Going on a multi-day hunt in the wilderness requires you to carry all your gear, food and water on your person. For hunters who hike many miles to their chosen spot, having a quality hunting backpack with frame can be the difference between a thrilling adventure or a miserable experience.
Choosing the right backpack and frame style will have an immense effect on your overall mobility and comfort as you’re making your way to your destination. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explain the key features you should keep in mind and highlight how the AKEK Climax 5400 is the best hunting backpack with frame you’ll find in today’s outdoor industry.
We Recommend One Of These 2 Packs Below
Alpha 3200 Bow hunting Pack
CLIMAX 5400 Bow hunting Pack
Frame Type
The frame of a hunting backpack serves as its backbone, and it plays a pivotal role in determining the pack’s overall comfort and stability. There are primarily two types of backpack frames to consider.
The first is an external frame. External frame backpacks have a visible, external frame made of lightweight metal or composite materials. They are known for their stability and load-carrying capacity. These are excellent for lugging heavy loads and maintaining an upright posture, which is essential to adequately use your energy during long treks or when hauling game.
An internal frame backpack has a frame that is hidden within the backpack’s fabric. Internal frame packs are more streamlined and flexible, making them ideal for navigating through dense vegetation. Internal frame packs are often lighter and offer better mobility but may have slightly lower load-carrying capacity compared to external frame packs.
The AKEK Climax 5400 is made with an external frame that allows you to customize and adjust your frame as needed to provide you with the best possible fit to load your gear. What truly separates the Climax 5400 from other packs is that it can be adjusted to meet your exact needs. The backpack shoulder straps can be manipulated up and down to better balance the weight of your pack, and you can also adjust the hip-belt system and pad so that the Climax 5400 perfectly fits any body shape and size.
The choice between external and internal frame backpacks depends on your hunting style and terrain, but the AKEK’s products are made with an ultra lightweight carbon fiber frame. Our frames are significantly lighter than the more traditional, heavier aluminum frame packs. The carbon fiber frame provides exceptional rigidity and strength without the added weight, which can make a huge difference for extra-long treks through the wild.
Comfort and Fit
Comfort is probably the most paramount characteristic you should look for when choosing a hunting backpack with frame. Not all frames are alike and choosing one that is not capable of supporting your load will result in lots of discomfort and an overall miserable hiking experience–especially if you’re attempting to pack out a load of meat along with your gear.
AKEK’s backpacks are designed by hunters who have decades of experience going on multi-day hunts in some of the most rugged regions in the world. We understand how a quality hunting backpack and frame should fit and feel and we’ve created the Alpha 3200 and Climax 5400 with this in mind
Padded Shoulder Straps
One of the features you should never compromise on are quality padded shoulder straps. AKEK backpacks are crafted with extra-soft padding on our shoulder straps because we know what it feels like to have an inadequate strap digging into your shoulders for hours at a time. AKEK hunting backpacks are well-padded and adjustable, which lets you choose how you want to evenly distribute the weight of your pack.
A solid hunting backpack’s straps should function with the frame to disperse the weight in a way that doesn’t overload at the front or back. AKEK’s hunting backpacks have straps that connect the shoulder straps to the top of the frame, which works to keep your pack upright instead of allowing it to tip forward or backward. Like everything else with AKEK backpacks, these small straps can also be adjusted for optimal comfort.
Padded Waist Belt
A padded waist belt will transfer the weight to your hips and lower back instead of forcing you to support the load with your upper back and shoulders. Many hunting backpacks feature a waist belt, but none is comparable to AKEK products. Both the Alpha 3200 and Climax 5400 are made with soft padding, which makes it much more comfortable to cinch down your waist belt more tightly and relieve the strain on your shoulders to allow for better balance.
The AKEK hunting backpack’s waist belt can be adjusted to fit your specific waist size, as well as the height that you want your belt to be in relation to the shoulder straps and frame. Our waist belt features wide padding that’s made to help distribute the pressure across a wider part of your midsection. This goes a long way in maintaining a comfortable fit as opposed to using backpacks that feature more narrow waist belts.
Ventilation and Frame Shape
The middle of your back puts off a great deal of heat when you’re undertaking strenuous activity like hiking with a 100+ pound load in the wilderness. Proper ventilation in the back panel is essential to your overall comfort when using a hunting backpack with frame. If your frame and pack rests too closely to your back, you will very quickly begin sweating and becoming overheated–even in cold weather.
AKEK’s Alpha 3200 and Climax 5400 are both crafted with a curved frame that directly solves this common issue that so many hunters deal with on a routine basis. The curved frame creates a small pocket or opening that maintains space between your back and the backpack’s frame, allowing air to pass through at all times.
Weight and Durability
Many hunting backpacks with frames are simply too heavy to be considered truly comfortable. We tallied many hours of research and testing during our development process when making the Alpha 3200 and Climax 5400 backpacks to ensure that the super lightweight design was fully capable of handling a seriously heavy load of gear.
The full weight of the Alpha 3200 with frame is just 5 pounds, 11 ounces, making it one of the lightest hunting backpacks with frame you’ll find. The Climax 5400 with frame tips the scales at just one pound more than its lighter counterpart. The AKEK carbon fiber frame creates a lightweight pack experience that is truly unprecedented in the world of hunting as it is capable of handling loads that weigh up to 150 pounds.
The weight of the backpack itself can impact your mobility and comfort. While external frame backpacks tend to be heavier due to their robust frame, it’s crucial to find a balance between weight and functionality. AKEK makes it possible to choose a backpack that is lightweight yet doesn’t require you to sacrifice strength and durability in the process.
One of the best features in the Climax 5400 is that this backpack can be adjusted and used in different ‘modes’ that are specifically designed for different types of hunting. The ‘regular’ mode is what is considered to be a standard hunting backpack with frame size, but the Climax 5400 can also be shifted and used in ‘compact’ mode when you need to go with a more “bare-bones” approach while in the field.
The backpack’s frame and pack can be extended to create the ‘climax’ mode, which allows hunters to carry a massive amount of gear with relative ease due to the weight being evenly dispersed across the various pressure points. These three different modes truly make the Climax 5400 similar to using three backpacks in one version which can easily be adjusted in the field to meet your needs.
Accessibility and Organization
An ideal hunting backpack should provide you with easy access to essential gear items while keeping it organized. You should seek a hunting backpack that offers multiple compartments, zippered pockets, and attachment points for gear like trekking poles, optics, and additional equipment. AKEK’s backpacks offer all of these in a way that outperforms other products in the field. These packs are also great packs for backcountry hunting.
While most hunting backpacks can only be opened from the top, AKEK’s Alpha 3200 and Climax 5400 can be opened from the top or front. This allows you to more quickly and easily locate and access the item you need without having to unload or remove gear that you have carefully packed.
Our hunting backpacks are designed in such a way that they offer the fit and feel of a high-end hiking pack combined with the functionality and organization of a hunting pack. Each individual opening and extra compartment has been added and strategically placed to maximize the organizational capacity of the backpack. As we’ve already mentioned, you can adjust and customize any part of the backpack to create the perfect multi-day hunting backpack for your journey.
Noise Level
Stealth is crucial when hunting, and additional noise created by your backpack is simply unacceptable to avid hunters who are serious about their outcomes. In many cases, the small noises like squeaking, rustling, rattling or other sounds are a result of poorly-constructed products. Every part of AKEK backpacks have been crafted with noise reduction in mind.
One of the great characteristics of the carbon fiber frame used in AKEK backpacks is that it is virtually silent–especially compared to metal-frame backpacks that often create an array of noises during use. Both the Alpha 3200 and the Climax 5400 have been rigorously tested with their maximum capacity of 150 pounds across a variety of different types of terrain. Each pack offers a surprisingly silent performance, despite the heavy loads.
Warranty
As serious outdoorsmen and women, we hold our gear to a higher standard when we trek into the wilderness for days or even weeks at a time. There can be no compromise on comfort, stability, and organization in the field. We stand fully behind AKEK’s products to deliver and perform in a manner that is better than the competition.
Each of our AKEK hunting backpacks come with our AKEK Lifetime Warranty, which means you can be confident that your pack will hold up against anything you encounter in the wild. A great hunting backpack and frame should be an investment that lasts and that’s exactly what you can expect with our products.