Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Tent Recommendation

Pretty lively debate here! I'll come down on the side of ultralight woodstoves and teepees, and I am a totally unbiased consumer of products. I have no links to any companies whatsoever.

I started out as a double wall tent kind of guy and used to use Moss tents - then on to Bibler and Hilleberg. And I still use those tents occasionally. I also have and use tents from The North Face, Nemo and Montbell. If I was to buy an old school tent with a floor these days I'd probably go with Nemo. I really like the tent I got that rather than poles uses pump up 'airbeams'.

I do live and work in Alaska - I do a lot of work in the field and often use the tents in remote base camps for up to a month at a time. For hunting these days I pretty much ONLY use teepees and woodstoves. Way lighter and FAR FAR drier. Only reason i ever use a tent is for mosquitoes, but by hunting season there aren't many bugs, and for just a few mosquitoes headnets work great.

And I have used a teepee in the snow. Did it on an elk hunt this fall. By the time we went to sleep the ground was totally dry. I also vent under the tent bottom and we had NO moisture on the walls. But venting is key. We had 4 people in the tent and the tent and woodstove all together weighed around 5 pounds.

Best of all, with a woodstove you don't have to bring along those bulky propane cans. I did a 10 day hunt in the Brooks range with a woodstove and one can of propane. We found wood up to 4400 feet in the Brooks Range. On Kodiak the best wood is dead alder and willow right at the tree line at around 2000 feet. Often the wood is much more moist down in the trees.

I can't even imagine going back to the bad old days of being cooped up in a tent. Woodstove and bare ground, warmth and conversation are the way to go. I remember hunting in the old days when after scarfing a meal down everyone would retreat to their tent and huddle in their sleeping bags. Or how about those 3 days of hibernation during a really bad storm? No More - those days are OVER.

I think the only time I would use my old Bibler or Hilleberg these days - other than in a base camp - is on a ski mountaineering trip.

Here are some photos - first the old days of mountaineering. I used a Bibler that is hidden in the lower left in this photo within our snow wall during a ski ascent of Shishaldin Volcano out in the Aluetians - we still also used a BD mega mid for a cook tent! This is the sort of trip where a mountaineering tent makes sense.



The next photo is of the inside of our teepee during an elk hunt last fall. We had earlier cleared off the snow before we pitched the teepee. The heat of the woodstove has already dried out the ground. The stove and tent in this photo weigh 5 pounds total including the pole.



Finally - living the life in the Brooks Range. It does not look like there is much wood - but there is plenty to found. This tent and woodstove weighed around 4 pounds total.