Best Meals For Hunting Camp

Here are ten of our favorite hunting camp meals.

If you've ever been hunting, you know one of the highlights of every trip is the food. Nothing compares to breakfast over a fire at deer camp on a brisk fall morning. No dinner is as good as one with wild game over a fire, old hunting stories and a few cold ones.

But which meal is the best of the best?

1. Chili

A hunting camp classic that is as good today as when your great-granddaddy was the camp cook. It tastes good, is easy to prepare and is perfect for putting in a thermos and taking to the stand or blind.

 Put it in the crock-pot in the morning and go hunting. Cook up some cornbread for dipping, sprinkle with some shredded cheese, add a dollop of sour cream and dig in to one of the best meals for hunting camp (or home for that matter.)

2. Eggs, home fries and venison sausage

Didn't your mother ever tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Fill your belly with a good breakfast and avoid running back to camp to feed those mid-morning munchies.

Wake up early and cook and you'll enjoy rock star status with fellow campmates.

3. Bacon

Okay, maybe bacon could have been included in the breakfast section, but when preparing meals for hunting camp, bacon is so much more than a breakfast food.

Eat it straight, make a BLT for lunch, or wrap blue cheese stuffed back-straps in it. However you choose to use it, make sure you take plenty of bacon to hunting camp.

4. Deer jerky, peanut butter crackers, and candy bars

A hunter's lunch of champions. If you've eaten a proper hunting camp breakfast, you should be full until at least 2:00 P.M. If you are trying to eat healthy or think you are developing scurvy from your hunting camp diet, substitute an apple for the candy bars.

A light lunch like this will ensure that you are starving when it comes time for dinner, the main event.

5. Grilled back strap and potatoes

This simple meal is the sign that you, or someone in your hunting camp, has had a successful hunt. Grill the back-straps to medium-rare with your favorite seasoning, bake or fry the potatoes, and enjoy the culinary spoils of the hunt.

6. Sloppy joes

"I made em' extra sloppy for ya. I know how you hunters like em' sloppy."

Sloppy joes are delicious and easy to prepare. They are also a good place to use up some of your ground venison. Whip up a batch at your hunting camp and watch them disappear.

7. Wild game stew

Fill a crockpot with whatever wild game meat you have on hand, potatoes, onions, celery, corn, tomatoes, a can of beer, a little water, salt, pepper, and whatever else is in the refrigerator or spice rack and turn it on low.

When you return from hunting you will have a delicious stew to eat before processing whatever you just killed.

8. Venison kabobs

Cut up venison and vegetables, skewer with a stick, and apply heat. It's so easy a cave man could do it.

9. Gobbler hot wings

Not all hunting camps are deer hunting camps. To make gobbler hot wings, roll chunks of gobbler breast meat in breading and fry until breading stays on. Place the breaded pieces on a cookie sheet and drizzle with wing sauce.

Bake the "wings" at 350 until they are cooked through, then give the pieces another coating of wing sauce and enjoy. Don't be surprised if this one becomes a turkey camp tradition.

10. Pulled pork sandwiches

There comes a time when it happens to every hunting camp -- the dreaded skunking. Camp members are left sitting around with bruised egos, wildly exaggerated excuses, and growling bellies. It pays to prepare for the day when no one brings home the meat and bring some from the store.

Pulled pork sandwiches are tasty enough to get even the most dejected hunter's spirits back up and have him looking forward to the next day's (or the next year's) hunt.