Rucking school: How dumbells and a military surplus backpack can prepare you for hunting season

“I can’t make it up there.”

In the world of fair chase, there’s nothing worse than seeing game and not being able to pursue.

Few things can doom a hunt more rapidly than an outright lack of physical fitness. At best it’s a slide whistle sound effect of failure, at worst it could be a safety hazard.

Navigating my social media trapline presents an onslaught of alpha-hunter-bros slinging supplements and workout plans in a targeted algorithmic barrage of January New Year’s resolution advertising, guaranteeing to transform you into the jacked John J. Rambo of ungulate chasers.

The alpha-bros are not wrong: If you were to draw a pie-chart of the factors that determine hunter success, a large slice of that pie would be physical fitness.

The ability to move efficiently over landscape at various intensities and speeds could mean the difference between a notched tag and an even more miserable January come 2027.

Luckily, getting in the best hunting shape of your life in time for the fall of 2026 need not be complicated. It doesn’t require ingesting questionable supplements and it can start right now.

All you need is a surplus army backpack and some weight.

Ruck it, let’s hike

Rucking – in the modern civilian nomenclature – is simply the act of intentional hiking with weight for resistance.

That weight could be carried in a pack or a vest.

Generally for a hunter, a pack is the most logical, since most of our loads consist of weight hanging off our backs.

Few exercises offer the one-to-one exchange of work to benefit that rucking will give you. It’s low-impact and builds all the muscles you will use for exploring the backcountry, hauling in your camp or, hopefully, packing out meat.

Time spent in a heavy pack tempers your feet, legs, hips and core under fatigue. It gets you used to having a heavy pack pulling against your back and shoulders for extended periods of time.

Rucking will improve your balance and stability on uneven ground and teach you how to adjust a heavy pack to ride properly in unforgiving conditions.

Equipment

The weight you load in your pack could range from sandbags, to lead shot, to jugs of water, to dumbbells or plates.

Companies like GoRuck build packs and specific weights just for rucking. They’re outstanding in quality but also costly.

Since 2018, I’ve had great success in both cost and consistency during my rucking career using a single generic dumbbell loaded horizontally into a military surplus backpack.

Stolen valor accusations aside, for the application of hauling heavy weights over long distances, military surplus packs are tough to beat. They’re cheap, durable and designed to haul heavy stuff.

When it comes to buying one, you most commonly have two basic choices: the 1970s ALICE pack system and the early 2000s MOLLE II system.

The MOLLE II is probably the best for beginners because there is more adjustability in the system. It’s an external plastic framed pack with heavy MOLLE webbing on the outside. The MOLLE II is most commonly found in the Universal Camouflage Pattern . UCP is an early 2000s digital camouflage pattern which is “universally” hated by surplus collectors, so it can still be had for fairly cheap.

The MOLLE II standard ruck has a heavy zippered divider in the center of the bag that allows you to zip the bag in half. You can load a single dumbbell laterally across the top half of this “shelf” and strap it securely with the two vertical guide straps on the outside of the pack. This configuration gives you the ideal weight placement in the middle of your back and also leaves room for a Nalgene bottle between the two lobes of the dumbbell for hydration.

The ALICE pack system is older – designed in the 1970s – but in my experience is preferable for the more experienced rucker. Next to the MOLLE II it’s a vastly simpler rig, with fewer straps and less padding, but the beauty of the ALICE lies therein.

The ALICE sports an aluminum external frame which holds the load slightly away from your back, allowing for more airflow in hot weather but still maintaining rigidity.

For rucking with a dumbbell, you want to attach a medium -sized bag to your ALICE frame. This way you can easily strap in a dumbbell in the same way as I recommended on the MOLLE II.

Companies have “hot-rodded” the ALICE pack frame for modern military applications. Tactical Tailor makes modern up-fits for the ALICE in their modern ALICE system that are quite appealing but also expensive for the dirtbag rucker.

I still use both surplus packs, but I almost always use the ALICE system when it’s hot out and sometimes switch to the MOLLE II when temperatures drop.

Neither of these packs would be my choice for a hunting backpack, but they’re great for training.

Good examples of either of these surplus packs can be had for around $100. On Amazon, a 50-pound dumbbell is about $50. That’s only $150 bucks for a system that you can train with year-round.

There are myriad choices on the civilian market of backpacks with built-in load shelves and dense padding.

I’ve packed a fair amount of meat out in various bags attached to a Mystery Ranch Guide Light frame. I love the ride and modularity, but I’ve never had the heart to strap a dumbbell to it and beat it up rucking. That frame in particular is great for securing something like an elk quarter, but in my experience, pretty bad at securing something small and densely heavy like a dumbbell.

Your results may vary.

Whatever pack and weight system you choose, you want the weight carried close to your spine and high up on your back. With a dumbbell, I find it carries best horizontally, with the ends of the weight at the bottoms of my shoulder blades.

You want most of the weight to ride on your hips using a belt strap, leaving the shoulder straps to stabilize the load to yourself.

Everything else you choose to wear, from footwear to pants is totally personal preference. If you go the route of the surplus backpack, the belt systems will likely chew up your shirts over time, so maybe don’t wear a concert T-shirt with sentimental value.

Trekking poles can be an asset on technical terrain and I use them when packing out super heavy loads after a successful hunt, but rarely use them on training rucks.

Let’s go!

Once you’ve got a pack and you’ve got some ballast, the next part is simple: get marching.

Assuming you’re reading this in January 2026, you’ve got eight or nine months to get tuned up before hunting season.

Workout intensity can be measured by time spent rucking, distance traveled, weight carried and elevation gained. A heart rate monitor can be used to track exertion if you’re feeling technologically inclined, but generally you’ll know when you’re working hard.

A good starting point for weight would be somewhere between 5% to 10% of total bodyweight for the beginner and 10% to 20% for intermediate hikers. At roughly 200 pounds, I’ve landed at 45 to 50 pounds of weight for almost all of my rucking.

My most common rucking routine is to hike the Knothead Loop in Riverside State Park with my ruck loaded with 50 pounds plus water. The loop is just over 6.5 miles and features more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain. The fastest I’ve ever completed it is just over two hours and a par time is usually around 2 hours , 15 minutes.

Some advanced ruckers – particularly those with experience in the infantry – who are trying to hit fast times rucking will shuffle-jog to crank up the pace. I’ve dabbled in this at times, but concerns about my joints have led me to self-governing to speed-walking and using conventional distance running to build higher aerobic fitness.

If you are strapped for time or concerned about heading off into parts unknown with a heavy pack, a quick, high-yield workout using your rucksack would be hill or stair repeats.

These are exactly like they sound: Find a steep hill (or a set of stairs) and head up at a fast clip, then turn around and head down using the downhill for your recovery interval. Just 15-30 minutes of this type of work is extremely beneficial in building strength and can be scaled with your fitness.

After building a baseline of fitness in the winter months, a savvy hunter could stack rucking workouts with summer scouting trips in the backcountry.

If you hunt dry areas and you know them well enough, you can haul in water reserves during the summer months and cache them to sustain your backpack camp in the fall.

Shed hunting is another activity that easily yields double benefits from strapping on a heavy ruck.

Final thoughts

The beauty of rucking lies in how simple it is.

It can be done almost anywhere you can walk and as we’ve already covered, the equipment is basic.

Strapping on the pack once or twice a week for one to two hours is more than enough to build strength that will pay dividends in the fall.