Packing for a Trip to the Backwoods

It’s fast approaching deer hunting season again. So I began packing my gear and getting ready for a week in the field with my flintlock rifle. I started with the food first. Here’s my Self Reliance Outfitters pantry tin filled with a freeze dried potatoes and chipped beef mix.

It’s fast approaching deer hunting season again. So I began packing my gear and getting ready for a week in the field with my flintlock rifle.

For a breakfast treat, I have a large 16 ounce tin with oatmeal and raisins with nuts called Muesli. This should get me through 2 - 3 small breakfasts.

Another 16 ounce tin has quite a mix of rice blends. There’s brown rice, basmati, jasmine, black japonica, and wild rice. This should be plenty for about 3 days — maybe a 4th one. Remember that one cup dry rice comes out to about 3 cups cooked. Each cup of cooked rice equals about 200 or more calories each.

I have another tin of freeze dried southwest chili mix with black beans and peppers. The container also has some freeze dried chicken meat in it.

The SRO food pantry tins are labeled as to what they contain, and are taped along the edges to keep them sealed from too much moisture, and from inadvertently spilling in the pack. I have rice blend, freeze dried black beans, three color quinoa, scrambled eggs mixed with potato shreds, southwest chili with chicken, and a couple of tins of biscuit bread mix. (The recipe is on another blog).

This should be plenty of food for nearly a week. Maybe about 5 days or so. I only eat twice per day even at home.

The gold colored spice tin you see in the foreground ? It’s a blend that I dearly love, and I mix it myself. It really dresses up bland foods in the field.

The spice tin makes the food really pop. It's more than sufficient to prevent it from being bland.

It contains about 2 tbsp of Penzy’s Northwoods Fire.

It has about 2 tbsp of fine black pepper.

And about 2 tbsp of organic turmeric. I include a pinch of sea salt. I close the lid and shake this to mix it well before taping it sealed.

I also have a 16 ounce tin of black beans and peppers burger mix from Auguson Farms. Yes, this is a vegetarian version of burger, and I've eaten quite a bit of it in between having regular meats. It cooks up into really decent burger patties in the field… especially with the turmeric spice mix.

The smaller 8 ounce tins stack neatly inside the small bush pot for cooking.

The lid fits snugly on the top of the pot and no space is wasted.

All of the food tins pack neatly into one long bag made of oilskin, and this tucks neatly in one corner of the pack at the side.

Everything fits neatly into the pack basket that I attached to the homemade pack frame I made of red oak. It all tucks neatly inside a waterproof pack liner and nothing is exposed to snag on a tree limb.

The pack may look incredibly large but it’s surprisingly light weight. Everything minus my rifle, canteen, and possibles bag tips the scale at only 32 pounds total. This is the tarp shelter, wool blanket, a ground sheet consisting of a heavy duty space blanket (to reflect body heat and keep me off the wet ground inside the tent), a wool and oilskin wrap, a roll of toilet paper (no need to explain that one, right ?) and the food for a week’s trip. I also included a small Pur Hiker brand water filtration pump with a micro filter good for 200 gallons of water. You definitely don’t want to pick up any giardia (called beaver fever) and end up with a serious case of the runs out in the woods.

For a closer look at the homemade pack frame and pack basket I made, click here.