To rough it or not, that was the question.

A group of hunters were sitting around a table at a local restaurant discussing plans for the first weekend of the Illinois archery deer season when their conversation turned to food preparation.

The cabin where they stayed had electricity, but no appliances other than a salvaged refrigerator that worked better than it looked.

A year ago, they'd brought a Weber charcoal grill to camp, but someone suggested they use something more convenient.

A microwave would do the trick.

Bad idea.

Thad Bryant happened to be the youngest of the group and staying at the cabin for the first time. Little did he realize most of his partners viewed the Weber grill as an insult simply because it wasn't cooking over an open flame.

They enjoyed building, lighting and stoking a fire. They brewed coffee, cooked eggs and bacon and warmed themselves by the campfire.

The notion of using a microwave? Well, they laughed it off.

"You go to the woods, you spend your day hunting, you head back to the cabin and you throw dinner in a contraption to be nuked," said Bob Sanders, the 52-year-old who is the oldest of the Pike County hunters. "That just doesn't make sense. That's not roughing it at all."

Although they blew off the initial suggestion of the microwave, the group asked Bryant what he planned to cook if someone brought a microwave.

"Pizza, hot dogs and burritos," he said.

Like the burritos you buy at a convenience store?

"Exactly," he said.

The laughter grew louder.

"He'll learn," Sanders said later. "We'll teach him."

The lessons started right away.

Bryant had never heard of a hobo's dinner -- hamburger, potatoes, carrots and other vegetables wrapped in aluminum foil and placed on a fire's embers. He hadn't cooked a steak or anything more significant than hot dogs on a campfire.

"I love making s'mores," Bryant said.

You can't survive on s'mores alone when you're tracking deer all weekend.

By the time lunch ended and the hunters each headed back to work, Bryant realized the opening weekend of the archery deer season was going to be about more than the chance to harvest a trophy buck.

It was going to be about camaraderie, the experience of being outdoors and living off the land, so to speak.

This wasn't just about hunting. This was about living.

"Deer camp is life as simple as it gets," Sanders said. "You sit by the fire, you cook by the fire, you survive by the fire. You don't need a TV or a radio or a darn microwave for this."

You simply have to be able to rough it.

-- mschuckman@whig.com/221-3366