This is a post I made about four years ago. I haven't done these hunting camps for a couple of years. Partly because of the Covid B.S. and partly because I just can't be gone for two weeks, completely out of communication with home, any more.
Anyway, cooking at hunting camps is a lot of fun and pretty good money. I enjoyed it and I'm thankful for the opportunity. Kind of another item tossed into my bucket.
So, here is my post from November, 2017.
Two hours and more crammed into the back seat of a 4 door
Ford pickup as we slewed into the mountains of central Montana, chains on all four wheels,
spinning, sliding and bouncing our way into another hunting camp.
I’d just enjoyed two weeks in a hunting camp with no road
access. The whole camp had been packed
in on horse and mule pack train and we’d only come out a couple of days before,
on horseback, because the snow had gotten so deep that hunting was nearly impossible
and mostly fruitless, as the animals are smarter than we are and had gone to
lower elevations. Se, we did too.
Now, we were headed into a different camp. One that we could access with four wheel
drive vehicles…kind of. The outfitter
and his crew had already been in and put up the tents and gotten the equipment
ready. Now, as darkness closed in and
the cold settled down on us, we were almost there. “Are we there yet?” Bounce across one more creek and then there
were the tents showing in the headlights.
My cooktent was the biggest and had two wood stoves for heating, a two
burner propane stove and a propane oven/stove top for cooking.
No one was waiting for us at the camp so none of the wood
stoves were going…no heat yet. As I
walked into the cook tent, a headlamp for my only illumination, I found several
boxes, totes and coolers of groceries and utensils stacked around the
tent. Although the propane stoves were
hooked up, the propane had to be turned on and I still needed something to cook
on them.
In parka, gloves and warm hat, I began rooting through the
various containers. First order of
business was to find a coffee pot and some coffee while I dispatched one of the
guides to the spring for a couple of buckets of water. We used just pots of water and coffee; no
percolator innards in our pots. “Cowboy
Coffee”. Once I got some coffee going,
my urgency diminished a little but I still needed to
get a dinner going.
In one of the coolers I found a 3lb and a 5lb chub of
hamburger…solidly frozen. Nothing I
could do with that right now. Hmm,
what’s this, down in the bottom? Ahh, 5
1lb chubs of hamburger. Solidly frozen
but much more useful. I put my 15” cast
iron skillet on the propane burner, skinned the chubs into it and covered them
with the lid. There; those will thaw ok.
Now, one of the boxes has canned goods. Four big cans of "sloppy joe" sauce. Another box with breads, including some
hamburger buns and a package of frozen corn on the cob in another cooler. Ok, we’re set. Within a half hour, I had dinner ready, just
about the time the outfitters crew had gotten the lights strung and the
generator going so I could turn off my weakening headlamp and finish up by
actual electric lights. Both my wood
stoves were going well by this time, too so I could take off my parka and gloves. Less than an hour from the time we bounced
into camp, I had coffee and dinner ready.
The outfitters wife had sent up a big apple pie so we even had dessert. Life is good!
When I had gone into the first camp, on a two hour
horseback/pack train ride and was setting up my personal space in the cook
tent, I had realized I had forgotten (I’m used to doing stupid stuff, but THIS
was a real winner!) my sleeping bag. Not
like I could just run home and get it!
One of the guides was not coming in that night so I used his bag that
first night while the outfitter got on a horse and rode to a place a couple of
miles away where his cell phone would work and called for additional items we
had all forgotten…including my Sleeping Bag!
Anyway, I had a really good bag; a mummy bag, very lightweight and rated
for -30 degrees. Nice and warm and
worked very well. Not, however, as
wonderfully luxurious as the huge -35 sleeping bag I borrowed that first
night! Wow! What a great bed that one was! For the two weeks at the Mount Edith
camp I slept warm and comfortable in my lightweight backpackers bag with no
complaints. But, when we had that two
days between camps, I had gone to Helena
and bought one of those great, roomy, soft, comfortable, LUXURIOUS outfitters
type sleeping bags. No, I wouldn’t want
to pack it on my own back but in a pickup or even on a pack train I wouldn’t be
without it any more. Best money I ever
spent.
Anyway, all that said, I got my space together at the new
camp, folding cot assembled, foam pad on it and my new sleeping bag spread out
and open, getting warm. I wasn’t right
beside the stove like I had been on Edith but I was close enough. True comfort.
A canvas tent, a wood burning stove and a sleeping bag on a cot, all
twenty miles into the Montana wilderness where I was now going to cook for
twelve hunters and guides for a week.
I’ve worked as a cowboy and ridden many a horseback mile but
that was a few years and pounds ago.
When I was offered the cooking job for this outfitter my girlfriend
laughed and said she wanted to watch me get into the saddle for the ride
in. I had to be babied a little but once
I was in the saddle I was ok.
We rode for over two hours, up the south side of Mount Edith,
then down past Edith
Lake and on to the little
basin where the camp was set up. Here
too, my cook tent was the biggest of the four.
I had two wood burning stoves for heat and for keeping things warm as
well as a two burner propane stove and that wonderful propane
oven/stovetop.
I set up my bed next to the back wood stove, hung my gear on
some nails in the tent frame and was home.
For two weeks, I got up around 0430 and fixed
breakfast. Out first group was seven
hunters, four guides and a camp jack (general worker) plus myself. I had set up a weekly menu to cover from
Sunday night to Sunday morning schedule as the hunter groups come in Sunday
afternoons and leave Sunday mornings.
After breakfast I’d do the dishes and clean up my kitchen,
put together the lunches for the next day and then would have the rest of the
day pretty much to myself. Hunters and
guides all gone, doing their thing, camp jack getting firewood dealt with and
taking care of the horses and mules while I read, took a nap or whatever. I’d usually laze around through the early
part of the day and then do some baking.
Cookies for the lunches, cakes and pies for desserts. Cinnamon rolls for
breakfast treats, that sort of thing.
Dinner didn’t have to be on the table until everyone was
back and some of the groups were quite a ways away so they wouldn’t get in
until way after dark. I’d usually be
ready to put dinner on the table around 8:30, often even later. What with cleanup and getting things prepared
for the morning breakfast, I usually didn’t get to bed until around 11 each
night, then up at 0430 again to start it all over.
At the Edith camp, water was hauled from the creek about 40
yards downhill from the cook tent.
Carrying two 5 gallon buckets of water uphill in the snow showed me that
there must not be anything wrong with my old heart! I’d be seriously sucking wind by the time I
got to my tent but I had made it! I kept
a three gallon metal pot full of water on the wood stove all the time so I had
hot water for cleanups and so on. A
small coffee pot with plain hot water on that same stove for things like hot
chocolate or tea and a big coffee pot always full of hot coffee…always!
We had a generator and had strung electric lights into all
the tents but the generator didn’t like Montana cold so, when I turned it off at
night, I’d put it inside the guides tent where it would be warmer and would
start easier in the morning. Usually,
though, I had breakfast pretty much done by the time the generator got started. I cooked a lot of breakfast by the light of a
headlamp strapped to my forehead.
Firewood had to be blocked, split and hauled into tents and
wood stoves kept going. This is, after
all, Montana
in October and November so it was plenty cold most of the time. It amazes me that those canvas tents hold the
heat as well as they do. A couple of
times, at each camp, the nighttime temps were subzero but we slept nice and
warm in our tents.
I thought the hunters were crazy for getting up at 5 and
going out in sub-zero cold to go hunting.
I remember a routine by Ron White about hunting…”It’s real early in the
morning, it’s real cold and I don’t want to go!” That’s me any more. My Grandfather probably spins in his grave
when I say stuff like that!
We had a shower tent set up.
Go in it and get a fire going in the stove, set the 3 gallon pot of
water on the stove, leave and zip the tent fly closed to keep in the heat. Give it a while to get the tent warm and the
water hot. There was a bucket with a
spigot tied to a pulley so you could pull it above your head. A pallet to stand on and some nails in the
tent frame to hang your clothes and towel.
Put hot water in from the pot, add some cold water to your liking, pull
the bucket up over your head and take your shower.
The latrine was a bench with a toilet seat thereon, over a
hole and screened by a tent. Not warm or
comfortable; just utilitarian. My home
bathroom habit of a book and plenty of time definitely went out the window
here. Get in, get it over with and get
back to my warm tent!
The first week of November it started snowing one evening
and just kept snowing. By morning we
were pushing two feet of new snow and no end in sight with our only way down
from the mountain a horseback ride over the top of Edith and back down to
beginnings of civilization. I looked at
the outfitter and said: “For two years, I’ve been trying to talk you into
hiring me for this and now I’m gonna die up here!” He just laughed at me and told me he hadn’t
lost anybody in 39 years and we’d be fine.
He was right, of course. As a
matter of fact, the horseback ride down to where the pickups could reach us was
a beautiful, scenic trip that I wouldn’t have missed.
A couple of days at home while they got the new camp set up
(and I went in and bought my NEW SLEEPING BAG!) and then the trip into the camp
near Tenderfoot Creek. Although we were
able to haul our gear in by pickup, I felt this was the more remote camp. Two hours of 4x4 riding, chained up on all
four and still slipping, sliding and bouncing over nearly non-existent roads,
as well as the fact that there was NO communication. At the pack train camp, we were within two
miles of cell phone connection. Even
walking that isn’t too far and on horseback, pretty much nothing. But, in the pickup camp we were two hard 4x4
hours from even the chance of getting phone use.
My schedule was pretty much the same at either camp. Cook breakfast, put lunches together and cook
dinner.
Will I do it again?
Absolutely! As long as they want
me as their cook and I can still hang on to a horse I’ll be headed into the Montana mountains every
fall. The job itself is great. I’m free, even encouraged, to be
creative. I have the time and the
solitude for not only the cooking but also for myself. I’m comfortable with the living conditions
and I didn’t miss the modern world much at all.
I am used to talking with Joann every day so I missed that but the
outfitter had to ride down several times with game and other issues so we sent
notes back and forth.
If you can afford to use an outfitter for a Montana hunting trip, I
can highly recommend it. They work hard
to find game for you and they have someone like me to keep you fed and
comfortable.
Come on up and see us.
The coffee pot is full and hot and the fire is always going.
