Backpacking food and nutrition for backcountry hunters

Tired of spending too much money on freeze dried meals? Feel exhausted while you’re hunting? Just looking for some good food recs?  This post is for you.  With the right guidelines, picking backpacking food can be easy and cost effective.

After 25 years of backpacking, I’ve spent plenty of time figuring out what works and what doesn’t.  In this post we’ll talk about what your body needs when it’s backpacking, why you should buy most of your backpacking food from the grocery store, go through my recommendations, and finish with some tips & tricks.  The goal is to help you save money, weight, and lots of time as you plan your upcoming trip.  Let’s dive in.

What your body needs when you’re backpacking

Backpack hunts are hard.  Shlepping a heavy pack up and down steep slopes at high altitude puts a lot of strain on our bodies that they’re unaccustomed to.  To help compensate, there are a few general rules about the right type of food for backcountry elk hunting:

You’ll need at least 3000 calories per day

That 2,000 calorie FDA guideline might work well when you’re sitting at home but it goes out the window when you’re backpacking.  A 160 pound person burns over 400 calories per hour of mellow hiking.  Add some more bodyweight, a heavy pack, as well as some high altitude, and it’s easy to see that you’ll be needing quite a bit more energy.

I find that I’m happiest with around 3,200 calories a day on my standard 3-4 day trip and I only weigh around 170 pounds.  Trust me, an elk hunt is not the time to try a diet… there will be plenty of other stressors.  Start with at least 3,000 calories/day and add more if you’re heavier or are going on a longer trip.

One of the biggest mistakes new backpackers make is not taking along enough food.  It’s hard to keep track of calories and it’s tempting just to “wing it”. I total up calories so I know that I’ve got plenty of fuel each day. It takes an extra 30 minutes or so but it’s far better than feeling tired and defeated during your hunt without knowing why.

”Food is mood” and sugar is actually great for you

Remember that post about training lessons from an Ironman triathlon?  It took everything in me to not start writing about food because it’s almost as critical as your physical fitness.  Now’s my chance.

Telling backpackers/hunters that sugar is great for them is a hard sell since most people think of sugar as a “bad” thing.  While that’s true for daily life, there is no better food for your body during endurance exercise.  Your body can only store about 3-4 hours of energy in the form of glycogen in your liver, muscles, and cells. Everything, including your brain, runs on glucose (basically sugar), so things go south quick if you don’t have enough.

This leads to one of the most common sayings in triathlon: “food is mood”.  Ever “hit a wall” or “bonk” on a long run or hike?  That’s your body telling you it’s out of gas. Simply eating a sugary snack can have a massive effect on your outlook. While that’s good to know, it’s better to not get there in the first place. Make sure you’re eating 100-200 calories an hour from simple sugars to keep your body going. If you’re not doing that, you body is slowly burning reserves that are difficult to replenish when you’re not exercising (see next section).

What about fat you say? Unless you’re already an endurance athlete, your systems to process fat probably aren’t that efficient, and they’re not going to change in one week of elk hunting. Like it or hate it, sugars (or other simple carbohydrates) are your best friend.

When you eat matters

What about if you eat a massive meal at night time? Unfortunately it’s impossible to “carbo-load” since your body can only process around 250 calories of carbohydrates an hour… so the rest goes to fat. Your body needs carbs during or right after intense exercise.

The single most important thing is to eat sugar and protein right after your work finishes.  Why?  Your body is literally orders of magnitude more efficient at putting energy back into storage in the 15-30 minutes post exercise.  The enzymes, insulin, and proteins that tell your cells to store energy all wind down after that time period.  It can be literally impossible to get enough energy back into your body if you miss that window.  I won’t write a novel here, since there is a ton of great research on the subject, but I’ve learned this the hard way many times over.

Ever feel like you run out of energy after the third day of your backpacking trip?  That’s might be sign that you’re not eating at the right times.  Make sure to eat sugar during your workouts and eat a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of sugar:protein right after you finish hiking.  You’ll notice a massive difference.

You’ll need fat to save weight

Fat does have it’s place in backpacking and that’s to help save weight. That’s not a small deal: backpacking food is usually the heaviest thing in your pack. 3,500 calories would still be almost a pound of food even if it was purely fat. That’s because there are only so many calories you can pack in an ounce. Here’s a breakdown:

• Fat: 255 calories/ounce (9 calories/gram)
• Carbohydrates: 113 calories / ounce (4 calories/gram)
• Protein: 113 calories / ounce (4 calories/gram)

Fat has over twice the calories per ounce compared to alternatives! While it’s tempting to just pack fatty foods, you definitely need sugar (aka carbohydrates) and protein to repair your muscles.

A good rule of thumb is to aim for ~ 130 calories per ounce of food since that means you’ll take around 1.5 pounds of food a day.  It’s a good blend of fat, protein, and carbs to stay healthy and also keep your bag relatively lightweight.

Why you can (and should) buy most of your backpacking food from a grocery store

I’ve been there: the nervous trip to REI where you walk through each meal of the day and load up on bars and freeze dried meals.  Nothing against REI, but here’s why that isn’t a good idea:

• “Backpacking store” food is expensive
  • A freeze dried meal is $8-15 and it’s not even enough for one meal (by the way, never trust the “serves two” label).  That’s $30-$50+ per day!
  • You can often find the exact same thing at a grocery store for a third the price
• “Backpacking store” food has limited nutrition + options
  • Pretty much all you’ll find are freeze dried meals, bars, and jerky.  Bless you if you have the willpower (and digestive regularity) to live through a week of that.
• “Backpacking stores” are few and far between
  • If you need to resupply on the road or in the closest town, odds are you’re not gonna find the same options you’re used to
• You won’t want to eat “backpacking store” food later
  • You always need to overbuy food, so why buy extras that you wouldn’t eat every day back at home?  That’s a good litmus test.

Yes, I still go to “backpacking stores” or order freeze dried meals online, but I try to keep them to one meal a day.  Cooking takes lots of extra fuel, water, and time that ultimately takes away from your ability to hunt elk.  I’d rather get 45 more minutes of sleep in the morning that have a hot meal.  I save that for the “dead hour” at 4:30-5:30 in the afternoon when nothing is moving before the evening hunt.  

So what should you get from the grocery store instead of all those fancy bars and food?  Glad you asked.  Here are my recommendations.

My recommendations

Here’s the long list of things I’ve found to be great when in the backcountry.  Hopefully this saves you a lot of money and several decades of research!

• Grocery store items
  • Instant pastas, cous-cous, noodles, or rices
    • But I don’t have a pan!  Yes you do: just put them in the bag your freeze dried food came in, before or after you eat it.  Then add boiling water…
  • Oatmeal, granola, powdered milk
    • You can make those “freeze dried” breakfasts for a fraction of the cost in a ziplock bag.
  • Potato Chips (or plantain chips)
    • 1.5 ounces of potato chips have as much potassium as a banana!  And salt, carbs, and fats.  Basically, everything you’d need while you backpack (and everything you don’t need on the couch).
    • Crush them up and put them in ziplocks so they’re easy to pour into your mouth
  • Dried fruit and nuts
    • FIBER!  You definitely won’t be getting enough of this, so dried fruit is a win-win since it has so many nutrients and sugars.  Buy in bulk to save money.  Mango tastes amazing at altitude for some reason.
    • Nuts are about as calorie efficient as it gets
  • Jerky
    • Bulk sizes and online orders are far cheaper than small packages at backpacking stores.  Tanka bites are one of my all time favorites.
  • Peanut Butter and Jelly
    • Seriously.  If you have a trip that’s less than 4 days these will be fine.
  • Pre-cooked bacon, bagels (or tortillas), honey
    • Last for days unrefrigerated and darn they’re good
  • Idahoan freeze dried potatoes/hash browns, powdered eggs, bacon bits
    • Talk about a tasty and inexpensive breakfast or lunch
  • Cheese, Salami, and crackers
    • Yes, hard cheeses (cheddar, manchego, etc) are fine for days without refrigeration.  And man they taste good up there.
• Freeze dried meals
  • Best Mountain House meals
    • Note: these are cheapest and often stuffed with sodium, but I mix them in every other day or so.  Make sure to get the “Pro-Pak” version since they remove the air so the pouch takes up far less room in your pack.
    • Beef Stroganoff with Noodles
      • Reigning champion, bar none.
    • Breakfast skillet
      • I eat this for dinner all the time.  Genuinely tasty.
    • Chili Mac, Biscuits & Gravy, Chicken & Dumplings, and Spagetti/Lasagna
      • All good, but not exceptional in my opinion
    • Granola with Milk and Blueberries
      • Really good, but as I mentioned above, you can make this yourself for a fraction of the price.
  • Heather’s choice
    • Note: Really protein heavy, I usually split these with my wife since they’re so dense.
    • Dark Chocolate Chili with Bison
      • Good, but all that chocolate powder can keep you up at night, which is annoying
    • Organic Chicken Mole with Rice
      • If you like authentic mole, this tastes the same
  • Good to Go Foods
    • Thai Curry
      • Do these guys make other meals?  Jokes aside, curry tastes good at altitude if you’re into that.
• Bars & Snacks
  • Perfect bars
    • They live up to their name.  Read the fine print, these are fine outside of a refrigerator for up to 7 days.
  • ProBar
    • Almost all the berry based ones are great, although expensive.
  •  RX Bars
    • Lots of great protein from the eggs.  A bit chewy though.
  • Justin’s Hazelnut / Almond / Peanut Butter, Nutella
    • Not cheap but great little snacks
  • Bobo’s Bars
    • Taste like a sweet, compressed oatmeal brick. Mmmm
  • Mojo bars and KIND bars
    • Good mainstream alternatives.  I can never eat another Cliff Bar.

Tips & Tricks for backpacking food

Here are some random, but valuable, tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years:

Water, water, water.  Hydrating is critical in the mountains and comes even before food.  I always use a bladder since it’s lighter, I drink out of it more, and I can carry more water than with bottles.

Things taste different at altitude.  Ever wonder why everyone gets ginger ale on flights? It’s because the lack of pressure actually changes your taste buds.  Same thing applies to backpacking.  Stronger flavors, more salt, and extra spices are generally better at altitude.

Pack each day’s food in a Gallon ziplock.  This allows you to pack food before you go on your trip, which saves you hours and hours of organizing while you could be elk hunting. You can also write calorie totals on the bag so you know you have enough food. This also makes it easy to grab and go when you car camp AND backpack together.

Bring extra food in the car (and in your pack).  You might decide you don’t like something and want to switch it out at the truck.  Also, there is nothing worse than finding elk and having to leave since you ran out of food.

Cook your meals extra long.  Ever wonder why your freeze dried meals always  taste underdone?  Most cook times don’t include the extra 5-10 minutes of cook time you need at altitude since water boils at a lower temperature.  

Buy a cup with measuring lines and a long handled spoon.  Putting the right amount of boiling water in your meals is key, so find a cup that has measurements in it.  Long handled spoons work like a dream for those deep, sticky freeze dried meal pouches.

Summary

Buying backpacking food doesn’t need to be stressful, expensive, or time consuming. Make sure you eat sugar while you’re working out, always eat right after you finish your workouts, and aim for 130 calories/ounce to save some weight. Take a look at my recs and head to your local grocery store… you’ll be surprised how good food can be.

Still have questions or think I missed something? Drop me a line in the comments below.