Exo Journal — Hunting Gear

Mark Huelsing
Backpack Hunting Basics — How We Sharpen Our Knives

Backpack Hunting Basics — How We Sharpen Our Knives

Start sharp and stay sharp. That should be the goal for your hunting knife. When it comes to keeping your knife sharp on a backpack hunt, we have experimented with a lot of different options — from replaceable blade knives to a wide variety of sharpening devices and methods for fixed-blade knives. In this video, we demonstrate the technique and share some tips for using our go-to knife sharpener for backpack hunts...

Read More →


Mark Huelsing
How To: Load Your Pack for a Multi-Day Backpack Hunt

How To: Load Your Pack for a Multi-Day Backpack Hunt

There is backpacking. There is hunting. And then, there is backpack hunting. Leaving society behind, hiking into the mountains, and surviving for days on end with the items you have on your back — on a mission to find, pursue, and kill an animal and then pack out protein to feed our families... There is nothing like backpack hunting! That is our passion and our purpose. It is the sole reason that Exo Mtn Gear exists. We design our bags from the perspective of backpack hunting. (They also work great for shorter, single-day hunts as well!) Every stitch and square...

Read More →


Mark Huelsing
Short Barrel Speeds & Effective Range for Big Game Hunting Rifles

Short Barrel Speeds & Effective Range for Big Game Hunting Rifles

How short is too short when it comes to choosing a barrel length for hunting? Here is how to estimate the speed and effective range for your next rifle.

Read More →


Mark Huelsing
Backpack Hunting With A Bivy Sack (Your Questions, Misconceptions, & More...)

Backpack Hunting With A Bivy Sack (Your Questions, Misconceptions, & More...)

We had been sitting on the hillside for over 9 hours. Daylight would be fading soon enough, and our hopes of seeing the bull this evening were fading even quicker. Cows began to feed out of the timber patch across the canyon. Eventually, the bull did as well. I set up for the shot. It was a far shot, but one that I had thought about, planned for, rehearsed, and dry-fired all day. And the conditions were perfect. My bullet found its mark, and I watched the bull drop through my rifle’s scope. By the time we dropped to the...

Read More →