TAG Game Bag Review

TAG game bags are by far the best game bag on the market.  Growing up hunting in Florida my entire life I never needed to buy or even use game bags until I moved to Alaska.  After doing some online research and seeing a few different types used on a previous moose hunt, I decided to purchase a 6 pack of TAG game bags in sizes 28" X 60".  My initial purchase was made primarily on 2 reasons and based off comparisons of the TAG game bag and a generic cotton game bag.  The first reason was how light weight and compact they are.  I knew that I would eventually being doing some backpack hunts and would need the lightest game bags I could find, but that were still durable enough to last a few seasons.  TAG bags are made of a new synthetic material called Game-VentTM.  This material is very breathable allowing proper ventilation to the meat and preventing spoilage.  Many other game bags made of cotton do not allow proper air flow and hold the moisture in.  This allows bacteria to form and the meat to spoil.  TAG bags synthetic material also drys very quickly when hung out.  Another feature that is crucial is they resist mold which is a must when dealing with meat.

On one of our caribou trips we opened up an action packer that had many of our game bags in it all freshly washed and bleached only to find most of the cotton bags unusable due to the amount of mold that covered them. Luckily we had 2 sets of TAG bags ready to be filled.  TAG bags come in a few different sizes and can be purchased individually or in packs.  For larger game such as moose they have a 6 pack that are 28" X 60".  For medium size game they have a 5 pack that are 24" X 44".  All bags come individually rolled inside an orange mesh bag that is about the size of a football.  My second reason for choosing TAG bags was watching how easily they were cleaned on the same hunt/moose in comparison to the generic cotton bag.   My set of bags saw 2 caribou and 1 moose and they still look brand new after some very easy cleaning.  The dried blood instantly started washing away with just a little water.  For cleaning my bags this season I simply let them soak in a bucket for about a 1/2 day to a full day.  Just allowing them to soak in a bucket of water removes most of the blood and stains.   Next I pressure washed each bag which gets the remaining stains out.  After this i let them soak in the bucket again with a little bleach and water to sterilize before taking them into the house and into the washing machine.  After that they go into the washing machine for a round of bleach and then another round of just water.  Doing this same process with the cotton bags requires many extra repetitive steps and time in order to get the same results.  Even after all this the cotton bags can still grow mold, as we found out.

One thing that is surprising is how strong and durable these bags are for being such a light weight material.  These bags handled the weight and size of a moose hind leg with no problem.  The sets were designed to fit a quarter in each bag and the remaining meat in the additional bags.  At the top of the bag is a draw string for closing up the top and keeping the bugs out.  They also held up to the sharp bones and thick brush we went through on the 4 wheelers.

After seeing how well they performed in the field Kyle and I wanted to do a quick comparison between TAG bags and cotton bags of weight and size.  We wanted to keep the bags as close in size as possible.  The closest we could find in our arsenal was a cotton bag 43" X 33" totaling 1419 square inches.  For the TAG bag we used the larger "moose size" bag that is 56" X 27" totaling 1512 square inches.  Our first weigh in comparing one bag each was more of a difference than we were expecting.  The single cotton bag came in at 1 lb 12.8 oz. While the single TAG bag weighed in at 7.9 oz.   We stacked up 4 tag bags on the scale and they weighed in at 1 lb. 15.8 oz.  Only a 3 oz. difference between the two makes a cotton bag almost 4 times the weight of one TAG bag!  Our final weight was of the complete set of 6 TAG bags in the mesh bag.  This total weighed only 3 lbs. 1.6 oz.  For a complete set of game bags that will easily handle an entire moose that's pretty impressive.  To get close to the same amount of square inches in the cotton bags you would not only only have to devote a small action packer of room for them, but you would be hauling around 10 lbs 12.79 oz.  For most wheeler hunts this isn't necessarily an issue.  However if you plan to be taking in your gear on your back, saving more than 7 lbs is quite a substantial weight savings.  In my opinion TAG bags are the best game bag on the market and the only game bag I will be taking in the field on my back or in my wheeler.