I was one of the ‘lucky’ guys given a free AKEK pack to review. I haven’t posted my review yet. I’ve used it turkey hunting and one afternoon where I loaded it heavy to test it’s load carrying. I’m not impressed. The lumbar pad is oversized and is not moveable or replaceable with a thinner one. Because of that I can’t make it comfortable, maybe it’s like a good set of boots, they might fit someone else better. It doesn’t fit me. The side pockets are not seperate from the main bag in volume, you can only fill one up full. Example, if you fill the main bag tight the space in the side pockets is minimized and not useable for much. The main compartment has two cavities, neither of which are very big, this divider is not removable so the size of items stuffed into the main‘s bag may be limited. The load shelf bottom is sewn in place so you can’t adjust it for height. When you separate the main bag from the frame to put a load in it you have to detach the top of the bag from the load lifters which effectively lowers the load lifters at a time when you’d like them to be higher. The belt is a one size fits all belt so you won’t have any options to change the size if you aren’t ‘average’. I carried my shot gun about 5 miles in the gun sling, it worked ok. I’ve carried my rifle with a sling over the top of one of my load lifters on my better packs with the chest strap clipped over the sling and I don’t see myself wanting anything different. AKEK makes only one bag, a 3200 ci bag so there are no options for a bigger bag if you should need it for extended backpack hunts in cold weather where you would have the need to carry more gear. Waterproof material would be a good idea too, DWR water repellent is not waterproof. In addition at 6 pounds it is a heavy bag for it’s size.
If AKEK is serious about making a venture into the high end market they’ll need to do some learning from this bag/frame combination.
akek.com
Any owners out there?
