TL;DR: Caribou Gear sells its game bags by species: Wapiti for elk ($105.99), Muley for deer ($91.99), and Carnivore for boned-out meat ($89.99), all backed by a 3-year limited warranty. Lone Trail's Game Bags 5-Piece Set is $70, covers elk and deer with the same five bags, and carries a lifetime warranty. Both brands use lightweight synthetic fabric built to breathe. The real differences are price, warranty length, and whether you're buying one set or a shelf of them.
Prices checked September 2026 on each brand's own site.
What Each Setup Actually Costs
Caribou Gear builds a different set for each animal. The Wapiti, sized for elk quarters (23" x 40" bags) plus a meat-parts bag and a storage bag, runs $105.99. The Muley, sized down for deer (18" x 34" bags), is $91.99. The Carnivore, built for boned-out meat with five uniform 16" x 30" bags, is $89.99. If you hunt both deer and elk and want a set matched to each animal, that's $197.98 for the pair before either box is opened.
Lone Trail's Game Bags 5-Piece Set is $70 and covers both jobs with one set: four 40" x 24" quarter bags plus a 17" x 29" bag for trim, tenderloins, and backstraps, sized (per our own product FAQ) to hold a full elk hindquarter and to work just as well on deer.
If you only ever hunt one species and want a bag cut to that animal's exact dimensions, Caribou's species-specific approach has a real case. If you hunt more than one species, or just want one set that handles both without a second purchase, the math favors Lone Trail by a wide margin.
Quick Specs
| Feature | Lone Trail Game Bags 5-Piece | Caribou Gear Wapiti (elk) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $70 | $105.99 |
| Configuration | 4x 40"x24" quarter bags + 1x 17"x29" bag + carrying case | 4x 23"x40" quarter bags + 1x 16"x30" parts bag + storage bag |
| Fabric | 40D diamond ripstop nylon | Breathable synthetic fabric (denier not published) |
| Species covered | Elk and deer, one set | Elk-specific (Muley sold separately for deer, $91.99) |
| Washable | Yes, machine washable | Yes, machine wash cold |
| Reflective element | Reflective strip | Reflective tabs and drawstring |
| Out-of-the-box smell | No chemical smell | Not addressed on Caribou's own pages we checked |
| Warranty | Lifetime, repair or replace | 3-year limited (defects only) |
| Returns | Free returns | 15-day no-hassle returns |
One Set vs. a Shelf of Species-Specific Sets
Caribou Gear's species-specific approach is a real strength if you only ever chase one animal. A Wapiti quarter bag is a closer literal fit to elk anatomy than a universal bag, and the Muley's smaller 18" x 34" bags mean less bag to manage on a deer that would swim in a set cut for elk. But most Western hunters aren't one-species hunters in a given fall. A hunter who fills a deer tag and an elk tag needs either the Wapiti alone, and to make deer quarters work in bags cut for elk, or both the Wapiti and Muley sets at $197.98 combined.
Lone Trail's set isn't species-specific in Caribou's sense, but it doesn't need to be. Our own product FAQ confirms the 40" x 24" bags handle a full elk hindquarter, and the same set "fits deer perfectly fine," with the elk sizing as the ceiling, not a mismatch. One $70 set covers a multi-species fall. If your freezer only ever holds venison, Caribou's smaller, closer-fitted Muley bags might suit you better. If you're hunting more than one species a year, one Lone Trail set replaces two Caribou sets and saves real money doing it.
Buying Singles to Top Off a Set
Caribou Gear also sells individual bags outside its named sets: Single Quarter Bags from $22.99, Full Carcass Bags from $55.99, and a Camp Meat Bag at $15.99. That's a real option if you fill more tags than bags in a season, tear a bag mid-hunt, or want to build a custom combination instead of buying a full named set. It's also how the true cost of outfitting for a busy season can climb past the sticker price on the Wapiti or Muley alone.
Lone Trail doesn't sell single replacement bags separately; the $70 five-piece set is the only configuration. For most hunters processing one or two animals a season, that's not a real limitation, since the set is sized to cover a full elk or deer by itself. If you routinely fill three or four tags and go through bags faster than a season's worth of use, Caribou's singles give you a way to top off without buying a whole new set.
Fabric: Named Denier vs. "Breathable Synthetic"
Lone Trail's game bags are 40D diamond ripstop nylon, a number we publish because it's the only way to actually compare fabric weight and durability across brands. Caribou Gear doesn't publish a denier figure for any of its three sets. The Wapiti and Muley pages describe "breathable synthetic fabric"; the Carnivore calls it "advanced synthetic fabric" with stain resistance and moisture wicking. Those are real, useful properties, just not measurable ones. A published denier number lets you compare apples to apples against any other bag on the market, ours included. An unpublished one asks you to take the marketing copy on faith.
Warranty: Lifetime vs. Three Years
Caribou Gear backs its bags with a 3-year limited warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. It's a real warranty with real terms, and it explicitly excludes normal wear and tear, accidents, improper care, and damage from tears, abrasions, punctures, burns, or animals, which covers most of what actually happens to a game bag in the field. Lone Trail backs every set with a lifetime warranty: if it has a manufacturing defect or quality issue, we repair or replace it no matter how long you've owned it, plus free returns on all products. Three years is a meaningfully shorter window than lifetime, especially for gear both brands market as built for multiple seasons of reuse.
What Hunters Report
Caribou Gear has been in this category since 2008, and its review counts back that up: the Muley set shows a 5.0-star average across 35 reviews on Caribou's own site, and the Carnivore shows 4.9 across 39. Most of what's out there is positive. Two threads are worth knowing about, though. On Amazon, one buyer's review of a Caribou Gear medium game bag set reported three of four bags developing dime- to nickel-sized holes before they'd even made it back to the truck, writing that durability and function "were not there" for that trip. On the hunting forum Rokslide, one buyer described a shipment lost by USPS and having to contact Caribou "at least 10 times" before getting a resolution, though other posters in the same thread reported the company working things out fine.
None of that is evidence the bags fail routinely. One longtime Hunt Talk poster described getting four to five seasons out of a single Caribou Gear set: soaking the bags in a rain barrel after a hunt, running them through the washing machine, air-drying, and reusing the same set the following year. That's the kind of multi-year reuse both brands market their bags for.
What Caribou Gear Gets Right
Caribou Gear earned its position in this category. Field-proven since 2008, with a product line built around fitting the bag to the animal instead of asking one bag to do every job. The Wapiti's meat-parts bag and rubber-coated mesh storage bag are a thoughtful, purpose-built combination for an elk pack-out. Reflective tabs and a drawcord-and-lock-loop closure make bags easy to find and hang in low light, a detail that matters more than it sounds like at 5am on a pack-out. And a company that deliberately keeps its logo small so it doesn't restrict airflow is thinking about the actual job the bag has to do, not just the label on it.
Buy Caribou Gear If...
- You hunt one species consistently and want a bag cut to that animal's exact dimensions instead of a universal size.
- You want the reassurance of a 15-plus year track record and dozens of five-star reviews on the exact set you're buying.
- You're already invested in the Caribou lineup (Magnum Pack for moose, singles for topping off a set) and want everything to match.
- A 3-year warranty against defects is enough coverage for how long you expect to keep a set in rotation.
Buy Lone Trail If...
- You hunt more than one species and don't want to buy a second species-specific set.
- You want a warranty that outlasts the gear instead of expiring in year four.
- You want a fabric spec you can actually compare against other bags instead of "breathable synthetic."
- You'd rather spend the $20 to $128 you save on tags, fuel, or better optics.
Bottom Line
Caribou Gear makes a legitimate, well-reviewed game bag, and if you only ever hunt elk or only ever hunt deer, a set built to that animal's dimensions is a real advantage worth paying for. But most hunters aren't single-species hunters, and Caribou's model asks you to buy again every time your tag changes. Lone Trail's $70 set handles both jobs with the same five bags, backs it with a lifetime warranty instead of three years, and publishes a denier number instead of "breathable synthetic." If you're building a pack-out kit that has to work whether you draw an elk tag, a deer tag, or both, one set that does both jobs is the simpler and cheaper way to get there.
Shop the Game Bags 5-Piece Set ($70)
Related reading: our full Caribou Gear vs Argali vs Lone Trail roundup, how many game bags you actually need for an elk, and cooling elk meat in the field.