Another thread got me thinking.

Have any of you not had enough food for the trip?

How did that affect you, your crew, the enjoyment, etc.?

How did you cope?

What was the experience level of the group/individual that went hungry and how did that help?

I think that most of us tend to pack too much food for our trips. Consequently, I would think that going hungry would most likely occur as the result of an unplanned over-stay caused by a storm or injury, rather than poor menu planning.
I've always packed out food that could have sustained me for a minimum of a couple of more days.

Or a medium sized black bear cleaning out your food pack. That'll do it.

View it as a weight loss opportunity.

I was wind bound once which kept us a day longer than expected. We didn't have any extra "meals" but enough snack/lunch type food to make it. It wasn't preferred but we had just enough calories.

far from it. i always overpack food.

Nope.

nope..like many others i over pack when it come to food for the very reason you brought up..

Once, right after college on a 5 day trip we were a little short on food. We planned for 1 fish dinner which was ok but we under-planned on snacks and portion size. By day 4 we were eating smallies as a major part of every meal.

With all the fish & game around?

A definite no!!

I always come back with too much food. We pack food and then if we catch fish we don't eat what we brought.

uh...no.

yeah, one of my first trips with college friends we didn't really think much about food. One of the guys, an Eagle Scout packed a bunch of shore lunch, pancake mix, instant potatoes, and some soups. That was it- five guys for five days. We were hungry, but it didn't matter all that much at the time. Those were the days when you couldn't wait to get back to Ely for a huge cheeseburger and fries. Bad planning and a little ignorance was to blame.

I really try to plan for each meal and we usually cut it pretty close without bringing too much back.

No, not really. I think we better in the BWCA than we do at home. No freeze dried stuff. Steaks, chicken, chili, walleye, etc. Our biggest concern is running out of beer and booze - Hic. No Everclear ever again.
You reading this KANOES? It is not good for you at all. Period.

our first trip out in 1992 we depended on fish for a few meals...a big mistake. not catching enough fish we had to eat some meals we planned for other nights. last night of the trip the 3 of us ate the remaining 1 1/2 cups of minute rice we had with us which left us with nothing for the LONG trip out to the parking lot the next day. we survived but it was a long morning! and i think we ate vertins out of house and home when we got back in town!

Never ran out of food in over 35 years of outdoors trips. Always over pack food on purpose. I do sometimes push the envelope on SAR training missions on purpose. Just for the mental aspect of training.

I do worry about rodents and birds more than bears when it comes to food theft. A gull on Ogish put a serious dent in our supply this spring.

I did have a bear eat all our food once. It didn't like our coffee so we had that in the morning then a long day to paddle out.

I have my journal with sketches of a hamburger, fries, and a chocolate shake drawn in it. I remember we were hanging out on some protected island in Brule Lake waiting for the wind to die down and sketching these.

We didn't go hungry, but did run out of jerky :) That went really fast. Overall we brought too much food with.

Nope. Always overpack food. Pack food in two separate packs because Spartan1 is insulin dependent and I am worried that we might have one pack destroyed/lost and be without food, so there is always food in two. But we invariably come back with lots left over.

Nope. Always pack extra.

I'm with wa0lye on this one. I always pack too much food but have to ration out the booze each evening.

We ran out of food and had to eat a box of fig newtons to make it 15 miles back to the entry point. It wasn't that big of a deal given that fig newtons have something like 150 calories per cookie.

Never, I've always come out with food left over, usually its extra snacks or oatmeal that I didn't sit around camp to eat in the morning. I've never come out with less than a days worth food left over so I'd be fine if I had to spend an extra day. Sometimes I come out with way to much though.

Only cause I couldn't bring myself to eat freeze dried eggs again.

But Lunch and dinners I was fine.

Yes, years ago on the very first BWCA trip I planned. The two main culprits were that 1) the fish weren't biting, and 2) I naively took the freeze dried company at their word when their packages read, "Feeds Four"!

Forgot the time that my buddy said he'd plan the menu and buy the food. Brown Rice.

That was it. He'd gone vegetarian, and not mentioned it.

Five days of it was a bit much. Don't think I've ever eaten it again.

I am another who tends to overpack, and have never had this issue.

Just once...my 16 year niece assisted by my 10 and 12 year olds ate all and anything resembling food. It was quiet an impressive eating frenzy which to this day has not been matched.

Nope. Never have ran out of food, always have at least one - 2 meals left over. Now our Vodka, we have ran out of on more than one occasion. Now that can be a tragedy!

Nope, not me....have ran out of booze before!

Still learning to pack lighter. Always have extra MRE in scent proof packaging for emergency. Never had to get that far. In 4 trips so far, I have always packed out too much.

Let me start by saying that I love food. Good food and plenty of it. On my first trip my food bag was HEAVY. I was, however, feasting on the sights and sounds of my surroundings so much that I did not want to waste time on food prep and only prepared the freeze dried foods. In the end I lugged most of the food back out and lost 10# of blubber around the waist.

I haven't experience any food shortages on any of my trips, most times the food bag is pretty much empty on the trip back to the car.

My son, who got me started going to the BW, is an insulin dependent diabetic like Spartan1. He always packed extra and I always packed extra for him. Like Spt2, we always packed 2 separate food bags.

In the boundary waters, we packed out about 20 lbs of food. (Thanks Mom). The only time we went hungry on a canoe trip was when we were supposed to do a "short morning paddle" on the Black River in Wisconsin. We brought about 1 Snicker bar per person. We got off of the water at about 7 PM. Our trip planner, who is a very experienced woodsman, had gotten a new map and forgot to look at the key because he "knew the area". 25 miles later, we were very sick of hearing "It's just around the next bend." I can't imagine doing that for more than one day.

Backpacking I have run short on food before, and always find it amazing how lethargic it makes me. I always think "body, there are at least 100,000 calories of fat on you, start using it."

I found that the best way to ration food was to eat tiny amounts quite frequently. We would open a Cliff Bar and take one bite. Walk for another hour and take another bite. I think this kept our blood sugar up better than eating the whole thing and then nothing for four - five hours.

OMG Trix that would end the trip. Once the 'cold beer' chant begins, the crew becomes pretty restless.

Gary

I have to say no, I always have enough food. I really liked morts response, when he said he took the freeze dried company at its word when it said (feeds four) LOL What they meant was feeds four infants. :-)

lack of food has not been our problem. frying grease and booze on the other hand is always packed at just the right amount. we could usually stay for a month if we didn't have to come back we would.

Always over pack, but probably too much kool aid or hot choc mix. Seem to take too much of the small stuff and that can really add up as far as the weight goes!

I pride myself on excellent family meals. I really do. But the meals I packed for my daughter and me for our trip this August really sucked. It was a last minute trip so every thing was rushed, esp. the food and boy did it suck. The Bdub diet. I couldn't eat at the end, just forcing calories. Next year, I am going to make sure I attend to the food. It will be a priority.