Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Favorite Elk camp meals?

What month do you hunt your elk?
I just got back from my elk hunt, and it was darn near light at 6 am. My Gentle Ben was going off at 4:30 and I was out of camp by 5 am and where I wanted to hunt before 6.

Breakfast: 2 packs raisin and spice instant oatmeal. Boil the water the night before and put in a thermos; Works dandy to buy a couple more minutes of shut eye. Water in second thermos is still warm enough to use for a hand and face wash before dinner at the end of the day.

Lunch: 1 Sunripe fruit source bar, apple, banana, a couple granola bars, and a bottle of gatorade and water to keep the mouth damp for bugling diaphrams.

Dinner:
1) 1/4 lb. Bacon, 3 Eggs and 3 toast with butter
2) Can of Chunky chili with a smoky and toast and butter
3) Sliced potato's, onion, garlic and left over bacon grease cooked in a covered foil plate on the BBQ
4) Smokies with sour kraut and cheese on toasted buns
5) Minute rice mixed with a can of Campbells condensed mushroom soup, can of yellow beans and buttered toast

When I'm on a hunting trip, supper is the most important meal of the day to replace everything I use up during the day.

RO

My favorite dish for elk camp is spagetti. Make the sauce at home and freze it. When I get back to camp at night I'll put on a pot for noodels and one to heat up the sauce. I have bread and butter with it. While it is cooking you can get other stuff done, its about as easy as a good meal gets in our camp.
After dinner I mix the left over noodels and sauce up and put it back in the cooler. It will get eat for lunch if someone comes back to camp durring the day. When I'm hunting alone, I'll eat left over spagetti for dinner and lunch a couple of days. This year in Alaska I had spagetti for dinner three nights. After hunting season I dont eat spagetti again for a few months.

Jamie

"When I'm on a hunting trip, supper is the most important meal of the day to replace everything I use up during the day.

RO"

agree with that 100% breakfast MIGHT be eggs one day if we feel like being lazy or wake up early. usually its quickyl warmed up burritos and milk. lunch is another burrito, or if we came back to camp maybe hot dogs or brats... dinnr is when we get really into it!

chili over an open fire, cooked in a rediculously large skillet. But let dad do it by himself or he'll be cranky, it's his thing....

hobo potatoes, big old foil pouch filled with chopped everything... potatoes are in there but there's much, much more...

but the most memorable was 4 hungry guys on day 2 of spike camp huddled over a pack stove & a pair of canteen cups, in the dark, on the gound, cooking elk tenderloin cubed into a packet of what was our only packet of dry "backpack food" with melted snow for water, spanish rice. Spanish rice & cubed tenderloin meat seasoned with 3 miniature tobasco bottles like the ones they put into MRE's.

That was one good meal.

good times.

We have either oatmeal or boiled eggs and toast for breakfast. They're both easy and fast to make while the coffee is going.

Lunch is whatever you shove in your pack. Protein bars, trail mix, dried fruit, jerky. Sometimes I cook ramen on my little pocket rocket stove if the weather is bad. It warms me up when I'm far from camp.

Dinners can be anything. We bring in chili (add beans while it's recooking and make corn bread in a skillet out of corn muffin mix), pork chops, chicken, and burger. We make hamburgers, soft tacos (chicken or elk burger), a pan lasagne with penne, cheese, sauce, and ground meat, pork roast on and under the wood stove, and lots of other stuff. One night it was rabbit (bought one frozen when we rode into town) and grouse (shot while out hunting) cooked in the same skillet.

My favorite elk camp meal is tenderloin just seared in bacon fat and left rare with caramelized onion and bacon bits to go with. We have mashed potatoes and corn with that most times.

I don't get up super early. Most times I hunt elk it's with a bow and I'm in the wilderness. Elk can be right outside camp so leaving before you can shoot just isn't a good idea. Plus I shoot at least one arrow before I leave camp to make sure my last time in the woods I didn't bump something and mess up the sights or wiggle the sights loose or something. Knowing for sure the arrow goes where I aim it is really important to me.

If I am back packing then its what ever freeze dried food packets I find. If I am hunting out of a base camp, or RV. Then It get a little more interesting. I like Western Omlets for Breakfast with red skin potatos converted to hash browns, I do all my prep work at home and every thing is is tupper ware containers. Lunch, some apples cheese and nuts, a sandwich or two on good rye bread. Dinner well, I will grill beef steaks and do oven roasted potatos and a toss salad with a little Red Wine. Beef Strogonoff etc. Spagatti with meat sauce, made a home with sausage. the Usual sort of guy food. I find if I do all the prep work before hand ie chopped onions garlic, roast garlic, celery tomatos, all in seprate containers, it cuts way down on the time it takes to get a meal ready. Been known to pre cook pasta as well, you can do a good hot meal in 15 to 20 min with a little bit of pre work. I spend a good bit of time before season, planing meals and such. I just hunt better when I eat good.

Rib roast imbedded in rock salt in the Dutch Oven. Simply awesome, and stupid easy. Seperate D.O. for taters, mushrooms and onions.

Mark

Precooked Mediteranean Sausage Dish/Mess

1# or more of smoked sausage
2- Diced Onions.
3- Garlic Cloves
2-Green peppers, cut up/diced
1.5# can of chopped tomatoes,

Cook together in pot (start by sauteeing garlic & onions, add green peppers, and sliced sausage (1/2" slices), add tomatoes.

Serve over favorite pasta or rice (pre cooked).

My favorite was taught to me by a late wildlife biologist friend; he called it "Eggs [bleep]." Scrambled eggs with last night's dinner leftovers. Tasted pretty good when the water bucket is frozen over at 5am!

when my wife comes she spoiles me omlets,or bberry pancakes and bacon fo breakfast. sandwitches an fruit for lunch. stroganoff, or burritos, or steak and tators for supper. by my self i do mre's and snicksnacks for short rifle hunts, and for 1 week plus bow hunts i do mre's with chochalate exlax for a treet (learned that in the army).
p.s. i like to save my back straps for elk wellington with family.

We go out of our way to keep the cooking simple. Instant oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. Sandwiches/lunch are usually assembled the night before. For supper we usually bring stew, or a tray of lasagna (premade) that just needs reheated. We very seldom due any serious cooking. Just heating up casseroles/dishes brought from home. There's nothing worse than comming in dog tired from a hard day afield and having to do a mmajor production for dinner.

I'm with you on not cooking in camp. I take my main dinners frozed in aluminum baking pans.

1. chicken corn chowder
2. Shepards Pie
3. Mild green chile
4. hunters stew
5. lasagna
6. BBQ ribs and beans. (had a lot left over from BBQ froze them)

when I come down from the mountain and stoke up the stove I just set the pan on a rack on top of the stove and dinner is cooking as I relax and get the gear ready for the next day.