For some thirty years my family spent most of the weekends during the fall hunting season weekends in and old camper.Actually it was more of a small trailer home that was gutted and rebuilt to work as a cold weather “cabin in the woods.”

This was in a small piece of private land amongst a large tract of national forest holdings. So, we would have public hunting access to over sixty thousand acres of absolute wildlife heaven.

Each weekend we would leave work maybe an hour or two early so we could catch golden hour, Friday night. We would swing by the local grocery store to get supplies. Always lotsa white bread, Miracle Whip, some sandwich meat and Kraft Singles cheese slices. Of course, there was the snack stuff like Snack pack pudding and butterscotch drops to suck on. Every now and again there would be some Butterfinger bite size left over from Holloween, Tootsie pops and orange and grape crush soda pop. Sometimes potato chips and the sort.

But the center of the menu for each weekend would be what was in the cast iron Dutch oven pot on the homemade oilfield pipe stove. There were three main choices usually. Chili, chicken soup and Super Soup!

Of course, there were donuts and cinnamon rolls and hot tea and hot cocoa. Bear in mind at this point it’s mostly a rated G family style camp so all specifics were age appropriate.

We took great pride in our "Evolved," confections. The chili had to be just right and always the secret ingredients. The chicken soup was a special evolution too. But the real super special champion of the camp was the "Super Soup."

I'm gonna share some deeply held top secret family recipes here. Prepare yourself. Starting with the Chili. Some of the secret ingredients are actually procedure. The best chili comes from the envelope seasoning from Schilling. Always medium because mild is soft and lame. The hot would make a guy into a fire breathing dragon. Key ingredient on chili, lots of the dried onion sprinkles from the seasoning cupboard into the ground beef while browning. Number two, cooking the ground beef at a high temperature almost to the point of burning. That way the toasted edges of the ground beef chunks (left as big as possible) take on a charred sort of flavor. The onion bits also get a toasted/charred flavor. Key secret ingredient three is catchup. After all the ingredients are blended and hot, a guy pours in enough to just taste the sugar and vinegar. Then when it's served in the styrofoam bowl and eaten with plastic spoons, black pepper is added to achieve the proper bite back.

Ingredients: 2 large cans of dark red kidney beans, 2 large cans of seasoned chili beans, 2 large cans of tomato sauce, at least 3 pounds of ground beef extra lean one or two packets of Chili seasoning. It's pretty much the main food for three days for three guys. Seems like maybe the Sunday night ride home might have had an unpleasant moment or two over the years. Of course, when you got the last bowl out of the batch it was always the best tasting one. Chili always gets better the next day. Each time it,s reheated it tastes better.

The chicken soup is a lot simpler. However, we did find a pretty special "tweak." Just pick up a couple extra large cans of Chicken Noodle soup. When you get to camp of course first thing is getting the fire stoked in the stove. It’s got a flat top cooking surface on it so it becomes the cooking stove as well as the heating stove.Bring the soup to a strong boil up close to the flue. Once its boiling hot, pull the pot back by the door where the top is much less hot. While the soup cools enough to stop boiling, a guy mixes up about a quart of Krusteezpancake mix and water or beer whatever is handy. Mix it extra thick so it’s more like a paste or a dough than a batter. As soon as the soup quits boiling, plop about half dozen globs of batter into the soup. Just plop it right in there. Throw the lid on the pot and move it half way back to the flue for a higher temperature. Give it about 5 mins with lid on tight. That actually bakes the dough into perfect dumplings for the gourmet "Chicken and dumplings.

The "FINALLY." SUPER SOUP! Never the same always spectacular Kinda like my wife's dump salad. It all starts with a can of freeze dried SOUP STARTER. I haven't done this in many years so I'm guessing it no longer exists but I'm sure there are others on the market. We would choose a beef vegetable soup starter base. Throw maybe two of them in the pot with a pot full of water and just put it on the stove to cook till all the freeze dried veggies and grains are softened. Then we would just start dumping in anything that sounds good. Leftover steak from the supper club last night would get chopped and dumped in, a burger left over, a pan full of well seasoned stew meat already browned. Then maybe a can of vegetable beef soup or alphabet soup until the pot was full. Let it simmer until its well blended. Then grab the styrofoam bowls and a slice or two of bread or a bun and dig in. Ok this batch is the least yummy. The good stuff come next week when we come back and just add whatever to the soup again. Maybe a bunch of chopped polish sausage, another can of soup maybe this time potato or split pea. Whatever is in the cupboard at home when we head for the hills for the weekend again The wonderful part of this is each time we leave on Sunday night to go home, we could put the pot and all contents outside tightly covered under the camper. It would be a frozen block until we returned and placed it on the stove again. Usually by supper time the soup was hot and ready to eat again. Each trip we would bring some new meat and soup and veggies. Never the same but always better each week.

There is a lot of life to live outdoors. Hopefully, with the new political climate in America now we can find the time and energy to get back to the outdoor life a bit. Many of my best memories came from hunting trips with family. I remember being about 2 and sucking on the frozen grape crush soda pop, tucked in very tight between the two bucket seats on my dad's old Wyllis half cab jeep. I remember getting very stuck in a snowbank and my sister and I were standing clear of the dangerous un-stucking going on. We walked a little ways up the hill and there was a big ole eagle flying over and he let out a big scream. Scared me. My older sister, never one to miss an opportunity for some sort of drama, said, "Quick run under the trees so he can't swoop down and get us!" Oh ya, I'm like two years old, I was so scared I cried. Remember that like yesterday... 60 years ago now.

That was some real memorable times. Every now and again someone would shoot a deer too. After all it was deer camp.