Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Backpack stoves, what’s your favorite and why?

I use a number of stoves including esbit, alcohol, canister and liquid fueled and I own but never really took to the jet boil.

For a walk in hunt where weather can be cold and at some altitude over a couple of days in length, I would go with a liquid fueled stove.

My personal favorite is a LAAF gear modified wisperlite international with the shaker jet, though any of the quality liquid fueled stoves will do well. The liquid field stove will work well despite cold and altitude, Its easy to track fuel use and quantity remaining and a well wind-screened liquid fuel stove is about as weight efficient as any for a longer trip. If melting snow is in the mix, the pot size flexibility of a liquid stove is useful.

The key to liking a liquid stove is clearly understanding how they work and how they clog, and being able to do the maintenance easily. Cleaning a jet or generator tube or repairing a pump are all easy, none takes more than a minute, but you don't really want to figure it out at 8pm in the dark when you are tired and hungry.

Canister stoves are simple and there ways to make them work in the cold, some of the methods are just a PITA and others are borderline dangerous, for shorter trips where temps are reasonable ( say above 25F) and you don't need to constantly judge how much fuel your using and have remaining canisters are a great choice..