Camp cooking can make everyone feel like a culinary artist

"Why don't you make that at home?" Christine asked. "We like it so much, it seems like we shouldn't have to wait until hunting camp to have some."

"Don't want to," I replied.

Between staring out at the wind-driven rain that was pounding the cabin and not reading her book by the yellow glow of lantern light, she was attempting to drive me crazy.

She had already tried to help cut up the onions and tomatoes and had the nerve to ask to see the recipe.

"I don't have a recipe. It isn't allowed for hunting camp chili," I told her.

The truth was, I had found the recipe in an Outdoor Life magazine in the early 1970s and committed it to memory. I'm sure the current version rattling around my head holds some resemblance to the original. But I wasn't giving it away — a good hunting camp chili recipe is like your PIN number, you must never give it up.

Cooking has never been a strong suit for me. More of a necessary evil to survive, done as quickly and simply as possible to accomplish that end. But hunting camp cooking is a different animal and, as I learned growing up, one needs to have some skills in the art of preparing meals in rather primitive conditions.

What surprised me was how much I enjoy cooking in hunting camp. For sure, having fresh game meat to cook enhances the experience. There is no place where game meat tastes better than in camp. Sheep hunters are perhaps the best example of appreciating game meat in the field.

There is something special about eating sheep tenderloin or ribs, on the mountain, after an often long and arduous pursuit. I think those circumstances contribute as much to the reputation sheep meat has for great flavor as anything. Once it is frozen and cooked later, it's still good meat, but not even close to as good as it was on the mountain.

Our bookshelves have numerous cookbooks dedicated to preparing wildfowl and big game for the table. Whenever I think maybe I'll try something different, in short order I'm annoyed. It seems like every game recipe attempts to smother the flavor of the meat with a grocery sack full of ingredients.

Reminds me of what some old duck hunters will tell you when asked how best to prepare a duck. Put the duck in a kettle filled with good Kentucky bourbon, they say, and let it marinate overnight. Then with a growing grin, they'll tell you to pick the duck out the next day, throw it away and drink the bourbon.

Breakfast is my favorite meal, and yet I never cook it at home. As soon as the coffee is made, I'm off to do something that seems more pressing than eating. In camp, the pressures of day-to-day life in the modern world disappear. Sometimes the habits of the species hunted demand the hunter be in the field at first light, but the declining light later in the season leaves ample time for breakfast.

Throw a pound of bacon in a hot skillet, and soon the cabin or tent is filled with an aroma that even those who don't eat bacon find delightful. When the bacon is done, it only takes a moment for the eggs cracked into the bacon grease to be ready and the fried potatoes in another skillet are done. You get a hearty breakfast to start the day, bacon snacks for the pack and a pan full of grease for future cooking.

The downside to these wonderful aromatic camp breakfasts is that the smell of bacon wafts across great distances and bears love bacon.

One night in duck camp we cooked up a big supper of bacon, eggs and fried potatoes out on the cabin porch. The day's take of ducks was hanging on the railing off the porch when we went to bed. Around 1 in the morning we were awakened by the cabin shaking from some heavy footsteps on the porch. That bear was quick. By the time we got up and hollered him away, he had eaten all of our ducks.

It's worth considering that a better breakfast option if you are in an area with a healthy bear population might be oatmeal or one of those awful cardboard-tasting energy bars, because camp smells can be a real concern in bear country.

If there is a more satisfying feeling than the exhaustion of a hard day in the outdoors, I'm not sure what it is. The sore muscles from clambering over the hills and through the brush, the ache in the shoulders from the pack you carried, the cold hands and the flush to the face — it all makes you feel as alive as you can ever feel.

You stumble into the tent or cabin and fire up the stove, and steam starts to rise off your damp clothes. The hunger that drove you the last mile becomes a pleasant anticipation as you prepare for cooking the evening meal. Instead of the demands of home, where your thoughts are always a step ahead, time stops. Your thoughts and conversation with your partner are with the day you shared, while the meal simmers on the stove.

The time to savor the moments, the meal, the warmth of earned exhaustion that seems cannot be found anywhere else, are why I enjoy it so much.

Steve Meyer of Kenai is a longtime Alaskan and an avid shooter.