound rifle and scope, I want my day pack to be pretty light weight. Ten pounds seems about right to me because carrying 16 pounds around the back country all day at elevations from 6,000 feet to possibly 10,000 feet requires good conditioning and some common sense.

I have determined what I carry in my day pack by trial and error over several years. Sometimes the best way to learn what you need in a day pack is to go hunting and experience the disappointment of not having something that you really would liked have liked to have.

Most of the friends I hunt with have their own list of items they carry in a day pack, but we all agree on some basic essentials. Here is a list of what you will find in most of our day packs.

Water: I carry two 16-ounce bottles, while some get a day pack with a bladder they can fill with water and sip from during the day.

First-aid kit: I carry a Boy Scout soft and foldable first-aid kit, but one can simply put three small, medium and large bandages, some Neosporin and anti-itch cream in a small sealable plastic bag.

Topographic map and compass: My map has various markings from prior scouting trips into the area.

Rain gear: Rain gear should be of a material that wicks water away. Sometimes a tarp can be set up to protect one until the rain or snow stops falling.

Headlamp and flashlight: The headlamp makes cleaning and gutting game in the dark a lot easier. A small, 300-lumen flashlight makes traveling back to camp as it is getting dark easier.

Food/snacks: When I am hunting, I like a pretty light breakfast, an Isagenix food bar for lunch and regular dinner after the day’s hunt.

Knife: In addition to a Swiss Army knife I carry in a pocket, I only have two knives in my day pack: a Browning skinner that is not quite 5 inches long and an extremely small Fremont Knives knife called The Five O’ Clock, for initial cleaning and gutting of game. I have several other Fremont Knives at camp for processing game.

Surgical gloves: Because my father was a physician, I have always used and favored surgical gloves to wear while cleaning, gutting an processing game, but rubber gloves will do the job also.

Game bags: I prefer game bags to garbage bag for packing out game because they don’t tear as easy and are reusable.

Survival blanket: One should always have a survival blanket in the day pack in case it is necessary to spend the night away from camp or while waiting for help if there is an accident.

Baby wipes: Baby wipes will get the mud off your hands before dinner, wipe any blood off of you after field dressing game, get the sweat of your face after a day of hunting, clean your knife off and can be used when you have to go to the bathroom.

Paracord: Paracord can be used to tie off the scent glands of game, lash poles together, set up a tarp for protection from the elements, tie off food bags and hang them 20 feet or so off the ground out of the reach of animals.

Fire starter and lighter: You did want to be able to start a fire if necessary didn’t you? Smart outdoorsman always have a lighter with them.

Hunting license: Put your hunting license and tags in a small plastic bag and seal it, so moisture can’t ruin it. You will be glad you did if a game warden stops by to check you out.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of day pack items, but it all comes in just under 10 pounds in my day pack. Hopefully it will get you thinking about what you think is essential for your own day pack.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

During the last full month of September, My wife and I decided to get out of town and spend a couple of days in Yellowstone National Park. Annie had ordered a cabin for us online at Mammoth Hot Springs.

Early Sunday morning, we loaded up our grandson and Annie’s small lapdog and headed for Yellowstone. We stopped in Ashton to top off our fuel tank and purchase three small bottles of milk to drink with some blueberry muffins we took for breakfast.

The drive into the mountains and the trip through Island Park was beautiful as always. We drove through the area of Henry’s Fork and were able to see a little of Hebgen Lake from the highway.

As we pulled in to West Yellowstone, we decided we had more than enough fuel to drive on through the park to Mammoth. The drive to Madison Junction was really pretty, and we saw bison on the road and an elk herd in the meadows that the Madison River runs through. At Madison, we stopped for about 15 minutes to stretch our legs, take advantage of the restrooms and give the dog some water, as well as let him walk around a little bit.

From Madison, we turned left toward Gibbon Falls, the lower and upper Gibbon Meadows and Norris Geyser Basin. Norris was packed, and the line of cars trying to get into a parking spot was so long, it took us about 15 minutes to even reach the parking lot. It took another 10 minutes to find a parking spot. Norris Geyser Basin is really interesting, especially if you take the time to read the various descriptions on the information boards on the trails around the area. The spray from the geysers in the basin can damage the finish on the cars in the parking lot, so be sure to wash your car when you return home.

There was a lot of roadwork going on in the park, and we were delayed for about 45 minutes between Beaver Lake and the Sheep Eater Cliff on the road to Mammoth.

As we descended into Mammoth, we were surprised by the number of people and cars. Mammoth is also pretty well known for the elk herd that is always wandering around or lying on the lawns in Mammoth. There were park employees standing by the various concentrations of elk. It was the rut at the time we were there, and several of the bulls acted irritated with all the people walking around.

After checking into our room and having lunch at the Mammoth Grill, we headed on down to the Roosevelt Junction and drove through Lamar Valley where we have seen grizzlies on previous trips. This time, we saw pronghorn and bison, but no bears. The mountains that border the east end of the Lamar Valley were impressive and had already received snow at the 10,000-foot level.

We then turned around, drove back to Roosevelt, turned south and drove to Tower Falls before returning to Mammoth and our cabin for the night.

As soon as we entered the cabin, Annie saw a small animal sitting on top of our suitcase. She screamed that there was a mouse in the room with us, and our little dog, realizing that Annie was frightened of something, also became frightened. After my grandson and I got Annie and the dog calmed down, we realized it was a chipmunk and called the hotel to report there was a chipmunk in the room. While Annie was talking to the people at the front desk, the chipmunk ran across both beds again, and Annie screamed into the phone and the pandemonium started all over again. We were given another cabin and packed up to move, while Annie made sure the hotel staff wouldn’t hurt the chipmunk when they removed it from the cabin.

Early Monday morning, we left Mammoth and drove over the Dunraven Pass and down to Canyon, which is about centrally located in the park. From Canyon, we drove to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone to see the Upper and Lower Falls and Artists Point. As we drove back from the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, we saw a herd of deer. We then drove by Fishing Bridge, Lake and West Thumb, before turning northwest over the Continental Divide and into Old Faithful to see the geyser go off and have lunch. We weren’t impressed when Old Faithful erupted since we have seen it look more spectacular in previous trips, but lunch was really good.

We then stopped to see Fire Hole lake for a few minutes before driving on to the Madison Junction, and and on to West Yellowstone and out of the park.

It was a beautiful time to see Yellowstone. Winter will be coming, and much of the park will soon be inaccessible until June of next year. Snow has already been falling at many locations above 8,000 feet elevation.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

There have been many more well-known or famous American hunters than can be discussed in the space allotted to a single column, so I’ll pick a few that have had an important impact on hunting. Some were bow hunters; others primarily used rifles; one hunted Jaguars with a spear, or zagaya; another gave up hunting dangerous game with a spear after one really close call and never let his .470 Nitro Express rifle leave his side for the rest of his hunting career.

President Teddy Roosevelt was one of America’s most famous hunters. He hunted all kinds of big game in the American West, Africa and South America. Roosevelt was also a leading advocate for the establishment of the national parks system in the United States and promoting wildlife conservation in the early 20th century. In 1909, he and his son Kermit went to Africa to hunt for big game species for the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

Roosevelt once wrote, “The free, self-reliant, adventurous life, with its rugged and stalwart democracy, the wild surroundings, the grand beauty of the scenery the chance to study the ways and habits of the woodland creatures — all these unite to give to the career of the wilderness hunter its peculiar charm.”

Ernest Hemingway was one of Americas most storied writers. He was also a skilled big game hunter in the American West and Africa who was inspired by Teddy Roosevelt’s accounts of hunting in Africa.

Hemingway wrote about his African hunting experiences in,”The Green Hills of Africa,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “True at First Light.” Unfortunately, he either accidentally shot and killed himself or committed suicide at his home in Sun Valley about the time I was a teenager wondering where I would get the money for a .300 Weatherby Magnum.

I remember thinking at the time I would miss him and his writing.

Saxon Pope is generally regarded as the father of modern bow hunting and is one of the namesakes of the Pope and Young Club, North America’s foremost bow hunting organization.

Pope developed his skills under the tutelage of Ishi, the last of the Yahi tribesmen. He often demonstrated those skills by killing grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park in the early part of the 20th century when it was legal to hunt in the area included in the park. He made his own bows and steel-tipped arrows.

Jim Bridger was one of the most legendary hunters and mountain men who explored the American West during the mid-1800s. He is believed to be the first white man to see the Great Salt Lake in Utah and then explored what eventually would become Yellowstone National Park

He was known for his great strength, endurance and excellent hunting and trapping skills. He built Fort Bridger in Western Wyoming close to the Utah/Wyoming border and was a fountain of information to the wagon trains traveling from Missouri to Oregon and other destinations in Idaho, Nevada and California.

He was also known for his tall tales, so nobody believed him when he said there were geysers in the Yellowstone country to the north of Fort Bridger.

He spoke the languages of the Sioux, the Blackfeet and the Crow and could make himself understood by the Shoshone and the Arapaho.

Fred Bear was the archer that I knew the most about as I was growing up. Although he didn’t start bow hunting until he was 29 years old, he eventually developed his own bow designs and manufactured several creative broad head designs for hunting.

He traveled the world hunting with the bows and broad heads he designed. For many years, he was the only archer who had killed every member of Africa’s big five — lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and Cape buffalo — with a bow and arrow. He also used a bow to hunt and take a Kodiak bear, Alaskan brown bear and polar bear.

Fred Bear struggled with chronic emphysema later in life and died on April 27, 1988.

Sasha Siemel didn’t start life as an American. He was originally from Riga, Latvia, moved to the Mato Grasso of Brazil and found work where he could. While in Brazil, he heard of the tigreros, Guato Indians who hunted and killed jaguars with a 6- to 7-foot spear called a zagaya, on the ground, with feints and jabs and finally embedding the spear up to its hilt in the jaguar’s chest and with the shaft tucked under their arm at the arm pit hanging on and working the spear blade into the wound until either they were knocked off their feet and the jaguar rushed in and killed them, or the jaguar bled to death and expired. This type of hunting excited Siemel, and he became an under study to a Guato Indian named Joaquim, a master tigrero who killed jaguars that fed on the livestock of the Mata Grasso’s farmers. Sasha did well and learned to fight jaguars with the zagaya until he ran into the remains of his Guato teacher, who finally lost his final fight with a jaguar.

Siemel spent many years in the Mato Grasso of Brazil fighting and killing the jaguars that fed on the farmers livestock. He finally decided he was too old to live that life much longer and moved to the United States where he made movies in Hollywood depicting his exploits in the Mata Grasso.

He finally died in Green Lane, Pennsylvania, in February 1970 at nearly 88 of age.

During the 1980s, I started reading books like, “Death in the Long Grass,” “Death in the Silent Places,” “Return to the Long Grass,” etc. The author was a most highly skilled African hunting guide and cropping officer, speaker at Safari Club meetings and one of the most passionate wildlife conservation advocates in the world. His name was Peter Hathaway Capstick, and I wanted to go on safari with him. Unfortunately he died at the age of 57 years and I didn’t retire for another couple of years. Another major problem was I didn’t have the money to go on safari.

Capstick quit a promising career as a stock broker to become a hunting guide in South America, specializing in guiding jaguar hunts, before ending up in Africa as a professional hunter, guiding those who did have the money to go on hunts for Africa’s big five as well as plains game. He also served as a cropping officer and hunted elephants, leopards and Cape buffalo that were causing problems or that had actually attacked and killed natives in his area.

He once decided to hunt a Cape buffalo with a spear. He had a tribal spear maker make for him after reading the exploits of Sash Siemel. Capstick’s spear was a throwing spear, forcing him to sneak up on the Cape buffalo, throw the spear and run the 100-yard dash faster that it had ever been run, while the pursuing buffalo bled to death. He threw the spear very well and he made a gallant attempt to break the existing record for the 100-yard dash — but why don’t you pick up a copy of his book “Death in the Silent Places,” find the chapter titled “And Furthermore” and read it yourself. Since he lived it, he tells the story much better than I can. The moral of the story however, seems to be something like, “If you are ever in Cape buffalo country, be sure your .470 Nitro Express is loaded and with in easy reach.”

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.