Hot Tent?

[Bill Christy]

I am a 69 year solo old elk hunter. I need to purchase a hot tent for hunting. There are a lot of hot tents on the market. I was wondering if someone could clue me in on a good style hot tent and wood stove. I've been leaning toward a bell style tent for the standing room (5' 11"). I've been using a 3-season dome style tent with a Mr. Buddy heater, but the frost inside the tent, caused by the propane, is a real headache. Any suggestions?

 

[sneakypete]

Watch Gritty’s hot tent and stove YouTube video! Very informative

 

[blueridge]

Just a tip on your threads: try to put them in the most related forum. This one is under “Rules and Announcements “ and would be best under “Gear”, and your threads on hot springs are also under “Rules and Announcements)” and would be best under “Elk”. Some people view all new posts; others specific forums only. May get you more responses.

 

[blueridge]

P.S. I hope I am up for hunting elk solo when I am 69!

 

[hogcarpy]

Watch Gritty’s hot tent and stove YouTube video! Very informative

Good tip here

 

[MThuntr]

lots of variables that need to be settled like budget, canvas or nylon, how big, solo setup, etc.

Personally, I've done the floorless with titanium stove and the novelty wore of quickly. Especially when I couldn't stand up or dry gear real well. The single wall tent was quick to build condensation once the stove was out. I've froze my butt off on the cold ground while stocking the stove every hour to maintain above zero temps inside.

A wall tent has its drawbacks like weight, size of footprint, etc but dang a nice warm tent to stand in and to walk around is fantastic.

Now I have a big Kodiak canvas 12x12 tent with a floor and woodstove. Great decision but a PIA to put up alone. A smaller tent would have been better for solo stuff and yet I find myself wanting to add the front vestibule and damn that's a lot of stupid stuff for a week.

The 8 man cabelas tent has a stove jack. If you have their credit card the price is pretty wild (especially if you buy on a monday in december).

 

[Wyohandscold]

Davis makes a great tent

 

[Farz-U-Know]

Well I'm going to be 60 this year and have treated myself to a Idaho elk hunt. Not a good unit but it will be fun doing a solo backpack hunt. I'm also trying not to spend the kings ransom on tent and stove. I've looked at all the really nice $$ hot tent and titanium stoves and I'm going to gamble on a 2 person hot tent I found on Temu. Sure I'd rather have the made in USA gear but not this year. Also found a titanium stove there. Just got the tent in and much to my surprise it looks pretty well made. Good looking seams, weights in at 3.8 lbs, that's more than the leading comparable brands but I only paid $110 for it.

 

[Alpine01]

Well I'm going to be 60 this year and have treated myself to a Idaho elk hunt. Not a good unit but it will be fun doing a solo backpack hunt. I'm also trying not to spend the kings ransom on tent and stove. I've looked at all the really nice $$ hot tent and titanium stoves and I'm going to gamble on a 2 person hot tent I found on Temu. Sure I'd rather have the made in USA gear but not this year. Also found a titanium stove there. Just got the tent in and much to my surprise it looks pretty well made. Good looking seams, weights in at 3.8 lbs, that's more than the leading comparable brands but I only paid $110 for it.

Best of luck to you. I have been running a tipi hot tent for 6 yrs now (I am currently 59) for my solo hunts here in CO. 3-person tent that is really a one-person tent with a stove. Nice to have room to store all of my gear inside. With single digits outside, the tent will warm to 75 inside with not much effort.

 

[Deleted member 16864]

Are hot tents against the rules, or no?

 

[Aldapow]

As a fellow solo hunter, I went with the FireHiking Leva hot tent. Compact, super efficient, and the hot tent is made with proper stove jack material. Makes cold weather hunts a whole lot more tolerable and you won’t miss the frost buildup from propane.

 

[Wild Bill]

Long live @Bill Christy

 

[utah400elk]

I had the floorless tipi. In the end…not a huge fan. Requires a huge foot print and not near as much usable space IMO.

I have been eyeing the Kirkham tents with the floor (classic Jack hot tent) However, I am going to probably go with a small trailer or even a teardrop trailer. As my back has gotten bad with age, tents are probably in my past. Best of luck to you.

 

[Farz-U-Know]

So here's a quick recap of my 2024 Idaho elk hunt. Packed everything into the target unit and while I may have forgotten the kitchen sink I think it was in there somewhere in my 90 lb pack, including rifle, etc. Ridiculous but not knowing how long or what to expect that's where it landed.

As for the tent which I sealed prior to leaving it had zero issues. The titanium stove ended up being the bane of my existence. No where in any of the You Tube video did they have a lack of hard wood to burn, lol. Well the only wood I had access to was pine, sure it starts up just fine but as we all know you only start the fire with pine. So that didn't work out well as I constantly filled the tent with acrid smoke.

Fast forward to coming off the mountain and sourcing some red fir that was nice and dry and ready to burn. The problem was that no matter what I tried the stove just wasn't big enough to hold a fire. Next I sourced some of those pressed wood burn logs and figured I had solved the problem. Nope, same issue. Get the fire going and within 40 minutes it's out and your back to filling the tent with smoke.

Lesson learned, if your going to pack in as a solo hunter just invest in a really good bag and skip the stove. My guess is you need a really good size stove to keep the fire burning and even then your going to get up throughout the night to tend it.

Saw elk one day on the adjacent unit but had a great time and no shortage of adventure. Would I do it again, you bet with a minus 20 bag and a better air mattress.

As for the You tube videos testing these small stoves, garbage to get views. Show me you packing it in and relying on it, finding wood in Idaho and not being up all night keeping it going. Anyone else have a different experience? Happy to sell you my single use stove, LOL.

In the pic you can see the mount of pine resin that started oozing out of the stove pipe. It was like one of those 50's horror flicks where it starts oozing and growing, LOL.

 

[Bowmannate2000]

So here's a quick recap of my 2024 Idaho elk hunt. Packed everything into the target unit and while I may have forgotten the kitchen sink I think it was in there somewhere in my 90 lb pack, including rifle, etc. Ridiculous but not knowing how long or what to expect that's where it landed.

As for the tent which I sealed prior to leaving it had zero issues. The titanium stove ended up being the bane of my existence. No where in any of the You Tube video did they have a lack of hard wood to burn, lol. Well the only wood I had access to was pine, sure it starts up just fine but as we all know you only start the fire with pine. So that didn't work out well as I constantly filled the tent with acrid smoke.

Fast forward to coming off the mountain and sourcing some red fir that was nice and dry and ready to burn. The problem was that no matter what I tried the stove just wasn't big enough to hold a fire. Next I sourced some of those pressed wood burn logs and figured I had solved the problem. Nope, same issue. Get the fire going and within 40 minutes it's out and your back to filling the tent with smoke.

Lesson learned, if your going to pack in as a solo hunter just invest in a really good bag and skip the stove. My guess is you need a really good size stove to keep the fire burning and even then your going to get up throughout the night to tend it.

Saw elk one day on the adjacent unit but had a great time and no shortage of adventure. Would I do it again, you bet with a minus 20 bag and a better air mattress.

As for the You tube videos testing these small stoves, garbage to get views. Show me you packing it in and relying on it, finding wood in Idaho and not being up all night keeping it going. Anyone else have a different experience? Happy to sell you my single use stove, LOL.

Why couldn't you keep a fire going? Was the wood all wet?

 

[The_Jim]

somewhere in my 90 lb pack, including rifle, etc.

I’m not an ounce counter by any means, but getting 90lbs into your pack is impressive.

Would I do it again, you bet with a minus 20 bag and a better air mattress.

You should be able to easily make a 15 or 20 degree bag work down to 0 on a backpack hunt. Use your layers inside the bag, boiling water in a Nalgene…

 

[Farz-U-Know]

Why couldn't you keep a fire going? Was the wood all wet?

No, as far as I could tell the box size is just to small to keep a good set of coals going. I had the air flow from low to high trying to keep it going at a reasonable rate. In the end it would go really hot and burn out within minutes or it would just smolder and fill the tent with smoke. The red fir was dried and cured and the press log was right out of the hardware store where the guy said he could, and was, burning it in his big cast iron stove. The stove was 4.2 lbs which was as much as I wanted to commit to packing in so going bigger wasn't an option.

 

[Farz-U-Know]

I’m not an ounce counter by any means, but getting 90lbs into your pack is impressive.

You should be able to easily make a 15 or 20 degree bag work down to 0 on a backpack hunt. Use your layers inside the bag, boiling water in a Nalgene…

Yeah, going up the cliff right off crossing the North Fork river was a lot of fun. Really thought after the 4th time sliding back down the rock face I was going to break a bone, best case. 5th attempt was the charm.

 

[Alpine01]

So here's a quick recap of my 2024 Idaho elk hunt. Packed everything into the target unit and while I may have forgotten the kitchen sink I think it was in there somewhere in my 90 lb pack, including rifle, etc. Ridiculous but not knowing how long or what to expect that's where it landed.

As for the tent which I sealed prior to leaving it had zero issues. The titanium stove ended up being the bane of my existence. No where in any of the You Tube video did they have a lack of hard wood to burn, lol. Well the only wood I had access to was pine, sure it starts up just fine but as we all know you only start the fire with pine. So that didn't work out well as I constantly filled the tent with acrid smoke.

Fast forward to coming off the mountain and sourcing some red fir that was nice and dry and ready to burn. The problem was that no matter what I tried the stove just wasn't big enough to hold a fire. Next I sourced some of those pressed wood burn logs and figured I had solved the problem. Nope, same issue. Get the fire going and within 40 minutes it's out and your back to filling the tent with smoke.

Lesson learned, if your going to pack in as a solo hunter just invest in a really good bag and skip the stove. My guess is you need a really good size stove to keep the fire burning and even then your going to get up throughout the night to tend it.

Saw elk one day on the adjacent unit but had a great time and no shortage of adventure. Would I do it again, you bet with a minus 20 bag and a better air mattress.

As for the You tube videos testing these small stoves, garbage to get views. Show me you packing it in and relying on it, finding wood in Idaho and not being up all night keeping it going. Anyone else have a different experience? Happy to sell you my single use stove, LOL.

In the pic you can see the mount of pine resin that started oozing out of the stove pipe. It was like one of those 50's horror flicks where it starts oozing and growing, LOL.

Interesting. I run a hot tent with a small(ish) titanium stove. Stove is roughly 13 x 8 x 7. It has the damper and spark screen at the bottom of the flue where it connects to the stovebox. Mostly burn pine here in CO so agree that it doesn't last long. That said, I never had an issue with keeping it going or getting smoke in the tent. Given the amount of pitch/tar in your photo, it looks like the fire wasn't burning hot enough. If that is the case, your damper (and spark screen?) were likely clogged with resin and thus you weren't getting a good draw. Just guessing though. Here is my setup that I have used for about six yrs now.

 

[Dougfirtree]

I think expecting one of these stoves to keep the tent warm for hours on end, is not realistic, nor what they're really designed for. You should have a sleeping bag rated to what the outside temp is and expect it to be that cold most of the night. The stove is to warm up when you return from hunting and to dry stuff off in the evening (with continual attention). I'm new to mine, but even with hardwood, I don't imagine I could keep mine really heating on its own for more than a few hours, when loaded up.