As hunters we often spend an exorbitant amount of time and effort getting back into far off valleys to pursue an animal. More often than not, once the animal is down, we pack up, blitz back to our trucks and head for home. What we leave behind in those remote valleys is often amazing country that we haven’t truly had the time to sit back and savour.
I like to think that if the food we ate on these backcountry hunts tasted better we might be inclined to spend more time out there after an animal is down. The challenge is how to pull it off with minimal cooking equipment and ingredients.
Recently, up a remote inlet in coastal B.C., I took a Sitka blacktail buck with some buddies and we were faced with this exact opportunity. What we turned to is a method that uses very few ingredients and produces pretty darn good results for backpack cooking.
This isn’t a new technique or recipe by any means. Pit cooking is a commonly used technique for cooking primals or whole animals all around the world. What makes this method great for a backpack hunt is how few ingredients are required to pull it off. Secondly, because a lot of the cooking is hands off it leaves plenty of time to sit back and take in your surroundings.
For this trip we cooked 2 small blacktail shoulders with the shanks but for future trips the shanks are better saved for a moist cooking recipe. The whole process can take up to 6 hours, plan accordingly. Serves 2-4 depending on the size of the shoulder.
Ingredients
Equipment
Technique
Notes: Pit cooking is all about managing fire, temperature and time to slow cook meat to perfection. It is not a skill that comes easy and it takes practice to master. One of the redeeming qualities of pit cooking on a hunt is no matter what level of skill you possess, given enough time the meat will be cooked and it will taste a hundred times better than the freeze dried meals you had been eating up until that point.