Winter Camping is Fun and Awful

If winter camping sounds like you have to make sure your heater and Wi-Fi is working in the camper, you can stop reading now.

Last weekend I camped with my dad and brother in the Black Hills for deer hunting. It was fun. It was awful.

The fun part was being able to survive outdoors in a remote location. We cooked on a wood burning camp stove (and a Coleman stove). My brother's primary job was chopping wood and keeping the fire going. The stove goes through wood like I went through Halloween candy as a kid. It would get extremely warm inside the tent, probably well in to the 80's. But as soon as Joe quit adding logs to the fire it cooled down quickly to the same air temp as outside - right around 28 degrees.

I had to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Leaving the warmth of my mummy style 0 degree sleeping bag was not easy. When the urge to pee was stronger than the urge to stay warm, that's when I slipped on my boots and ran out to pee. There are other options, but they can go wrong, so I don't participate. (Use your imagination.)

We didn't drink beer. Well, Dad did. But we mostly drank whiskey. Why? Because it's too damn cold to drink beer. And a couple shots of my Ole Smokey Tennessee Moonshine did much to comfort me.

The advantage of camping is normally that you are close to the game you are hunting. That wasn't necessarily the case in the Hills, we just wanted to. Even though it was awful, it was fun. So much so that I'm doing it again this week when I hunt West River.