The Indestructible Pack Basket

Wane Loring

Loring Pack Basket is a small unassuming shop located just a stones throw from the Old Town Trading Post in Old Town, Maine. What the shop lacks in impressive size, it more than makes up for in the creation of a product big on quality and durability. A short while ago, I was fortunate enough to have a chance to stop by Loring Pack Basket and chat with Wane Loring the owner, designer and primary builder of these amazing pack baskets.

Wane is a registered Maine Tribal Guide and avid sportsman. As I chat with him, he points to several of his own personal specialized pack baskets, filled with gear for his various adventures afield, ice fishing, hunting and trapping. It is immediately apparent that Wane’s construction principals and pack basket designs are hard tested in Maine’s woods and waters, refined by actual sporting pursuits.

Wane's Son Jesse Loring

Wane’s understanding of pack basket construction is based on time tested traditional techniques passed down from father to son for centuries. This knowledge is apparent in his craft, as he painstakingly incorporates traditional Native American basket building skills with present day space age materials. The end product is an exquisite pack basket that is indestructible in all but the most dire of situations. These baskets have been run over by ATVs, hit by trucks, shot with rockets and basically torture tested in an attempt to find their practical limits. Wane jokes that if my pack basket gets caked in ice, I should simply beat it against a tree until all of the ice breaks off . . . try that with your old wooden pack basket!

10 Lbs of N. Pike

Wane is driven not by the construction of a product but how to continually make that product better. While talking, he described a laundry list of improvements to be incorporated in future models. Some of these modifications are ergonomic; others aesthetic but a majority are to provide the public with an extensive list of ways to personalize their pack baskets. As he describes the possibilities, I begin to see how much his ideas separate him from the current one size fits all mentality, seen in some of his competitors.

Wane and his wife as well as a small contingent of workers, complete a majority of the pack basket construction processes. Wane mentions that he is potentially looking to expand his operations in the spring, a testament to the popularity of these pack baskets.

The Loring Shack!

Popular at ice fishing derby’s and sportsman shows, the giant Loring black and green checkered ice fishing shack is a classic sight to behold. Complete with an enormous set of Heritage ice traps sticking out of the baskets top and an ice scoop hanging by the door that would take two men to successfully heft, it is a display well worth seeing. Wane hints he is planning to soon begin construction on another giant pack basket shaped ice shack, thought he suggests that the next one will be based on a more “traditional” design.

If you are in the market for a pack basket and searching for a product that is indestructible, highly functional, comfortable and guaranteed to make you stand out slightly from the crowd, I strongly suggest dropping Wane Loring a line and ordering one of his indestructible pack baskets!

For the traditionalist, wanting to own a true masterpiece, Wane also builds impressive hand made ash wood pack baskets upon special request! When you order a pack basket, please tell them the Rabid Outdoorsman sent you!

Torture Test Conducted by my Son the Wild Outdoorsman

From Trophy Winning Pike to the Dinner Table

“If it looks good eat it”, is the popular catch phrase of Andrew Zimmern of the Travel Channels Bizarre Foods. As I watch him weekly scoff down a plethora of unusual food choices, I often ponder how he would feel about eating a Northern Pike. Most likely, he would marvel at its delicious, flaky white meat and jubilantly describe its complex textures and lack of fishy taste when battered and deep-fried to golden perfection. Then of course, he would suck out the fish’s eyeballs and chew them up with gusto and I would hurl and that would be the end of the show. I imagine it would be quite an interesting episode.

Back to reality and the job of processing my personal best and tourney placing Northern Pike for the dinner table. This ordeal started with the extraction of a very large (17.70 lb) frozen pike from my chest freezer and it taking a 5-hour soak in my bathtub (yes, my wife is a very understanding woman). I debated using the hot tub but was concerned the excessive amounts of slim dripping off the beast might clog the intake jets (did I mention my wife was understanding?).

After a through defrost and de-sliming, I hauled the fish and a large number of cutting utensils out onto the deck and started in on the chore of filleting. Using a heavy hunting knife, I made several initial cuts to slice through the thick skin and allow the more delicate fillet knife to do its job unfettered. The processing took about 15 minutes and there were a lot more bones then I remember from completing this task on a similar sized fish a few years ago. In the end, the fish yielded 8 full cups of pure white meat sure to be enjoyed in the weeks to come.

One Side Complete onto the Next

Pike Rendered to Guts, Bone and Skin

Edible Bits Remain . . . YES even the HEAD!

Next three different ways to cook Pike . . .

Home Sweet Home

The image above is my newest Desktop Background and was a shot I took out the door of the ice shack looking westerly toward a small community of shacks that can be barely made out spread across the lake surface. Throughout the two days of fishing this little group of shacks provided hours of entertainment as we watched through the binoculars at snowmachines and ATVs racing across the ice.

Big Bait Big Fish

This video shows just how voracious Mud Trout can be when they are hungry! The fish in this video was one of the larger specimens caught at 24 inches. Note that even after captured the fish refused to give up the large 8 inch sucker Brett had been using as bait. Most of our fishing lines (including this catch) were set 1 foot off bottom on a large shoal in about 8 feet of water. None of the Lakers that we managed to take were in water deeper than 20 feet.