None of us are getting any younger, and if you were to ask my legs, hips and lower back, the hills I choose to hunt seem to be getting steeper. Despite having crossed the half-century mark, I refuse to allow my native Catskills and Adirondacks to intimidate me to the point where I avoid hunting them. Though the terrain may be rugged, here in New York we have oxygen in our mountains—as opposed to the Rockies, where oxygen comes at a premium—and while the game might be sparse, it’s an iconic experience.
Rifle weight has often been a factor for those who hunt the rugged terrain, whether it be sheep hunters on the scree slides of Alaskan mountains or anyone who hauls their gear on their back when venturing into the few remaining wild places left on Earth. If I’m on relatively flat ground—say, in the Hudson Valley of New York, the Great Plains of the Dakotas or eastern Wyoming and Colorado or even the vast majority of
