food for fly in trip to Kotz

[BruceB]

When on a drop hunt out of Kotz what kind of food do you usually bring?
Are we talking all freeze dried or is canned/fresh feasable in this situation?

Also, where to buy in Anchorage. We are coming from Wisconsin and want to buy food in Anch. so we don't have to transport it all the way unless this is a dumb idea.
Thanks
Bruce

 

[Bill S.]

A lot depends on what your weight limit is for your flight. Mountain House will definitely lower your overall weight when needed. Taking some canned or packaged as a break from mountain house is not a bad idea, althoough I usually hope for backstrap to break the routine. You can buy Mountain House at Wiggy's of Alaska, on the corner of Old Seward and Dimond. You can also buy them at Sportsman's Warehouse which is also by the same dimond and Old Seward Highway but I would recommend Wiggy's. Buy the 20 oz two serving ones for one person.

 

[AkHunter45]

Look into the pre-cooked packaged meats also, they will be a nice break from those Mountain House meals. We cooked our own chicken, pork chops, and my wife made a huge pot of cowboy beans which we took with us on our float hunt, delicious doesn't even come close to describing it!!

 

[mdhunter]

Fly In Food

Fly In Food

+1 to checking on the weight restrictions for your flight. If you are going in with 2-3 other guys in an Otter or Beaver, you may have plenty of room for more fresh/non-freeze-dried foods. If you're going in via Cubs, weight will be a much bigger factor.

The Mountain House meals are great and really tasty, but don't always give me a feeling of being full. On one hunt we were eating Mountain House for both breakfast and dinner - by about the 6th day I started eating PB&J sandwiches for breakfast, just to feel like I had something in my belly!

One note on shopping for groceries in Anchorage, if you haven't done so before - be prepared to pay more than you do in Wisconsin, due to the added cost of getting that stuff to Alaska.

Good luck,

Michael

 

[BruceB]

weight restrictions

weight restrictions

Out transporter is limiting us to 125lbs / person. We have 4 in our party.
Bruce

 

[Bill S.]

Well then you should haave plenty of room. Most people on their first fly out hunt take way too much stuff. I used to take guys out with me on their first hunts in Alaska (people I knew from the AF Base) and no matter what, they always brought too much stuff. Think about what you need and ask yourself why you are taking what you have packed. anyway, besides mountain house, it would be good to take some of the prepackaged meals like MD suggested, especially if you are going out for more that 5 or 6 days. There's all kinds of prepackaged meals you can get now at the local grocery store to augment the mountain house and to go with the backstrap. Good luck!

 

[akfishinguy]

fly out food

fly out food

REI also has a wide variety of freeze dried food...although if it's not on sale, it'll be a bit spendier there. Walmart usually has some of the best prices around, but I've only seen Mountain House brand stuff there.

We were limited to about 75# on our flyout out of Kotz this year as we were flying out in a 206. The way planes and passenger loads worked out, we really could have taken a fair amount more stuff with us. Would have been nice to take more "real" food with us.

 

[winkhink]

flew out with just one other guy, Mt. House was the way to go. Ramen was a nice add to that and power bars. We also packed oatmeal and trail mix but that was the extent of our shopping list. We packed some peanut butter cups for a nice treat throughout the trip.

500lbs with 4 guys is a lot of weight so you should be able to bring some canned goods but the more time you spend preparing is more time away from hunting.

 

[Frankie 2 Times]

I would plan on mountain house with some added canned items. I just returned and my outiftter had precooked bacon, canned corned beef and canned ham. We even had frozen burger, eggs and boxed milk. While this might be over your limit, some of these items were well appreciated after a long hard day. Mountain house meals are good, but only for so long. I would recommend with the MH meals, you add rice or instant potatoes. The extra carbs are great at filling you up.

 

[gus]

One Word: SPAM

Gusto

 

[AkHunter45]

With that much of a weight allowance I would try and bring some real food, believe me after about the 4th day you will really appreciate it. Canned corned beef, SPAM, Pre-cooked chicken patties, burgers, and pork chops don't weight that much and you can get all right here in Anchorage. The Lipton noodle and rice packages are awesome as are the instant potatoes, use instant milk instead of real milk. I did all of the cooking during our hunt and it only took up a small part of the day, we basically ate hot meals for breakfast and dinner and snacked throughout the day. Take a long a big jar of peanut butter to dip your granola bars in or just do what we did and get a big spoonful of it and eat it like that. Jerky is a must, we took 2 lbs and ate almost all of it.

 

[Milo]

Cheese and brats....

Cheese and brats....

if you're coming from Wisconsin. What else is there?

Or wait, beer. But be careful if flying through a dry village.

 

[Jason in Anchorage]

Kotz Hunt

Kotz Hunt

I have done Kotz the last two falls. 125 weight limit will allow for some real food. Do a little of both...Mtn House and real chow. Buy all your nonperishable prior to Kotz and mail prior or check as baggage when you fly.

There is a pretty big store in Kotz (I believe its called A&C) that carries real chow and supplies such as white gas, etc. They have a good selection.

No alcohol sold in Kotz so plan on that if its an issue.

Plan on spending $ in Kotz...one can of white gas cost me $11.49....but if your going to Kotz to fly out, you are already paying out the shorts any how!

We had no problems with the locals and walked around town in camo clothing. Most were friendly.

Read the regs and be very familiar and abide by all rules especially the meat salvage rules. All the hype of hunters leaving meat in garbage cans was junk and mostly unfounded. I spoke to a warden and he said they had only issued 3 tickets total for the season and that was in late Sep.

Enjoy the country...beautiful scenery up there.

 

[Alex_Cena]

When on a drop hunt out of Kotz what kind of food do you usually bring?
Are we talking all freeze dried or is canned/fresh feasable in this situation?

Also, where to buy in Anchorage. We are coming from Wisconsin and want to buy food in Anch. so we don't have to transport it all the way unless this is a dumb idea.
Thanks
Bruce

I'll chime in but take it with a grain of salt. I'm not from Alaska and I've only been on 4 trips up there.

I usually go almost all freeze-dried plus I supplement my meals with real food too. On a seven day trip, I'll take 10 days worth of freeze dried food for all meals plus I pack real food: 3 days worht of pancakes w/heat & serve bacon. For dinner, I supplement 4 meals with stuff I check on the plane with dry ice (the airlines allows 4lbs). i.e. shrimp, boneless rib eye, lamb chops and filet mignon. I also pack 3 candy bars a day per person plus enough gatorade to mix a quart per person per day. It's waay more food than we need and we always end up leaving a lot of freeze dried behind with our pilot.

You can pick everything up in Anchorage, but I did not want to deal with any of that so I packed everything from New Jersey. Most of our rafting and camping gear as well as non-perishable food went ahead via Alaska Air cargo. Once the gear arrived in Kotzebue, I had my stuff fork-lifted over to my pilot's hangar for storage until our arrival. I use IsoButane fuel cannisters, which are not available in Kotzebue so I had those sent via Air Cargo from Anchorage. btw, if you use IsoButane, Snow Peak is the only fuel cannister with a DOT stamp of approval on it. w/o that stamp air cargo will not ship it for you.

I could have rented all our rafting and camping stuff up there, but there's nothing like using all your own "familiar" gear.

All our stuff was packed "load ready" in small polypropylene sacks, which were in Action Packers for protection. When we got there, we just opened the action packers and tossed all the bags in the plane and off we went.

 

[theilercabin]

REI Mountain House

REI Mountain House

You can hardly go wrong with buying a variety of mountain house dinners.
I highly suggest to people going to Kotz to have a high percentage of those sorts of meals. One thing the guides and transporters hate is people always being overweight. Around 90% of our clients are over their weight limit when it comes time to do the final weigh in. Believe me I've seen it all. Even seen one guy bring a cast iron wood burning stove and a large amount of chopped wood out with them.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is a fairly descent grocery store in Kotz and any other food you may need can be purchased there. The food items are not that pricey and you can also obtain your propane and white gas there. Make sure you allow you and your group enough time to get into Kotz, get a pre-weigh in for all gear taken into the field, once you figure out how much else you can bring in lbs, then go to the store and supplements your preperations into the field.

Hope that helps

 

[Adventures]

caribou trip

caribou trip

my brotherr and i bought the mountain house in a coffee can from sportsmans. 1 can makes 9 1 cup servings. Well we figured 2 of those was enough(it wasn't) You are much better off buying either 4 of the cans (2 per person) or all mountain house 2 person packets. We also brought ramen noodles wich are really light and a nice break from the mountain houses. The mountain houses are quite tasty i havn't found a flavor yet I don't like. Also brought 3 breakfast bars per day, and quite a few granola bars as well as 2 packets of quaker oatmeal per day for breakfast. other than being short on the cans of mountain house we had a nice variety and we easily came in under our weight of 80lbs for our outfitted flight. my brother was at about 63 and I was at 76. the clothing reccomendations that one of our posters here put up about just bringing layered clothing instead of a heavy jacket worked out excellent and made our weight very manageable. I like packing and getting everything you need and weighing and finding you're only at about 60 lbs and now you get to look for thing you would LIKE to bring that are'nt really necessary.
I must say it did cost me a small fortune to get all of the thermal layering stuff but now i have it and I'm set for next time.
good luck on your hunt Bruce. You must be getting ready for whitetails down there?
just my .02