# Prepping / Emergency Preparedness > Bags, Kits and Vehicles >  Gun hates Pack, Does not play well with others.

## Sourdough

Some equipment is just not compatible. Just because you bought it, does not mean you are proficient in it's operation. And some equipment needs to be broken in carefully prior to hard use. This would include machinery, but more specific to me is Boots, Backpacks, Tents, Camping stoves, etc.....

I have been on an arduous campaign to wear-in all of the new (Ten pair) boots, dry them, oil them, then store them for future use.

This also allows opportunity for failure to "Play well with others" to raise its ugly head. Yesterday I learned that rifles with steel butt plates are not compatible with modern padded backpack straps. Sadly this information was grasped while on a death hike, wading through bear poop, grass & cow parsnip 6' 5" high.

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## Winter

So, the steel butt plate is destroying the shoulder straps?

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## Sourdough

> So, the steel butt plate is destroying the shoulder straps?


No.....It slides off the thick padded nylon strap and onto my bicep, 100% of the time if mounted quickly. It would work OK with a leather or canvas shoulder strap. My solution is pack a different rifle.

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## LowKey

or modify the shoulder strap on your shooting side.

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## Sourdough

> or modify the shoulder strap on your shooting side.


NO, the pack is WAY more important than the firearm in the wilderness. But the point is not my gun and my pack, the point is don't assume anything.

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## LowKey

I'm for making something work should you only have the choice of that pack and that firearm. 
If it isn't interchangeable, why wouldn't you modify it? 
Specialization is for insects.

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## Rick

Slide a recoil pad on the butt and presto, instant stick in the shoulder modification. Don't have that pack? Slide the recoil pad off. We be mammals. We don't need no stinkin' specialization.

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## hunter63

+ one on the trials, the time to figure it out is not O-dark thirty in the morning when heading out the door.

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## aflineman

I hear you there. Many Air Force Civil Engineering folks found that out the hard way. Got issued the "new" Interceptor body armor, and our old original M16 rifles (NOT A1, or A2, but true M16). They found that the fixed stock did not work well with the body armor. Worked better than the Army's M16A2 stocks did, but not as well as the M4 does.

I myself have to remember to change a few things when I carry/shoot one of my older steel butt plate rifles. Some jackets do not like them either.

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## Sourdough

> I'm for making something work should you only have the choice of that pack and that firearm. 
> If it isn't interchangeable, why wouldn't you modify it? 
> Specialization is for insects.


I have about 25 or 30 backpacks, and about 75 firearms, I don't need to modify things. I just need to test, test, test. and remember what works.

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## Sourdough

> Slide a recoil pad on the butt and presto, instant stick in the shoulder modification. Don't have that pack? Slide the recoil pad off. We be mammals. We don't need no stinkin' specialization.


The LOP is max now, and the firearm is $1,559.00 (New Winchester 1892 limited edition octogan take'down). It should not have been on this adventure.

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## Rick

It sounds like the firearm was fine on the adventure. It sounds like Sourdough might be the one that shouldn't have been there.  :Whistling:  Six foot grass and walkin' in bear poop? Color me gone.

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## crashdive123

Is that color in the super deluxe Crayola box?

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## Sourdough

> Six foot grass and walking' in bear poop? Color me gone.


That was the good part, it got worse. The important thing is that as I continue to push/test myself I am getting a very clear concept of my bodies endurance ability. I prefer the knowing 100% to guessing what I think I can do. As the guessing is always to optimistic. 

Round trip was just over 10 miles, with a climb of 3,300 feet in elevation, with a 19.5 pound pack, and 7 pound firearm. One thing I needed and did not have was leather gloves. I also inventory wild food encountered through-out the hike, the only thing I could have harvested was Magpies (small bird).

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## Rick

That color is in the 120 count box. It's between Yellow Bellied Yellow and Scaried Chitless Brown. 

I carry leather gloves as well. I've probably used them as much for cooking as for anything. They've saved my fingers from a blister a time or two.

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## Bushman

> The LOP is max now, and the firearm is $1,559.00 (New Winchester 1892 limited edition octogan take'down). It should not have been on this adventure.


sweet rifle................44mag/45LC........or 44.40 ??

keepin in the Spirit of the Gun , ya shoulda been packin an old spruce frame Voyageur pack or sumpim like it????
and wearin a set of buckskins and a coonskin hat.................  :Smile:

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## Sourdough

> sweet rifle................44mag/45LC........or 44.40 ??
> 
> keepin in the Spirit of the Gun , ya shoulda been packin an old spruce frame Voyageur pack or sumpim like it????
> and wearin a set of buckskins and a coonskin hat.................


One is .45 Long Colt and one is .44 Magnum. I do have an original "Trapper Nelson" pack which does have canvas straps.

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