My Cabelas tent weight 50 lbs and stove about 8 lbs. Do I need a lighter tent?
Yep. (You're pulling my leg. Right?) That's too heavy for a fly-in hunt. Leave the stove at home and get a lighter tent. A Cabelas "Instinct" 6-man tent with aluminum poles weighs 26 pounds. On several hunts in September, above the Arctic Circle, I've experienced night time low temps in the low twenties and day time highs in the high thirties. So a heater stove is not really necessary. But a tent that will stand up to high winds and a sleeping bag rated at 0° are both essential.
Also it can be difficult to find firewood. Alder branches burn very quickly and even those can be hard to collect in some places. A big pile doesn't last very long.
Last September we hunted caribou on the upper Kivalina River. We collected firewood all week and waited until the last night to have a campfire. Our firewood lasted about two hours. If we had been breaking it into small pieces for use in a stove it would have lasted longer but we certainly would have depleted the locally available wood before the trip was over.
I use a set of MSR pots and a frying pan with a folding handle. I had to buy this set in pieces at REI. I couldn't find it offered as a set.
https://www.msrgear.com/cookware/base-2-pot-set https://www.msrgear.com/cookware/quick-skillet This allows me to eat a wider variety of food. Not gourmet but more than just freeze dried. And I can fry up some fish or caribou tenderloin steaks. I'm not a very good cook, but over the years I have developed a list of camp foods that are lightweight, non-perishable, easy to prepare, and easy to cleanup. My week long menu is a blend of freeze dried food, dehydrated, canned and nonperishable fresh food like bread and tortillas.
KC
