Meat care:
• Pre-cut ropes for hanging quarters. Make them six to seven feet long with a tied loop on one end to fasten to the meat. Leave them attached to lift meat up into a plane or a high truck bed.
• Use a child’s crazy-carpet snow toy, or a quadruple folded tarp, to slide quarters short distances to the plane, boat, or truck to prevent injury to your back.
• Remove the rectum and its meat-spoiling-content at the kill-site. This spoiling happens with caribou or sheep when both sides of the hind, or the whole animal, are moved in one piece.
• Putting surveyor’s tape on your knife, saw, binoculars, and range-finder makes them easier to see and less likely to be left behind at the kill-site.
Around Camp:
• Ziploc bags in a creek or snow patch make a good fridge for bacon, eggs, veggies, and leftovers. They also hide food smell from bears and other scavengers.
• Pre-mix dry bannock ingredients and seal in a bag, which can also be used for mixing the batter.
• A dozen pieces of charcoal take very little space, are lightweight, and can be ignited fairly easily with a few twigs or dry roots.
• A very small, lightweight cooking grate can be made from the corner of an oven rack or one of the panels of a shopping cart.
• Extra socks, underwear, and other clothing can be shrinkwrapped into a small waterproof package. A Ziploc also works well if you squeeze the air out of it.
• A plastic peanut butter jar makes a good stash for fire lighting materials such as duct tape, Fire-Paste, alcohol hand cleaner, coffee whitener, or bug spray. Include a couple of lighters.
• A separate plastic jar containing chain saw chips soaked in kerosene is a guaranteed fi re starter.
• A highway sign from the dump makes a good fire reflector, and being aluminum, can be bent as needed. A bent 45-gallon drum lid also works well.
• For truck or boat camping, or any semi-permanent setup, use the drum from an agitator washer to contain the fire, in order to control the size of a fire and focus the heat. The circular sides are full of holes and allow good draft for the fire. Items to be cooked can be hung over the fi re or set upon a grate that fits the drum. This setup is ideal if a strong wind might blow hot embers into the forest.
• Tie foot-long pieces of surveyors tape on tent and tarp guy-lines to make them more obvious in low-light conditions. Even in darkness the light from the fire or a distant headlamp will reflect off the bright orange tape. This tape can be useful to mark the trail to the meat-pole, boat, or toilet facilities. Be sure to remove it when you leave the area.
