Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting 14 Day Menu

Most of what I have seen is a bar (Cliff, etc.) of some sort for breakfast and lunch, with a mountain-house for supper. All supplemented with jerky and fruit/nuts for snacks.

Anybody else running anything different or have a better suggestion?

14 days is a lot of food...

Backpacking all your food at once?

I like to bring all the stuff you mentioned, plus add in some hard salami and hard white cheese, some pita bread (can't smash it) and some of the little foil packs of mayo. For bars I like Probars because they're almost 400 calories per bar. Sometimes I'll bring foil pouches of almond or peanut butter to slather on, that's another 200 calories. And a little plastic bottle of olive oil to put about a tablespoon full of into each Mountain House.

I've never packed enough food for 14 days, that'll be a challenge.

couscous, jerky, trailmix, dehydrated spuds, instant rice, the knorr instant meals, tuna pouches, canned chicken, or just dehydrate ground meat and shredded chicken to save weight, oatmeal, peanut butter, bacon, anything i missed?

hard candy and chocolate?

I do instant oatmeal for breakfast. It does require a container of some kind and you have to wash stuff or deal with ziplocks.

Bars, trail mix, etc for lunch on the go, and Mountain House for dinner. 14 days is a lot of food, but certainly doable. Figure out what mountain house you like best and keep it in rotation. Otherwise, I like to keep it as varied as possible.

We usually pack in four days worth and then make a hike back out later with an empty day pack for the rest of the week. We leave camp set up if we don't plan a move and set aside one day to go wash clothes and hit the KOA for a real shower instead of a washcloth. Leave before sunup and back for the afternoon hunt. Take in the last weeks vittles then.

I like making up a days ration and then put it in a gallon zip lock and squeeze it as airless as possible, put these in a nylon sack to rope up a tree. Each zip will usually have 3 instant oatmeals and a starbucks "via" rubber banded for breakfast, a bag of dried fruit and nuts I make myself with a bar or two for lunch, and a MH for dinner. We always lose weight so going to try boosting calories with the olive oil idea of smokepole's as well as mixed peanut butter and crushed fritos on tortillas. Oh yeah, a small nalgene of powdered milk to add a couple of spoons to the oatmeal. smoke's idea there too.

This, of course is in a spike camp that is usually 2-3 miles from the truck.

My partner has 20 acres at home, if he would just get some rescue burros I would take in 14 days worth much farther.

Rifles & More:

I have carried 21 days food on three expeditions. It was all freeze-dried and dehydrated. But in addition to carrying a backpack, I was pulling a sled in the snow. I've never tried to carry 14 days food in my pack. If I did it would all be freeze-dried and dehydrated. But just in case you are a big strong young guy who likes to carry a heavy pack, here are some other options.

DINNERS
Chicken Casserole
- Chicken or Turkey (foil pouch)
- Knorr Caserole with Noodles
- Margarine (caf� packs)

Mac & Cheese
- Velveeta Shells & Cheese
- Ham (foil pouch)

Tuna Casserole
- Tuna Helper
- Tuna (foil pouch)

Burritos
- Mexicali Rose Refried Beans (dehydrated)
- Minute Rice (boil-in-bag)
- Salsa (caf� packs)
- Tortillas

Beef Stew
- Beef Stew (foil pouch)
- Cup-O-Noodles
- Tortillas

BREAKFASTS
Oatmeal
- Quaker Fruit & Cream

Breakfast Burritos
- Mtn House Breakfast Skillet
- Tortillas

S. O. S.
- Bread or Rolls
- Country Time Gravey Mix with Sausage
- Ham (foil pouch)

Breakfast Cereal & Milk
- Carnation Instant Milk (quart packs)
- Cheerios & Cinnamon Life

English Muffins
- English Muffins
- Condiments (caf� packs)
- Tongs or stove top Toaster

P B & J
- Bread (or Pita)
- Peanut Butter
- Jelly (caf� packs)

EACH PERSON BRINGS THEIR OWN NO-COOK SNACKS AND DRINKS.

INDIVIDUAL DRINK OPTIONS.
- KoolAid
- Cocoa
- Coffee
- Tang
- Tea

INDIVIDUAL NO-COOK SNACKS.
- Beef Jerky, Summer Sausage
- Cheese - parafine wrapper
- Sandwich Crackers, Cheez-it, Ritz
- Salted Nut Roll
- Dried Fruit or Fruit Leather
- Sardines or Oysters - canned
- Lunchables
- Candy Bars, Granola Bars
- MREs

Real oatmeal and/or steel cut oats w/ raisins and pecans powdered milk and/or powdered protein mix of some sort for breakfast. This stuff sticks to your ribs. Premixed daily portions using small sized ziplock bags.

I make my own Logan bread for snacking on.

PBJ wraps till I run out of wraps.

For a trip that long dried beans or lentils might work. Freeze dried split pea soup or bean flakes from the bulk section is another idea.

We did 14 days sheep hunting last season. The bulk of that much food gets to be somewhat ridiculous, but obviously it goes away pretty quickly.

A couple things on that note - Mountain House pro-paks are vacuum sealed, so there is no air in the package taking up space. If you don't want to pay for the pro-paks, you can take about 10 minutes and let the air out of your regular mountain house. Poke each pack with a needle below where the heat seal is on the pack, and above the ziplock. This is the part that you tear off to pour water in when you cook it, so it isn't going to leak there anyway. Squeeze the air out, and put a small piece of tape over it to re-seal. You can also roll the tops a bit so they pack tighter. My buddy trims all the sharp corners off of mountain house so they don't poke holes in the gallon ziplocks... I don't have that kind of patience.

I normally do the gallon ziplock per day, but it really isn't a big deal to have just a feed sack. So I have 14 Mtn Houses, a gallon ziplock of instant oatmeal, and a few quart ziplocks of trail mix, bars, etc all thrown in a stuff sack. I think this packs down somewhat better - fewer ziplocks = less trapped air.

When I don't take Pro Paks, I juts rip the top off the Mtn House, zip it to about 7/8's closed then suck the air out of it. Fold it over tight and tape it with some scotch tape, works great.

I'm not a big fan of oatmeal so I like to take dehydrated scrambled eggs, throw in some instant flavored grits then vacuum seal it. I also like the foiled tuna, chicken, ham, and salmon along with the instant rice meals as a substitute for a few Mtn House meals as a change of pace.

Bannock is a very traditional survival food, easy to make and delicious. A quick internet search will bring up several recipes for the survival bread. I like mine with cinnamon and some dried fruit of some sort. Form a rope out of the dough, wrap it around a stick, bake it over a fire and enjoy, good, smokey and full of energy!

I've done quite a few 10-12 day trips. That much food takes up a lot of room in a pack for sure.

One thing I've started doing is packing in "bulk" instead of individual packages. You can get cans of MH for less than the packets, put them in a ziploc or two and you don't have to worry about packing out trash. I can adjust my dinner for how hungry I am, same with oatmeal or granola in the AM. Just get a cozy for your mug, or cook in in a JB. A little clean up usually isn't that big of a deal to me.

I like to make a big batch of taco burger and dehydrate it. A pound will dry up to about 4-5 oz, and rehydrate to about 8, or enough for 4 meals, easily. Add in equal parts dehydrated re-fried beans. Top with taco sauce packs and cheddar roll in a tortilla and, and you have a great meal.

Also for breakfast, you can buy dehydrated hash browns that just need to be soaked in warm water. Add in some dehydrated eggs, precooked bacon on a tortilla and you'll never eat oatmeal again. Doesn't weigh much and fuels me all day long.

I always bring a small jar of peanut butter/honey 16oz?, and chocolate bars and snickers, one minimum per day. I get really tired of cliff bars after a few days. The peanut butter is great fuel/weight ratio as well.

The single pack dry roast almonds with cocao are really good, and I generally pack at least one pack per day.

I always bring a hard salami, a couple packs of smoked salmon, and a pound of cheese.

A home cooked stew dehydrated is really good too, more meat than the MH, and less sodium.

Stovetop dressing, instant mashed, instant gravy and dehydrated canned chicken, is a great meal as well. Not sure its any better than the MH version, or weighs less, but I can make it cheaper.

Dehydrated fruit, like bananas, apples, pineapple are a nice treat as well.

I usually end up around 1.25-1.5lb of food per day or a bit less. Never go hungry, and usually have food left over.

Which brands are good for these, if you don't mind me asking?

+1 for hard salami. If a meal takes more preperation than adding boiled water it stays home. I make most of my instantized meals either from scratch or splitting up a freeze dried meal and then adding instant rice, potatoes, or beans. This make the amount of spices and salt more palatable and I can add powdered milk or whatever. I can also add salami or sausage into the bag before the boiling water to warm it up. A chemist recommended that I not us quart freezer bags due to concerns that plastic particle are leaching out when one dumps boiling water into them. Designed for freezing not adding boiling water. I use http://www.packitgourmet.com/CookIn-Bags.html

I make my own dinners too, and wanted to avoid boiling water in ziplocs. We ended up going to the local coffee shop and getting a large paper coffee cup for every dinner. We carried them all in a stack during the hunt in our packs. Didn't matter much if they got smashed.

At dinner, pull out a cup, add dried food, add boiling water, wrap in a cozy, wait, eat, then burn the cup. You can do a second round if your dinner won't all fit first time.

The are heavier than plastic bags, but I liked being able to simply burn them with a little less guilt than burning a plastic bag. And they are designed for hot liquid, although I'm sure they still leech some kind of crap into your food.

Summer Sausage sticks and string cheese, for added fat and protein.

Breakfast - 1 mountainhouse granola with blueberries.

Lunch - 1/2 pita bread, small stick of salami, 1 triangle of laughing cow cheese, 1 clif bar, 1 sunrype fruit bar and a small baggie of assorted nuts and chocolate chips.

Dinner - 1 mountainhouse meal and a 1/2 size chocolate bar.

We bring emergen C packets to mix with our drinking water. I believe it all ads up to just under 1.5 lbs per day. My total pack weight including rifle for our 14 day sheep hunts is usually just over 65 lbs. I dont mind going a little heavy in the food because it drops every day;)

For breakfast: 5 strips of bacon
For lunch: a bacon sandwich
For snack: a whole plateful of bacon
For dinner: Pat's backcountry brew: http://www.patsbcb.com/