Cook Outdoors Without Attracting Attention
If the time comes when you have to bug out, you will probably need to spend some time outdoors before you are able to locate a suitable indoor shelter. And if that situation occurs, you will have to cook food outdoors, most likely in a woodsy area.
Now, maybe you’ve already done this plenty of times before, or perhaps it would be a completely new experience for you. But in a bug-out scenario, the chances are that this time you will want to stay as far under the radar as possible.
You probably will not want any authority figures or wild animals becoming aware of your campsite due to the sighting of smoke or fire, or the smell from your food that animals are sure to notice.
But how in the world could you possibly avoid either of these scenarios if you’re cooking food in the wild? Authorities might be looking for just this type of occurrence, especially if martial law is in effect. And animals have a sense of smell far superiority to that of humans.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution to this problem. But there are a few things you can do to lessen the odds that your outdoor meal will be interrupted by uninvited authorities or animals. Here are seven of them:
- Cook your food away from your campsite. Even though it will be an inconvenience, make sure your cooking site is at least a 10 or 15-minute walk from your campsite. Cook your meal at this site, eat it quickly and get back to your campsite. Hopefully you’ll be long gone before a human or animal shows up to investigate.
- Stick with precooked meals. Emergency food, often featuring long shelf lives, will emit weaker smells than cooking fresh meat and some other foods will.
- Douse your campfire. This is important anytime, but in this case it will help keep other people from noticing it and either finding you there or following you to your campsite.
- Use canisters for transporting food. In a perfect world, you’ll consume all your food at the cooking site. But you don’t want to waste leftovers, so if you transport them to your campsite, use canisters to hide smells more effectively than plastic baggies will.
- Clean your utensils. Smells will linger on knives, forks, spoons and any other utensils you use for cooking and eating, so wash them thoroughly before you leave your cooking site.
- Wash your clothes. Yeah, that’s right, the smell of food you’ve eaten will soak into your clothes and follow you back to your campsite. So, as soon as possible, change your clothes and wash the ones you wore while eating.
- Assume the worst. Always assume that authorities and/or animals will be arriving at your cooking site soon. That will keep you motivated to eat and clean in a timely fashion before returning to your campsite.
By taking some of these precautionary steps, you will reduce the odds that your eating will bring people or animals your way that you don’t want to see.
The scenario created here is a joke, unless you are running because you just killed umpteen people w/o a cause. If you are alone and the authorities have nobody else to chase, you can follow a plan similar to one presented here. But everyone knows, you won’t get away forever, if you are the only one they are looking for. Lots of cases like this are public knowledge, and they were on TV for many nights.
If all hell breaks loose, am I going to be the only one making hay? The so called authorities will be too busy dealing with crying college kids dialing 911 wondering where their safe space is, dummies calling 911 because they can’t get their nuggets, and on and on. The authorities will also be busy with people breaking into stores and the mayhem with people shooting each other, as in the LA riots after Rodney King.
Looking for me? Thousands of people have warrants for their arrest, and the police have no clue where they are, and they don’t know they’ve found even after finding them sitting on the porch of their mother’s home waiting for her to come home.
Didn’t you see the movie Rambo? Not everybody is or can be a Rambo. But, note the clowns looking for him in the woods. Let’s create another scene where a group of people (armed) are evading authorities. Make it hard for them. Aside from not leaving trails, set up traps, look for ambush points, and keep moving. Set up false camps, phony trails, pepper the trail for the dogs, and be a Cool Hand Luke. Make them suffer, and if necessary, kill a few of them to make it senseless to search for you. With the right conditions, start a forest fire that could head in the direction of authorities. Desperate conditions call for desperate measures.
One person? Millions of people are easy targets because they do nothing to prepare. A prepared person could walk down a burning main street and not be bothered by authorities. The TV cameras will be focused on the chaos, and not a lone prepper bugging out. I’m not buying the above scenario. Besides, you could probably stay home safe in your own bed and STILL not be found.
I purchased one of those enclosed, tubular solar cookers. Very little, if any smell or smoke. Great item in a mass emergency situation. Cooks very quickly too!
Does the sun shine at night? In the woods, do you have good exposure with all the trees? Good if it’s day time in the desert. Maybe.
For cooking you might try a Dakota fire hole. Very little smoke. Works like a rocket stove. Also can hide the fact a campfire was ever there. Crazy Russian Hacker on YouTube has a good video.
What is the best way to cook food and NOT be detected? It depends on the current situation at hand. For example:
1.) Are there people actively searching for you? That is to say, do they know you are out there somewhere and they are actively searching for you. If this is the case, then the best thing to do is (NOT) to cook anything that will give your position away. Remember, if you can smell food cooking, then you are giving your position away as to being an active sector. All your enemies have to do is a grid search for you. If they find your cooking site or campsite you will soon be recovered.
2.) You are in an area where you don’t want anyone to know you are there and they are (NOT) actively searching for you; but, they will invade your campsite and can cause you grief or possible harm.
In this case, it is best to have a secure campsite and a secure cooking site. In doing this, you keep the local predators and any unwanted guests away from one or both campsites.
You cook your meals only once a day and take back to your campsite the excess food so that you can eat later in the day or night. To avoid fire and smoke, I suggest that you use a Dakota fire. If you don’t know what this is then look on http://www.YouTube.com.
Why cook only once per day? to avoid leaving a food scent that can be tracked back to your campsite. This will also allow you to use one trail without creating a small path back to your campsite. If you walk on tall grasses it will take a day or two for it to return back to its natural state.
3.) When do you cook your meals? If you use a Dakota fire then you can cook your meals around 9:00 P.M. or later. Why so late? Because most of the two legged predators would have created their own campsite and quite possibly fallen asleep. If by chance they smell your food cooking, chances are they will not look for it so late at night – they would wait until morning to search for you.
4.) Change your cooking site and/or change the way you return to your to your campsite. If you can not change your cooking site, remember you DON’T want to create a path back to your main campsite. If you change your cooking site DON’T return to a previous site. You might set a pattern that someone can stake out and find you at some later time.
5.) Where do you set up your cooking site? Select a site where the smoke and smells will dissipate very quickly, like a heavy wooded area or near a stream or river. Pick a site where the wind is down wind from you and your campsite. (Stay out of the smoke. You may not smell it but others can and will follow it back to your campsite.) Pick a place that will allow you to escape easily and safely. You pick a place that will give you the vista advantage. That is to say the ability to see if anyone is coming. Ideally, you want at lease(4) different ways to escape. If you feel that you are being followed DON’T return to your secure campsite. Take the long way home, better safe than sorry.
6.) When you have two separate campsites set up small tell-tale-signs that someone or something came a calling. This way when you return to your campsite or cooking site, you will know if you had company. Sometimes you can tell what kind of company came-a-calling. Think, booby traps, something that a person will normally over look; but, will tell you that someone or something was there.
6.) Remember to wash your utensils, hands, clothes and whatever that may have come in contact with the food you had cooked. Some animals have very strong sense of smell and can follow the trail back your campsite, like wolves and bears and wild cats of all kinds.
7.) Make food(s) that don’t give off a strong scent like soup, vegetables (like potatoes, corn, tomatoes and alike. How many times have you smelled the coffee brewing or bacon cooking?
8.) Cooking on cold days or early morning the smells of your cooking will be kept close to the ground area. Cooking during the light of day or the heat of the day allows your campsite and cooking site to be smell for miles away. Hot air rises and will travel for miles.
9.) Keep your cooking and use of fire down to a minimum. You DON’T have to cook every day. This is why you supplement your cooking with foods that don’t need to be heated. You may not like it; but, it is better than being detected.
I can give you more information, however, this is the basics. This is what I learned in Army survival course. Good luck.
One more tip – when you leave the cook site be sure to mask your footprints and/or smells – or the people and dogs they have will track you right back to your camp.
Best way to keep smoke down and the flames out of sight is to use a Dakota fire pit with lots of very dry tinder. It burns so hot little or no smoke comes out. It cannot be seen even a few yards away. It’s simple, quick and easy to cover up unless there are a lot of roots growing into it – they can smolder after you cover the fire with dirt so you have to put the fire out completely before you cover it. Will cook food quickly and efficiently.
Appreciate the tips for cooking away from campsite!
Again Frank, you feed us what we need and we appreciate your vigilance. Another small tip here just added in, one may want to orient that isolated cooking area where the downwind approach by unwanted intruders is over impossible to difficult, if not noisy, terrain, i.e., a swamp, a lake, a river, a rocky gulch or ravine, a gravel or rock strewn slope, or even just open ground with crunchy twigs & leaves, or spacious field where you can ‘see them coming’, etc. Just a thought as yes we are all in this together. Enjoy the trek and cheers all!
Matt, let me ask you, where can I pickup a Large BPA Free container that would fill up the bed of my pickup? We go to Hot Springs AR now and again and I would like to store up some of that water. The best tasting water ever.
Keep an eye on the wind direction while cooking, especially where it will funnel up a canyon as it can draw an arrow right to you. Just be aware.
Cooking small (harder if there are several people), can of sterno between two rocks, heats soup quickly, keeps smell down.
Dear Frank,
As always, you shoot straight on survival subjects and this is another well made point,
We have tangled with a lot of camp robbing critters over the decades. However, only once did we have to subdue human raiders.
In 1973 a group of teenage hippies raided our campsite while the family was fishing the Cache La Poudre River. They stole our food box, coolers, sleeping bags and some other camping gear.
ERROR! Stealing from husband and wife cops and a search/rescue tracker was not wise. We tracked them down and recovered our property. Although, we did take them down at gun point we realized they were not so evil as they were young and stupid.
Yes, they were lowlife thieving, looters!!! But, once we got past our anger and listened to their story it turned out … they were just foolish, desperate kids with no place to live and they hadn’t eaten in days.
After explaining the facts of life and the evil of their ways, while they stood at a braced attention (at gun point) we drove their leaders down the mountain to a war surplus store and outfitted them. Then we stopped at the Safeway and loaded them up with groceries.
We thought about running them all in, but what the heck, compassion and mercy seemed to be a better path at the time rather than endless paper work while we were vacationing.
The most aggressive camp robbers we tangle with are ants, flies, mice, squirrels, raccoon’s, skunks, coyotes and a big ugly bear now and then!
God Bless to All,
Orrin
Pack a few cans of that stuff they put under a buffet tray to keep food warm. No smoke or smell, You won’t be able to cook larger quantatys of food, but its better than the large amount of smoke a regular camp fire makes.
If you are making a regular camp fire make sure everything you put on is dry, and long time dead. Any green grass or wood will create smoke. Start with a small fire and add to it slowly, that will help keep the smoke down.
Do not cook in the early morning or at night. The smells do not linger as much in the daytime, and try to find a day when there is a small wind blowing.