I heard it very well described one time. Deer camp teaches young boys how to become men and it allows grown men to become young boys once again.

Totally agree with you Dave, but this year I decided to give somewhat of a healthy spin to snacks at our deer camp in southern Arkansas. Brought apples, oranges, bananas, and granola bars. One of the guys looked at me and said, what the hell is this stuff? You going to shoot the deer or feed'm?

Honker:
If your attitude on here is truly reflective of yourself, the reason you didn't get invited back to camp had nothing to do with missing dinner.

The times we've spent in deer camp are more important to me and my hunting buddies than any deer we might have shot.

Me and the guys call camp "Nuetral Territory". Everyone in camp could stand to loose some weight and a couple guys are diabetic but that doesn't stop us from eating like its the last day of eternity. After the morning hunt, bacon, fried potatoes, honey bisquits, and fried eggs are on the menu. For dinner, fried fish or wings, chuck roast, etc are served. Desert usually consists of beer. Gotta love deer season.

"OF an army." (Apparently I should have paid more attention in Typing and less in Latin.) D'oh!

Don't forget the Little Debbie snack cakes. Nuttie buddies seem to be the favorite around our camp. Chips and salsa are always close at hand too.

I don't hang out in hunting camps. I rarely hunt with anyone besides my dogs. But back in the day when the family would make the annual five hundred mile trek to Eastern Montana to hunt deer, Dad always insisted on having a bag of licorice handy. According to his dad, it's always lucky to be chewing on licorice when hunting. Dad always bought the variety bag. You know, the stuff with all different colors and shapes, some pink, some with sprinkles, etc. When my brother and his son came over to hunt with me this fall I made sure we had a bag of licorice. Mike is diabetic but that's okay. Sometimes he needs the boost ... badly. They got their bucks without much effort. Nice to know that sweet crap still retains its charm.

Ordinarily I hunt birds all day without eating anything. There have been many times I wished badly that I had something to eat. Guess I'm just too focused on getting into the field to bother with looking after packing a lunch.

Honker:
I read the post. Good thoughts. There's no right or wrong answer - it's always good to reflect on what's important in life. Nowadays, it's not the harvest, but the experience that counts - and I think we would all agree on that. None of us posting on here need the meat, despite our trying to convince ourselves we do. I've done my fair share of hunting hard in my youth, but I've come to cherish more the social aspect of camp. The memories made and time spent with my brother, father, our little ones and other friends at our camp are much more important to all of us than any harvest.

I think I value time spent discussing the morning's hunt and planning the afternoon's over coffee and fried eggs more than I would value that time spent alone in the woods. When the good lord finally does keep one of us from making it to deer camp, I think those memories will be more important than any deer one of us might have shot had we hunted harder. That's just my humble opinion though.

I prefer Beekeeper's brisket and Texas pork ribs. A little sourwood honey over a biscuit is always in order.

Two other great treats are a large Payday and a Mounds.

I eat healthy, home-made....Stuff.

Mix dry roasted peanuts and sun flower seeds with dried tropical fruit. Sometimes I fall to the Dark Side adding a few M&M's...the green and orange ones. I only like green and orange M&M's.

AlJoe, You have captured, in one sentence, the whole essence of what deer camp truly is. Bravo.

I'm pretty sure some people I hunt with wouldn't show up for deer camp if there weren't any LIttle Debbie's.

Are you sure about Cornucopia? When I was growing up in New York, I thought it was a town somewhere between Canajoharry and Skinnyateles.

you forgot mini snickers bars. how can you go hunting without mini snickers bars. it is plain UNAMERICAN! lol. but your analogy is correct. my personal "excuse" is in cold weather, when sitting on your hind end for hours on end, you need something to keep your metabolism "fueled" to keep you warm. not unlike the eskimo's with their fish dipped in whale oil. except theirs is honest true survival food that really works. and despite how it sounds, is relatively healthy. ours is just junk, that fools our brains (by releasing dopamine) into thinking we are doing something good for ourselves. when in fact, we have just shortened our life span by several hours. a peanut butter sandwich on rye would be much better in nutrition, beneficial in building heat, and do less damage to our bodies. but it does not have the miracle food, chocolate in it.

Hey Jay, I think you have been visiting my camp. Your menu sounds very similiar to ours. Especially the part about beer for desert.

90% of my hunting is Upland, Waterfowl and Turkey. In the off season I fly fish.
My wingshooting and fly fishing pals (separate groups) both know how to eat. In fact some of the best gourmet meals and snacks I've had have been on Birdhunting and Fly Fishing trips. The best part is there are guys who come along on those trips who I swear would rather cook than hunt or fish...AND THEY ARE DAMN GOOD AT IT....which is fine with me since I'd rather hunt and fish. They even pack 5 star snacks for you and the dogs in the field. It's awesome and I will take their names with me to my grave. None of you can have them for pals.

Then there is deer camp. First let me say that I'm 60 and one of the youngest in the Bird and Fly groups....while in deer camp, I'm the old man.
A chubby old man....with men half my age that all run 5 miles a day.
I can not believe the **** they eat. Their snacks are things like Beef Jerky, Diablo Nachos, Twizzlers, Skittles, Slim Jims (hold on, I just threw up in my mouth),honey buns, etc.... AND MOUNTAIN DEW.
Hell, if we grab a meal in town, no matter what state we are in, they all eat Deep Fried Chicken Tenders and French Fries (and it's not a money thing).
That said,a Tootsie Roll in your hunting vest will survive heat, rain, snow and lint and still taste the same.

There is nothing like beer farts around a campfire to gratify our primitive urges.

Peterson, how far north are you?

Hermit Crab, your thoughts expressed above and some posts I recently made in Chad Love's blog on modifying hunting practices to accomodate older dogs gave me pause to reflect. I think you would be interested in the results. See: h.ttp://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/mans-best-friend/2013/01/taking-your-old-gun-dog-granted

HC: Don't misunderstand, I'm no game hog. I simply enjoy being out there more than in here. As I have said many times, if I don't shoot a bird (or a deer back in the days when I hunted them) that just means I don't have to clean and butcher em. Eating what I shoot is a bit of a bonus, but you are dead on in saying we all know we don't actually NEED the meat. What I do NEED is time in the field ... without the "contamination" of other human companionship. I have come to cherish that more than time spent in camp with friends. It's a different way to be but not really "bad." No one is hurt. Perhaps no one is helped either. But is "helping" humanity always so essential? Again, the definition of "productive behavior" is in the eye of the beholder ... provided no one DOES get hurt. Weird guys who want to hide in the basement and play with their black guns are okay with me ... as long as they don't shoot up the neighborhood kids. Weird guys who hunt alone in blizzard conditions? They're okay too.

Last year at camp we ran out of provisions, so we sent a guy to the store, he came back with a case of bourbon, 6 cases of beer and a pack of hot dogs, what the hell are we going to do with them damn hot dogs.

Not a lot of that stuff in our deer camp. We take a lot of pride in the food that is served. Dinners vary. we might have a Roasted Hog stuffed with sourkraut and sausages one night, home made Gumbo the other night, possibly moose something or other. Breakfasts are breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwitches etc. Snacks that people take to stands are generally what we had for brakfast, sandwiches, jerky, chili in thermoses. Not a lot of sweets

At our camp we eat healty. Our better halfs make meals that all we have to do is reheat and for snacks, we all pack our own. Mine aren,t anything fancy, just some hard candy and some [keep this to yourself] peanutbutter brownies that my wife makes. Gee's are they ever good.

Carmel Nips and beef jerkey...makes me dream of deer season all year long.

I must have grown up in another world. Back in the day Granny would be the camp cook and there wasn't much that couldn't be produced with a couple of dutch ovens and a couple of cast iron frying pans. We ate roasts, stew, chicken and dumplings. Breakfast was usually cinnamon rolls (made in advance) dutch oven biscuits with sausage gravy over them and scrambled eggs with either ham or bacon mixed in. Lunches and snacks were usually sandwiches on thick sliced homemade bread and oatmeal cookies. Not much in the way of candy bars, candy or other sweets. just good rib sticking food and plenty of it.
Now days if I hunt with others on extended trips I'm usually the camp cook because I learned and have honed those dutch oven skills that Granny W. demonstrated. One year I even did a full Thanksgiving turkey dinner using dutch ovens with coals and a three burner Coleman stove. For me its the going, the food and the company.

I couldn't stop laughing while reading this article. Mr Petzal it seems you hunt with the same circles as I do. You perfectly described the atmosphere of our hunt camp up here in Northern Ontario.

Our hunting camp may not be filled with a lot of junk food but it sure is filled with a lot of tall tails hahaha

Hermit Crab: Truth be told, I'm really not that hard to get along with. The guys at camp would get justifiably worried and upset if I don't come back till well after dark (like 11 p.m.). And I'm not pleased if I have to return for lunch in the middle of the day. It just works better for everyone if I hunt alone. We are all still very, very close friends. I was in fact with the one fella on our way to check his trapline when my late wife called my cell after finding our son dead in his bed three years ago at Christmas. Don't know what I would have done without that guy the last couple of years (or his wife - she was my wife's best friend). But I still hunt alone.

I don't eat during the day when hunting for the same reason the dogs choose not to eat during the day when we were working. If I eat, I poop. If I poop in the field, I usually wind up with red eye (or rather a red brown eye). Five weeks of hunting pheasants all day long day after day this past fall and never pinched a loaf in the field once. I'm so confident I don't even take along butt wipe. Not even in the rig. Okay, maybe I'm not THAT confident. I usually just forget to pack it.