Our Story
Ovis Mountain is a family-owned and operated business out of Palmer, Alaska, dedicated to producing the highest-quality backpacks for backcountry hunting. Founded by Sam Jeffries, an experienced mechanical, aerospace, and field engineer, the company benefits from his extensive engineering experience and decades of solo backcountry hunting. After working for years as an engineer, Sam made the pivotal decision to merge his passion for hunting with his technical expertise. Drawing on his strengths in composite engineering and research and development (R&D), Sam embarked on a journey to create his own pack systems, aiming to enhance areas he deemed in need of improvement. Through years of meticulous design and rigorous testing, Ovis Mountain was born, representing the culmination of Sam's dedication to crafting high-performance backpacks tailored for backcountry hunting adventures.
Founder
Sam Jeffries – Before starting Ovis Mountain, Sam was a mechanical-aerospace and field engineer. As an aerospace engineer, he worked in R&D on the cutting edge of the aerospace industry with organizations like NASA, FAA, DoD and some of the top research institutes in the world. Some of the projects he has led include state of the art aerial sensors for wildlife detection and population surveys, aerial UAV gas leak detection for the Alaska Pipeline, aerial oil spill response and mapping for Kodiak Island’s critical habitat, along with a multitude of other projects.
He also spent years working at one of Alaska's premier rocket launch research facilities, specializing in winter launch pad prep in Alaska's bitter cold interior and recovering the rockets after being launched to the most remote parts of Northern Alaska.
As a field engineer, he has traveled to nearly every corner of Alaska, designing and maintaining the states massive seismic monitoring network. He spent months in the field testing a marine wildlife early detection sensor he designed for Alaska's busy ocean waters. He worked with the remote western Alaskan villages helping to design and implement an emergency response thermal imaging system to locate lost individuals during Alaska's brutal winter snow storms.
While Sam’s professional career has gained him a unique engineering skill set, his true lifelong obsession has always been wildlife and backcountry hunting. Originally from Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, Sam grew up with a passion for hunting and the wilderness from a very early age.
He began solo backpack hunting when he was a teenager and has been hunting the most remote country he can find ever since. Sam’s passion for hunting eventually led him to Alaska where he continues to solo backpack hunt for sheep and everything else Alaska has to offer.
