The Fire Ban That Almost Ruined Elk Camp

Every fall my brother-in-law Denny and I take a week off and drive out to elk camp, same stretch of national forest we've hunted since our late twenties. We plan that week around a fire. Coffee at daylight, meat and potatoes at dark, a fire ring we dig out fresh every year about ten feet off the wall tent. That's just how camp has always run, going back to when it was my father-in-law's camp and not ours.

Last September we rolled in on a Friday afternoon, truck loaded the same as always, and there was a fresh sign nailed to the forest service board at the trailhead. Stage two fire restrictions, effective that morning. No open flame of any kind, no campfires, no charcoal, nothing. I had a Gas One stove buried under the back seat from a trip earlier that spring, but that first night neither of us gave it a thought. The county had gone from dry to critical in about ten days and nobody had bothered to tell us before we left.

I'm not going to pretend that first night wasn't rough. We had a cooler full of food planned entirely around a fire, cast iron and a grate and a week of routine, and none of it worked anymore. We sat there in the dark eating cold sandwiches out of the truck cab, both of us a little sour about it, and Denny said something like, well, this is going to be a long week if we're eating like this every night.

That was when I remembered the stove sitting under the back seat, the little dual fuel one that runs off either propane or butane canisters. I'd used it once at a lake house fish fry and figured it might come in handy for something someday. It had been sitting in its case since spring, and I'd never actually planned to cook a full camp dinner off it. A fire ban has a way of changing your plans fast.

We went from eating cold sandwiches in the truck cab to a hot skillet dinner in about twelve minutes, and neither of us had touched a match.

I pulled it out that second night, hooked up a propane canister we had left from the camper, and had it lit and heating a skillet in under a couple minutes. No pumping, no priming, just turn the knob and light it. We fried up elk backstrap and potatoes right there on the tailgate, and honestly it cooked more evenly than our fire ring ever did, since we weren't fighting hot spots or wind gusts scattering coals.

It's not without its quirks. The legs on the case fold out but they're not the sturdiest thing in a stiff wind, and I learned to set it low and close to the truck bed rather than up on the folding table after one gust nearly walked it off the edge. It also runs through a butane canister faster than I expected when the nights got cold, so I'd pack an extra one or two if you're planning more than a few days on it.

By the middle of the week we'd settled into a new routine that honestly wasn't worse, just different. Coffee still came first thing, boiled on the Gas One instead of a fire, and dinner was faster to get going since there was no wood to gather or fire to tend down after. Denny, who'd been the most annoyed about it that first night, ended up saying he might bring his own stove even on years without a burn ban, just to save the hassle of building a fire every evening after a full day of hunting.

We've used that same stove twice more since, once on a spring turkey hunt and once on a weekend at the lake, and it's held up fine both times. No rust on the burner, no trouble lighting even in some wind, and it packs down small enough that it doesn't take up real space in the truck. It's become one of those things I load without thinking about it now, same as the cooler and the rifle case.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you asked me whether it's worth keeping a stove like that in the truck even on years when a campfire is legal, I'd tell you yes, not because campfires are a bad way to cook, they're not, but because you can't always count on being allowed to build one. Fire restrictions are getting called earlier and lasting longer out west than they used to, and finding out about a burn ban when you're already parked at the trailhead is a bad time to be without a backup plan. I've written up a longer breakdown of how the Gas One held up over a full season, so read the full review if you want the details, and a piece on why I never leave home without one now if you want the rest of it. A stove like this won't replace good camp cooking, but it means a fire ban doesn't get to decide whether your week is a good one.