Cooking and shuttling hunters in a slow archery elk season

[Okanagan]

Title pretty much says it.  It has been fun but our poorest opening day of archery elk ever.  Heavy smoke in the air from forest fires reduces elk ability to smell and that plus high wind has had them holed up and jumpy.  Plus they have been totally silent, no bugling nor cow talk.

I have been scouting for my upcoming permit season so only cooked one big supper and kept it simple. Prepped a big deep bed of coals and baked foil wrapped big potatoes, corn on the cob and Coho salmon fillets.   Salted and peppered the salmon and wrapped it in bacon, then wrapped in foil and buried in the coals. That stuff was hot and ready to eat as the men came in to camp 15 to 30 minutes after dark.  Butter and sour cream on the tailgate.   

FWIW the big spuds took 35-40 minutes to bake through, the corn got ten minutes and the salmon cooked in 19 minutes.  I checked it at 16 minutes but it needed a bit more cooking. A shovel is the cooking utensil.  The only clean up is to burn paper plates and wad the foil into a garbage sack. I folded and fashioned a long clam shell cover from a cheap aluminum Dollar Store baking pan to protect the salmon more, then over wrapped that in foil secured with thin wire.

[FinsnFur]

Still sounds like a awesome get away. You had me at "A shovel is the cooking utensil. ".

[JohnP]

I'm confused, which is normal. Did you wrap the salmon in tin foil and also put it in the Dollar Store baking pan?  Never mind I went back and re-read what you posted.  But why wrap it in bacon?

[Okanagan]

I'm confused, which is normal. Did you wrap the salmon in tin foil and also put it in the Dollar Store baking pan?  Never mind I went back and re-read what you posted.  But why wrap it in bacon?

The bacon was experimenting with flavor.  Plus it keeps the salmon from drying, though the sealed foil helps with that as well.

Likewise the aluminum pan, almost like heavy foil, was an experiment to toughen against getting normal foil torn or a hole poked in it while shovel handled in the coals.   The folded pan for protection, with foil over that to keep out fine ashes, and a fine wire around the package as an after thought.  It worked well.  The bacon was good, not that great of an addition to salmon.

FWIW, I started the fire 2 1/2 hours before cooking.  Before that I dug out a 2 1/2 foot by 3 foot pit, 6 inches deep.  Then kept a large fire of 2 inch diameter and smaller fire wood going, to build up a big pile of coals, filling the pit and heaped up by the time we started cooking.  Half that time was sitting visiting with a grandson till he went out for an evening hunt. 

[Okanagan]

On re-reading, my explanation of bacon is not so clear.  The bacon goes right on the raw salmon fillet, and then the bacon wrapped salmon is covered/wrapped with foil.  So the bacon is inside with the salmon, not wrapped around outside of the foil package.