Young Men Food and Sleep

by: Gary Sorenson

I certainly don’t want to alienate young ladies here, but being an American male I can kind of share my feelings a bit more. I know from experience that at a certain youthful age few things were more important to guys than food and sleep. I think I helped with the demise of Bob’s 19-cent hamburgers and I know I must have helped spur the Idaho potato fame. And getting out of the sack in the morning was the major issue of the day. Like I say, there were a few things that trumped eating and sleeping, and two of those things were hunting and fishing. I truly disliked it when in the middle of enjoying a good hunt, doing my thing, and my stomach started reminding me that I had put it in second place. There was definitely a conflict of loves here and I had neglected one to satisfy the other. Or that time in the morning when the alarm rang at 4:00 AM and through the foggy recesses of the mind you’re trying to justify why that stupid thing went off so early, you then remember that you’re going hunting or fishing, and the battle begins. It isn’t till you get the fog beat back that this hunting thing even makes since. On the other end of the day how many times have you wished, “man if I only had another hour or two or four or eight— this sleeping thing is a waste.” Now we know the answer to all this is self-discipline and proper planning. But again we are talking of young males and I’m afraid the percentile of young males that have these qualities isn’t real high. Like they say “been there, done that.”

I remember one hunt several years back when I hooked up with my little brother Scott to see if we could track down a buck in the Deschutes unit in Oregon. I was late as usual and I was supposed to bring the food for morning and lunch. I don’t remember what I brought for lunch so that must have been alright. It is what I brought for breakfast that seemed to set Scott off and just about ruin our hunt. When the alarm went off the next morning we bailed out of our bags and I evenly split my jar of pickled pig’s feet with him for a little morning nourishment. Get the picture, it’s still dark, no lights but the star light and I hand him a paper plate with this glob on it and in his hurry to devour what ever it was so he could get going, he never asked what it was. There was no way to warn his taste buds what was coming. They evidently rebelled. Really I was innocent of any conspiracy here because when I walked by that rack in the grocery store the night before, my mouth actually watered when I saw that jar of pickled pigs feet. I guess morning taste buds have a different idea of what are good than evening taste buds. Then, to not tell the buds what’s coming is kind of irresponsible, I suppose. We ended up having a couple slices of dry ol’ bread slices and chased it down with water for breakfast. We didn’t fill our tags that day, but it seems to have left a lasting impression on little brother since he hasn’t let me forget that hunt.

Another time, I was again with Scott and a friend of his (who also goes by the handle, Scott) on a week-long archery elk hunt in Northeast Oregon. Didn’t take long to figure out who those guys decided should be camp cook. Breakfast wasn’t hard as we had plenty of cold cereal and milk. Lunch we made ourselves – the standard peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and candy bars built for convenience and energy and certainly not for taste. It’s the supper meal that kills you when you come dragging back to camp after dark and are expected to actually produce something palatable. That first night I rummaged around and found some cans of Dinty stew. Awesome. I fixed it all up because by then I was starting to have a plan materialize in my tired little brain. The next night I just added corn, beans and Peas to the left over stew, it wasn’t too bad. The next night I thought I better change the flavor a little and dumped in a couple big cans of chopped suey on top the stew. Chinese food in elk camp? Spare me. By the fourth night there were still plenty of juices left so opened a canned chicken and cut it up in the pot of what ever it was by now, with a couple more cans of veggies. Fifth night I had two choices to add to the pot, canned spaghetti or chili. If you’re going to have chili in elk camp never feed it before the last day or you’ll regret it, so spaghetti it was. Now with this concoction I started keeping my eyes on my victims for any sign of reprisals but they just happily slopped away. By adding Chili on the last night I realized I was bending the rules by now because I couldn’t even identify all the things I was putting in my mouth. Finally after our last meal I actually got a comment from the Scotts. Little Bro slurps up the last of it and says “wow, that was different”. Man, I cooked it but I couldn’t have agreed more.