I'm going to name three that stand out over the years that I've been hunting in camps, leases, safaris, yadda yadda yadda....
One that stands out is the salad from Ray Hammond at Ray's Hog Heaven. Totally outstanding.... it didn't really matter what was the follow after that salad the meal was already complete.
Another is Matt Schuster's Dutch oven hog recipe.
Absolutely insane to have that kind of taste Brewing while you're out hunting during the afternoon.
And Andrew Harper's anything.... he knew Bobby Flay for God's sakes.... and I did say anything but his mashed potatoes would make you commit crimes.
Let's hear some more about meals in hunting camp....
My buddy, Russ Kness, at our deer camp. He does all of the cooking and we eat good food and lots of it. Dinners, thick pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy, limas, or the best spaghetti sauce I've eaten with sausage and meatballs. He even bakes scratch biscuits. He does make me grill the steaks though. For breakfast (in the middle of the day), SOS from scratch over homemade bread, puddin' gravy over hominy and homemade bread, eggs, homefries and onions...and homemade bread. He's a great cook.
Once I came home and raved about Russ's cooking to my wife and she suggested I go live with Russ. I don't talk about it anymore.
My favorite meal of the year is the night before opening day of rifle season. Every year we buy half a steer from my uncle and when we have them cut up we have him cut three extra big steaks specifically for my dad, my brother and me on that night.. We grill those, along with the biggest potatoes we can find and make a big salad. It's nothing super fancy, but I look forward to that meal every year!
Quote from: Trenton G. on January 15, 2019, 07:27:18 PM
My favorite meal of the year is the night before opening day of rifle season. Every year we buy half a steer from my uncle and when we have them cut up we have him cut three extra big steaks specifically for my dad, my brother and me on that night.. We grill those, along with the biggest potatoes we can find and make a big salad. It's nothing super fancy, but I look forward to that meal every year!
That's what its all about we do kinda the same thing. But at bow camp there is a different chef for each meal and there aint been a bad one yet chili steaks stew big ol breakfasts man getting hungry just thinking about it and camp isn't until the 3rd weekend in october
Bear camp in northern Saskatchewan with Rob Nye. All time favorite is fresh caught northern pike fried with french fries. I dream about that all winter. Second is what he calls poor mans lobster. Its cubed northern pike that he boils and serves with a butter dipping sauce. Im drooling just thinking about it. Never had a bad meal with him but those are the two that I request . Could eat it all week. Bear camp isn't just about the bears.
Some of these descriptions make drool and cry at the same time. I developed Alpha Gal allergy (caused by a tick bite), so now I am allergic to all mammal meat, including some dairy. Nobody in the world likes meat more than me or gets sicker from eating it. It ain't fair, I say! But fish and fowl are just fine, so please toss in some of these recipes, too. It sounds like some of the hunting camps qualify as 5 star establishments.
beemann..... that northern pike sounds like a crime I could commit for also. so be prepared when I crash your Camp next season :biglaugh:
My brother in law's dad is an amazing cook. When I go to visit them in MS he is known as Food & Beverage and every meal is amazing. He is Greek and their family grew up in the restaurant business so every meal is just awesome in hunting camp. It doesn't matter what he cooks its just good!
Oh my, the Shrewhaven meals have been legendary over the years. Prime rib and twice baked potatoes that would make a first year cardiac med students cringe. Leg of lamb on the grill with rosemary oven roasted redskins. Bacon wrapped wild duck breast cooked medium rare on a grill served with fall vine ripen squash and 100% wild rice. All you can eat walleye and bluegills deep fried in a light dusting with coleslaw. Fresh baked apple pie with butter crust and tree ripened northern spie apples.
My good friend Cory Mattson cooks up some great camp meals that will pretty much ruin you for "normal" camp fare. Three of my favorites, in no particular order, are tuna steaks with ginger sauce, braised deer shank and red beans and rice.
Beeman, I've been in Rob Nye's camp and had the poor man's lobster. You can definitely eat that until your sick. I've also had it with lake trout and it's excellent as well.
I have to agree with Terry regarding Andrew Harper. I have never been fed better.
My buddy Gerry Beckerman is a dutch oven genius. My favorite is Chicken Cacciatore.
Yes Cory Mattson cookies went for $6,000 on the st. Jude's auctions once.
Tuna steaks with ginger sauce, yeah I'll have to commit another crime. :biglaugh:
Last year at Wild Things, Don Price feed us well!
Terry them lakes are full of fish Im sure there is enough for both of us... :thumbsup: Matt Im glad someone can vouch for me. Suddenly Im hungry..... :bigsmyl:
Andrew Harper's Sunday morning Shrimp-n-Grits!!
Man could Harper cook!!
I have to agree about Andrew Harper's cooking. He took great pleasure out of cooking terrific food. His chili was the best I have ever tasted, and his bean soup and ham is historic.
A also agree about Ray Hammond's cooking. Anything Ray makes with pork is crazy delicious. That man can really cook pigs.
Then there was one meal years ago for an opening day hunt with a bunch of people. Fried catfish was the main course. I cannot remember the name of the cook, but the catfish was the best I have ever tasted. If I could, I would transport myself back to that day and beg for the recipe.
Some of the best eaten you'll ever wrap a lip around, venison ribs roasted over hardwood coals....larrupin!
(http://www.shrewbows.com/rons_linkpics/TRR%20ribs%201.JPG)
Venison haunch is mighty good too, with bacon strips pinned to it. slice off some meat and keep the spit turnin till its cooked to the bone.....lip smackin good
(http://www.shrewbows.com/rons_linkpics/TRR%20Ven%20hanch%201.JPG)
(http://www.shrewbows.com/rons_linkpics/TRR%20ven%20hanch%202.JPG)
Of coarse it's hard to beat butterflied venison backstraps fried in a cast iron pan, the aroma of the cookin meat mingling with the smells of the fall woods.....you'll think you died and went to Heaven.
(http://www.shrewbows.com/rons_linkpics/TRR4.JPG)
I'm pretty much the camp cook at our club...On our small game trips the number one meal everyone requests is the "buffalo squirrel wings"......after a few days of hunting we have a mess of squirrels that I piece out and simmer until tender, then let cool. Dredge in flour and fry them up crispy and toss in my buffalo sauce....serve hot with a cold beer or three. Happy hunters that night!
Ron LaClair.......awesome pics! Those meals look outstanding.
Ron,
Absolutely! Wild game cooked over wood outdoors is a real treat -- especially when the weather is cool and the fire is a welcoming place.
Joe
PS: How is your shoulder coming along? Mine is really great.
My favorite camp food by far is the Scotch eggs I make for Spring turkey camp! They're great to throw in the back back and eat in the field cold, or throw them wrapped in foil on the fire and heat em up. A close second is the antelope fajitas my friend John Halverson made for turkey camp in the Black hills of South Dakota. He put out a heck of a spread!
Tattoo Dave
QuoteHow is your shoulder coming along? Mine is really great.
I saw my surgeon day before yesterday, her said I was doing great and he'd see me in a year
Quote from: Ron LaClair on January 16, 2019, 10:20:41 AM
Of coarse it's hard to beat butterflied venison backstraps fried in a cast iron pan, the aroma of the cookin meat mingling with the smells of the fall woods.....you'll think you died and went to Heaven.
(http://www.shrewbows.com/rons_linkpics/TRR4.JPG)
Absolutely!!!
Been at that Northern Michigan feast many times with my brothers...good memories
The Myth, the Legend, BowDoc, the one and only Camp Cook Iv had the pleasure of knowing....
His 30 egg omelet was something to behold.....AND he was the first one to come out and give you a big oll huge when you got your bear!
Oh, and he had a few stories up his sleeve too[emoji23]
Bear Quest will never be the same with out him, RIP BowDoc.....
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I'll agree......Ray Hammond and Bowdoc........both did a great job!!!!!!! :notworthy: :thumbsup:
Bill Millers cooking anything while we were in Texas........but his home made biscuits ....WOW !!!!!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
This tread really brought back a lot of memories of some of meals I have had while hunting different places. I've really been blessed. Sometimes what makes a meal special is the meal, sometimes its the people that your with and sometimes its the place and sometimes its all 3. I can truly say the best meals I've had have always been while hunting. No restaurant can compare. The best PB&J sandwich was on the side of a mountain, the best steak was under the stars by the fire. I would gladly eat another MRE if I could go back to where I ate my last one. If I had to pick one meal that I loved, it would have to be Alaskan King crab that we pulled up while hunting on Kodiak for Black tail. That's a meal I will never forget because of the place, people I was with and of course the crab was excellent. The following day we had crab salad sandwiches on fresh home made bread. Oh man, I'm getting hungry. Thanks Terry for bringing this up.
Gilbert
What a great thread, sure takes me back.
I'm remembering the best Thanksgiving meal.
We were at a friends rustic cabin in upper Michigan.
Aunt Nina as we called her cooked a very large Turkey in the wood fired kitchen stove along with sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, fresh bread and I think four different pies.
That cabin smelled wonderful coming in from a day of deer hunting.
That was in the mid 1970s.
Sure do miss all of them......
Randy Madden cooked some pretty dang good ribeyes on our trip to Colorado this year. Food wise this was definitely the highlight of the trip.
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He made some breakfast burritos that were awesome too!! I was eating them for several days after the point that they were probably no longer safe to eat but they were still good and I didn't die.[emoji23][emoji15]
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My dad and uncles "invented" "Mountain Burgers" at the hunting camp out of necessity about 40 years ago when we were kids. They had a bunch of mouths to feed in turkey season one evening. It has been a ritual ever since.
Nothing fancy, ground beef, deer or elk or any combination of the above made into about 3"x 1-1/2" thick "burgers". Brown the burgers in a big skillet, cover completely with onions and continue cooking, pour in several cans of store bought gravy. Simmer for an hour or so. Serve mouth scalding hot on top of mashed potatoes and canned corn. (the amount of mashed potatoes must be debated with enthusiasm usually ending with "just make all the f-ing potatoes, they are cheap!"). The original was made with a box of instant mashed potatoes found in the cupboard. Some argue it's not right unless we use instant.
A buck on the pole, mountain burgers simmering, glass of makers mark in your hand. That's good stuff.
Tedd
Lucky for us MOST of our crew are fair cooks in camp. That is a serious compliment. We have so many but a few honorable mentions. The Battens are all good cooks with a wide understanding of technique. Always a great meal when we share a camp. Don and I have a years running back and forth cooking chicken thighs one of the few meats we actually buy. Don is one of the best cooks I have ever worked with running hunt/fish camps.
Monty Browning is a very good cook in and out of camp most notably he'll stay in half a day and turn the back leg of a doe into cast iron skillet steaks mashed potatoes green beans with gravy for ten people. It is a real treat.
Dean Torges was an excellent cook with a strong knowledge of cuisine, ingredients and methods. We ran many camps together for at least a ten year period and he had a requirement for new invites - they had to produce one meal for the group. If it was not good they got uninvited! The goal was to get us out into the woods and it worked out mostly and I would say to all bowhunters they should learn one meal they can do well that all will like and bring that to camp.
Marty MacMahon is and has always been "host extraordinar" Marty probably hosted more hunters than anyone we know maybe even more than most outfitters. His go to was pot Roast always perfect!
We have more like Joey Buck when he is coming to your camp tell him to bring a pork butt (shoulder)
Schuster has really come into his own as a cook since he went new age modern diet - his chicken thighs with fennel onion criminally mushrooms sun dried tomatoes is awesome! And he does it in a bag in a croc pot makes it look easy.
Phil Muller does a Linguini meal with stingray clams some veg and a cream sauce!! Hard to believe it is stingray camp.
A life long friend Bill Burbride came to our mule deer camp and cooked mule deer potatoes onions peppers in a cast iron skillet for me and Phil and I never bought another freeze dried for the rest of my life that was mid 80s.
Sam Roberts dad cooked fish for us mid 90s it was delicious and he made it look easy!!!
Matt Quick puts on a good meal too - best hunting buddy - and tell you what that Dude is ON time EVERY time LOLOLoL
It was probably 20 years ago....mid February we left an ice storm in southern MO and drove south to the king ranch for a hog javelina n snake shoot. A day or so later we were eating fried rattlesnake in camp and enjoying the mild temps. I think it was the atmosphere n people that makes me remember that so well.
Tim B
Says Cory Mattson.....
The guy whose cookies went for $6,000 on the St. Jude's auction :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:
My favorite cook is Jerry Richard. I won the Michigan Traditional Bowhunters Bobcat hunt and he put me up in his cabin and was the cook. With all the hunting and hiking I did I still managed to gain 3 lbs on his delicious meals.[attachment=1]
Great post.
The meals at ShrewHaven have been legendary. It's hard to pin one down. Greg and Ray are amazing cooks that work HARD to keep us full and happy.
But I have to say that some of my memorable meals were pretty simple...red beans and rice, with ground venison over a fire in Wyoming with Mike Vines. Ground venison thrown into a skillet with a can of baked beans while turkey hunting with my boy Danny.
Heck...Danny and I have had some pretty good lunches, sitting in the woods with a couple bologna sandwiches and a package of PopTarts.
Cory's cookies are the best. After eating one you'll never look at a store bought cookie the same. On a similar note Cory gave me a smoked snack stick that Dean Torges had made from wild pig. This thing was so good I refuse to eat a store bought slim Jim style meat stick. That was like fifteen years ago.
[attachment=1,msg2847390]One of my favorite Cory meals. this was a while back at a St Judes hunt. I think the kids agree the dessert is fittin. Grilled doves, wood duck breast, pineapple and jalapeneo peppers, corn, fresh carrot salad with honey lemon vinegerette. Need to do this one again. DB
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Brad Hawkins (Biathlon Man) is a great camp cook and fed hungry PBS bow hunters at the ongoing coastal Georgia hog hunt. Can't single out a particular meal, they all were great!
For me, it was back in the late 80's at my family's cabin in central Pennsylvania, (Union County),. My family used to hire a older Dutch lady, Armena that everyone called "Mom", to cook for us during the bow and firearm season. She was well into her 90's and never missed a beat. She used to cook ''Scottish venison Stovies" in a cast iron Dutch oven out on a open fire behind our cabin. One could smell the Scottish Stovies cooking from the deer stand!! That dish helped me shake off the chill of many frosty deer stands in central Pennsylvania.
At little ball mountain a few years ago at Cohutta we had elk, antelope, wild boar, venison and pheasant.... Alll killed with a Trad bow for dinner one night..... People from other camps came around to see what was up and yes we shared
Normally on either the second or third night of firearm season my dad's buddy Tim will invite us up for dinner at their camp, and they always do a huge thing of venison lasagna. Between that, the garlic bread, and whatever is leftover from the chili cook off, we always leave their feeling substantially heavier than when we got there. The downside is that it's really hard to keep your eyes open for an all day sit the next day.
Although Terry Green will say it is simple to make, and therefore nothing much, his Stroganoff is amazingly delicious. If I had a photo it would make me drool.
Just re read this old post. Lot of good stuff on here. quick Corey story. catfishing on Nuese in NC a few years back. Cory , I'll bring " snacks". been fishing a while and one of my boy's girlfriend is hungry. Cory grabs lid off his cooler. What ya want? got sushi rolls, ham sandwich wraps and PB&J wraps. She went with the PBJ. she said, " Mr Cory, this is best PBJ i ever had." he said it's actually
Almond butter I made this morning. The rest of the "snacks " were off chart as well.
You won't go hungry at Marty's either. And this past Oct i spent a couple days with Joey Buchanan
at his camp on Miss River. 20oz ribeyes, Saw Mill Breakfast in mornings and crappie and fries. Not
bad scenery either. Sitting on porch watching the barges go by and a couple 130/140" bucks sparing
in the back yard. The older I get the more and more it's about the trip, company and food than the hunt.
Ray Hammond made a meal of wild hog sausages cooked with onions that was great . I had the name of the processor he used down near Estil as I hunt down that way once a year, but haven't managed to shoot a hog in years.
I was in a club for years on Friday nights you brought your own meat to grill , but a standard side was sliced potatoes and onions, butter, salt and pepper cooked in a foil bag on the grill. Smelled heavenly cooking and tasted even better.
Ah, great re-up!!! Yeah Ray was a great camp cook for sure, and his salad was a labor of love to make it that delicious.
SteveM's chili and the 'trick boys' from Arkansas and their fish fryer they bring along to the LTRs... I just had to add these 2 guys to my list.
Here's another quick Cory story. This is back about 2002 or 03, we were planning a short overnight hunt to the Woodbury. So we are planning on the phone and like usual Cory's like don't worry about food dude. I got it. So he had whatever for breakfast and lunch and he's like I got some "beef scraps" for dinner. So at this point we'd only hunted together a couple of times and food was great but I'm thinking to myself, "beef scraps??" That sounds like something I'd probably throw away. So we do the hunt and we get back to camp the first evening and I'm curious about these "beef scraps." So Cory breaks out this little charcoal grill and it turns out these beef scraps are the 3 to 4 oz ends off of full size beef tenderloins he had leftover from a catering event. Needless to say the beef scraps were awesome!!
Cory story.....
Biggie and Matt Schuster were riding together to or from a hunt and they were STARVING, and Cory kept telling them to keep going cause there was a cracker barrel an hour away.... and they always had fresh food from shear turn over of customers... Now Cory is a 5 Star Chef so he knows this kinda stuff....
So Biggie and Matt suffer for another hour to make Cory happy... and when they finally got there.....
Cory only ordered THREE pieces of bacon!!! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
LMAO:)
I also have a Biggie story I'll tell in a bit...gotta run!
Cory is for sure not a glutton. He's a great cook but don't eat much. but then again he has buddies like Me , Joey , Marty , and Biggie that can take up the slack. He could for sure feed the multitude with 3 fish and a loaf of bread. LOL
Hunted moose with Kent Wolowski on Fontaine lake in 2019. After not seeing a moose for seven days I finally shot a small bull on day nine of a ten day hunt. We gutted him that night and took the liver back to camp for liver and onions. Fantastic.... The next day after butchering the bull and getting all the meat taken care of Kent made tenderloins. We ate till they were gone. Dusted with flour and pan fried with onions. They were so tender you hardly needed a knife.... HMMMMMMM talk about good eating. Simple and delicious. Had my first Gin and Tonic at 56 years old on that trip. :biglaugh:
Fontaine Lake, SK! Amazing place!! The lake trout and pike are next level eating since the lake water never gets much above 60 Degrees.
Quote from: Terry Green on January 31, 2019, 03:24:16 PM
At little ball mountain a few years ago at Cohutta we had elk, antelope, wild boar, venison and pheasant.... All killed with a Trad bow for dinner one night..... People from other camps came around to see what was up and yes we shared
Ah, ran across evidence this morning....
[attachment=1]
Wondering where the pheasant is at? GONE! it was the appetizer.
My brother's camp chili, Make's a big pot of it and just let's it simmer on the wood stove.
Better than my wife's but I don't tell her that!