It was when I started shaking involuntarily that I realized I might have pushed myself to hard. I had hiked five miles out onto the tundra north of the Brooks Range in Alaska, then dropped my 60# pack and headed out after a caribou. Several hours and seven miles later I returned to camp, lightheaded, shaking and pale.

My father and cousin asked if I was ok, I mumbled something about needing to eat. As quick as I could I ate my dinner – cured wild boar loin, black coffee and Stoffers Stove Top Stuffing. I passed out and awoke in the pre-dawn light with a huge headache. It took me half the morning to feel “normal” again. As best my Doctor can tell is that I had dropped my blood sugar to a dangerous level. I had used up all the food energy I had eaten that day and my body was consuming its own muscles for energy.  This is a common occurrence in endurance athletes but for those who are weekend warriors like myself burning fuel like that is dangerous. Especially in unforgiving grizzly bear country. I should have known better.

My diet needed regulated – I was expending fuel, but not taking any in. I had snacks in my bag, I just wasn’t eating them. I was to busy hiking and looking for caribou. My poor food choices led me to make mistakes that could have cost me my life. Since then I have kept a closer eye on my consumption of food in the backcountry. Managing intake, especially on an extended backpack hunt, can be critical. Pack to little food and you might end up hungry and doing foolish things. Pack to much food and you have wasted energy.

Back at camp later that morning, I needed to get my calorie intake in check. I caught a big Grayling out of the stream we camped next too. Then I cooked up the fish with a bit of sweet coconut powder, a pinch of curry and some minute brown rice. Quickly I had a hot stew of curried grayling and rice. After about an hour my body just felt “better” than it had in two days.

Why? Balance. Not only do you need to consider total calorie count with food you need to consider the nutritional benefits of what you are brining. I had ignored the signs and let my body deprive itself of proper nutrients.

As luck would have it, I went to a seminar recently on backcountry nutrition. The speaker was Heather, of Heathers Choice – Meals for Adventuring, and she was explaining the building blocks of backcountry nutrition. The Proper mix of calories for the backcountry it vital to success.

The proper mix looks something like –

• 30% Fat – This is the “fuel” for the fire. Fat from nuts and fish are the best, nutritionally. However, chocolate, summer sausage and hot coco are good sources as well.
• 50% Carbs, i.e. complex carbs, – This is the sustained burn on the trail. Things like brown rice and whole-wheat pasta are best. They take your gut a lot longer to digest than “simple carbs” (white rice and white flour noodles). This longer span of digestion makes them a more reliable source of energy.
• 20% Protein – The Coals for the fire. Protein is the recovery food for the trail. It helps the body repair itself when you sleep. Meat is the best option for this – jerky, cheeses and my favorite wild game.

Looking back at my prior to now backcountry nutrition I was skipping a few things as far as food groups were concerned. My diet was mostly low grade carbohydrates – like stove top stuffing – and lean meat. While not bad horrible I was not giving my body any fat or sugar for that matter. I was setting myself up for failure. When I ate the coconut milk soup I filled my stomach with what it needed; protein from the fish, fat from the coconut and complex carbs from the brown rice. I felt better because I had eaten better.

Backcountry Snacks –

Pemican, like this recipe, is a great resource for fat, sugar and protein. Pemican is the old mountain man and Native American travel staple. It holds for years, and has just about all the calories and nutrition a hard working person needs.

GORP – “Good’ol Rasins and Peanuts” – AKA Trail Mix – the reason that this is well known to backpackers and hunters alike is because it works. Nuts provide the fat, chocolate gives you the sugar/carbs and the raisins are great little energy pills.

Hard Cheese and Jerky – the often-skipped food group on backcountry hunts is protein. A hard cheese, one that does not require refrigeration, has fat, protein and salt. All three are essential for proper backcountry nutrition. While jerky is inherently lean meat it is a very good way to get protein into the diet. Your body will eventually start consuming its own lean muscle mass if it deprived of protein for too long. (This will cause you to get tired faster)

Interview with Heather, From Heather’s Choice  –

CITW: Out in the bush I tend to eat like crap. Does that affect my performance while hunting?

HC: Yes, the quality and quantity does have a dramatic impact on your backcountry experience, as well as your long-term health. While one meal will not wreck your health, if you plan on spending a lot nights out each year, the damage done by poor quality food can start to take a toll.

CITW: What can I do to supplement my dried food rationing?

HC: In order to supplement your dried food rations, you want to make sure you’re drinking plenty of water. When you eat fresh food, you can meet some of your hydration needs simply from the food you eat. Once you have figured out how you’re going to drink enough water, you also want to make sure your replacing the sodium that you lose through sweating. The bare minimum amount of sodium we need to survive is 500 mg per day, while we can lose a couple hundred milligrams per hour when we sweat. Make sure there is a good amount of sodium in the meals and snacks you have packed for the trail.

Additionally, I would encourage you to look at the protein, carbohydrate and fat content of your daily rations, and strive to get a balance of all three, rather than packing mostly simple carbohydrates or poor quality fats.

CITW: Protein seems to be important – how much should a 200lb guy get in a day and how do I do that in that backcountry for a week?

Getting enough protein in the backcountry is a real challenge. For a 200 lb guy, I would recommend getting 1 gram of protein per lb of lean body mass. This might mean you have at least 160 grams of protein to get each day. You can do this with a good quality jerky, some nuts and seeds, a high protein dinner, and high quality cheeses.

CITW: What separates your products from the competition on the nutritional scale?

HC:  What sets Heather’s Choice apart from the competition is our selection of ingredients. We use only healthy, whole ingredients to create nutritious meals and snacks for the backcountry. Our products provide you with easily digestible fats, lean sustainably sourced protein, and complex carbohydrates.

CITW: Balance seems key – but on the hunt, I am never really balanced. Either I am camped on a ridge glassing for animals or I am pounding up a mountainside. How do you balance that out?

HC: Our experiences in the backcountry will rarely feel “balanced”. We are always pushing ourselves to the edge or past our comfort zone, which can be a beneficial stress on the body. Since the climate and exposure is generating stress, you can strive for balance by focusing on high quality nutrition and hydration to help your body recover.

CITW: I remember getting back to camp on the Tundra during a caribou hunt and I was physically shaking. I ate my food, passed out and woke up with a screaming headache in the morning. What did I do to my body and how could I have prevented it?

Screaming headache? I would guess hydration…if you were pushed to your limits you might have not rehydrated enough to fully recover. You know when you get a hangover; It’s largely from dehydration.

The Recipe –

This recipe calls for “bear” meat, but honestly, any protein will work. Slice thin to win with this stuff. Even the most leathery jackrabbit meat will be rendered tender if it is sliced thin enough. Just ask your local Mongolian BBQ place.

Curried “Bear” and Rice Soup

Serves 1 – designed for backpacking

1 tbsp canola oil

4 ounces bear meat, sliced super thin (really any meat will work here)

1 ½ cups water

¼ cup instant brown rice

2 tablespoons dehydrated vegetables (bulk from the grocery store)

2 tablespoons curry powder

2 tablespoons coconut milk powder (available online and in some grocery stores)

Salt and Pepper

In a small backpacking soup pot, add the canola oil. Heat until almost smoking then add the bear meat. Brown the meat then add the water to the pan. Bring to a boil.

Next add the rice, dehydrated vegetables, curry powder and coconut milk powder to the water. Turn to a simmer and stir. Cover and let cook for five minutes on low. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Enjoy.

(Pro-tip – the rice, veggies, curry powder and coconut milk should be pre-mixed at home and put into a Ziploc bag. That way you only take what you need into the bush and are not measuring stuff in the backcountry.)

It was a windy Saturday in November when I gathered my two older boys, my nephew and my buddy for a road trip to the happy antelope grounds. We had drawn the not that coveted doe tag for the area and were looking to make meat. I had filled my freezer already with an elk, two deer and one antelope and was not in a meat crisis. However, one of my buddies had failed to get his deer that year. I was on a mission to fill his freezer.

I’ve read before, in one of those “Outdoor” magazines, that using a flag can attract antelope. Yeah, not for me or my son. The herd we were stalking was feeding in an unapproachable patch of knee high grass. Chances were slim anyway, why not take a gamble? So I stuck my hunters orange cap on top of my shooting stick and gave it a wave in the air. This group, a doe filled meat market, was not having any of it. The only thing my flagging did was give them a focal point.

A doe noticed it first, then a small buck. Before I knew it thirty sets of binocular powered eyeballs were trained in on me at 600 yards. The lead doe then fluffed her but hair out and took off like a squirrel from a Labrador at the park. The remainder of the group promptly turned and ran as fast as possible, and that is stupid fast, away from me. My son, Middleman, was not impressed. He knows his shot range, and those antelope were well out of it.

“Wouldn’t work, told you I did” he said, channeling his Yoda wisdom at only ten years old.

I gave him a cockeyed look, not really appreciating the smack talk from a pre-teen, but understanding why he would remind me. We would never have flagged down a deer, an elk, a bear, a turkey or any other animal for that matter. So why the hell did I think it could work on an antelope. No matter, this stalk was busted, our second bust that day.

We walked back to the truck, parked on a rocky knob, to keep glassing for critters. Eventually we glassed up another herd of antelope, these ones about a mile off. Luckily, they had chosen a location that was “accessible” for a stalk. A single row of sagebrush obstructed there view from the valley floor. If we got to sagebrush and we might have a shot. We grabbed some more water, a granola bar and hit the trail.

After an hour of careful wind checks, slow and quite walking and some serious self-doubt about the antelopes still being in their beds we came to our little patch of sage. We belly crawled to our chosen location, not daring to expose ourselves over the top of the sage. And there they were, a dozen or so sleeping antelope at 200 yards. A chip shot for most adults but a solid 50 yards past my boys’ effective range.

We decided to risk getting in closer and crawled slowly in the grass toward the animals. At about 160 yards the first doe rose to her feet. Five more yards had three does standing. It was shoot now time. I propped up my shooting stick, my son took a kneeling shooting position. He waited for his breath to come under control and fired. The shot making a puff of dust right over the top of the nearest doe’s back. A clean miss. Perfect stalk, blown shot.

As the doe’s ran off I looked at the boy. I expected to see a frown or a grimace. Instead it was an ear to ear smile. He got it. He understood that the hunt was a goal in and of itself. He understood that shooting and killing was not always what was best.  “Well” he said “That was fun!”

Over a mile away

We picked ourselves up, dusted off and called it a day. Back at the truck we stashed the guns and drove out toward the highway. That is until the herd of antelope wandered in across the two track in front of us at about 100 yards. Then we quickly hopped out, set Cameron up and watched as he let lead fly at a doe. Filling his tag, and my buddies’ freezer, after all.

Some hunting involves looking and looking for animals. Antelope are fairly easy to spot – their sides being bright white against the yellow of the plains and dessert. Some hunting is just about finding the animals. Our location has them by the hundreds, almost making it harder to hunt them. Some hunting involves a methodical and patent stalking. This is the definitive way to hunt antelope.

That or just have them stand off the side of the road and let you shoot them. Either way.

Antelope and the Myth of “Game” Flavor

If you are skim reading this section here is the lead – antelope don’t taste like beef, they taste like antelope. AND THAT IS OK.

The number of times I have heard that antelope are bad to eat is borderline depressing. But you also here, from a fewer number of folk, that antelope is the lobster of the prairie. The meat is bordering on sweet. Personally I don’t buy either claim. I think antelope taste just like antelope. And I love them.

Unfortunately, most households have a limited range of proteins that they consume. Beef, Pork, Turkey and Chicken are about the only non-fish meat consumed. Sure a little lamb is eaten, maybe some goat, a hint of rabbit – but honestly flavors outside those aforementioned meats are “gamey” to a lot of folk.

That is not a product of them having a poor pallet, or of the meat being bad (most times). The “gamey” flavor is the only description most people have to describe meat that is not “normal” to them. The best way to get past the gamey flavor is to reframe your mind around the issue. Antelope is not beef, so thinking it tastes funny because it does not taste like beef is silly.

With properly treated animals “gamey meat” is not a thing. Deer tastes like deer, elk like elk and antelope tastes like antelope.

History of Kefta/ Kofta

A generalized “meatball” dish from the Middle East kefta is traditionally served with yogurt or curry of some kind. The goal with the sauce it to provide a “fat” to the often lean meat that is used in the skewer. This recipe harkens to the more Moroccan and Egyptian flavors of North Africa with the addition of the cinnamon and allspice.

Traditions vary on these meatballs being on a skewer or not. The idea or ground meat on a stick gets some people hung up. It is not as hard as you might think. First make a roughly two ounce meatball. Then channel your inner preschooler and roll that meatball into a finger length “snake”.  Then run the skewer into the center of the snake and set the skewer onto a plate. Chill the skewers before cooking to keep them from falling apart.

Antelope Kefta Kebabs with Greek Yogurt

Serves 2-3, depending on how hungry you are…

 2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
1/3 cup onion, fine diced
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon ginger, minced
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon red chili flakes

2 teaspoons curry powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 pound ground venison, antelope in this picture

1/3 cup currents, rehydrated, optional

½ cup Greek yogurt, plain

1 bunch watercress

Add all ingredients, except the yogurt, to a mixing bowl. With your gloved hand stir to incorporate. Mix until the meat starts to become “tacky” or sticky. About one minute. This will give the skewer a sausage like texture. Roll 2 ounces of meat into finger lengths and skewer them. Refrigerate them before grilling to your desired doneness. About 3 minutes on both sides for medium well. Serve the skewers with a side of watercress and a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Mole sauce is a strangely ubiquitous term in the cooking world. I like to equate it to “gravy” in the English language. Mole can be green, red, brown and black – with all sorts of shades of “grandmas favorite” tossed in (Los favoritos de la abuela). Mole is usually a mix of chilies pureed with onion, garlic and corn tortillas. Endless varieties exist per the flavors and norms of certain regions. Oaxaca mole is nearly black. Many describe mole as the “peanut butter and chocolate” sauce, and that is sometimes true. The sauce has a huge flavor and adds a depth quite a few dishes. Not being of Mexican/ Spanish heritage I tend to make a white guy mole at home. I have no grandma recipe to work with here. In fact, my grandma would have never eaten this being an Oklahoma “meat and ‘tatos” woman. So, to make mole, I cheat.

Why? Because I do not regularly have the necessary ingredients on hand to make a traditional mole. Nevertheless, I do usually have the items to make a pho-mole. I start with a base of enchilada sauce, the red stuff in a can. It provides a solid base of flavors that I can add onto quickly. Next, I add a few other items in a blender and puree. The sauce is ready to use almost immediately. I like to sear my meat – generally a turkey or chicken legs – while I make the sauce. By the time the meat is brown in the pan the mole can be poured over the top.

Turkey Mole

1 tablespoon canola oil

2 wild turkey thighs, deboned

Salt and Pepper

1 16 ounce can enchilada sauce

1 tablespoon cumin

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ cup coco powder

1/8 cup peanut butter

2 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 each corn tortillas, 6 inch

Heat a heavy bottomed 10-inch saucepan on medium. Add the canola oil to the pan, season the turkey thighs with salt and pepper. Next add the turkey thighs to the pan and brown on both sides. About 4 minutes per side. The more brown, the darker the brown, the better.

While the meat is browning, add the remaining ingredients to a blender and puree until smooth. The sauce will be darker and thick now. Turn the pan with the turkey legs to low. Add the sauce to the pan with the turkey legs. Cover pan with lid and let simmer, stirring occasionally, until fork tender (for a Jake that might be an hour for an old Tom maybe 2 hours). Add water – ¼ cup at a time as needed with older birds if the sauce starts to stick to the bottom of the pan.

When tender shred the meat with a fork in the pan. At this point you can serve the turkey mole with corn or flour tortillas and the “traditional” accompaniments of onions, peppers, cabbage and rice. For added flavor I like to grill my onions, peppers and tortilla shells for my mole.