418 Pleasant Street · Miles City · Montana

Smoked Slow, Cut Thick & Wanted Clear to the Coast

Montana beef and bison, marinated overnight and smoked over split cottonwood until it bends without breaking. Ten bags, rubs and sausages, five degrees of heat.

See the wanted list

Pick your heat

Dark strips of peppered beef jerky piled on a scarred wooden cutting board — Range Rider Original, sliced and cooling on the board

Montana beef & bisonCottonwood & chokecherry smokeFreight $8 · free over $75

Freight notice

Packed Tuesday & Friday · out next morning · 2–5 days to any door in the lower 48

The Wanted List

Five of ten outlaws now at large · rewards paid in freight to your door

All ten bags & tins →

Wanted

for peppering the whole county

Close view of black-pepper beef jerky, the cracked pepper pressed into the glossy grain

Black Pepper Bounty

Thick-cut · 4 oz

Reward$12

Claim · $12

Wanted

for snapping in every saddlebag

A tangle of thin smoked snack sticks, wrinkled and red-brown from the smoke

Ramrod Snack Sticks

Ten sticks · pepper jack

Reward$15

Claim · $15

Wanted

dead or alive — preferably in a lunch pail

Red chile-marinated beef strips laid out on drying racks beside a full plate of finished jerky

Red Rattler Chipotle

Thick-cut top round soaked overnight in smoked red chile and sorghum, then hung fourteen hours over cottonwood. Bites back, never bites forever.

Desperado heat · 4 oz · 41 bags in stock

Last seen: Rack four, the Pleasant Street smokehouse
Known accomplices: Cold beer, a long drive, a tired hunting dog
Distinguishing marks: Red chile glaze, cracked pepper, a smoke ring

Reward$13

Claim the Rattler

Wanted

for roaming the Powder breaks

A shaggy bison bull standing on a dry grass hillside in winter light

Bison Brisket Strips

Strips · 3 oz · only 6 left

Reward$18

Claim · $18

Wanted

for riding out the long winter

A heap of sliced summer sausage rounds, red with white flecks of fat

Trail Hand Summer Sausage

12 oz log · no fridge needed

Reward$16

Claim · $16

Now playing nightly at the smokehouse

Five Degrees of Heat

Every bag carries its heat in pips. Start at Tenderfoot and climb as far as your tongue allows.

I.TenderfootSorghum, garlic & smoke — for kids and grandmothersfrom $9
II.WranglerCracked black pepper, a pinch of mustard seedfrom $12
III.Trail BossGreen chile, cayenne & pepper jackfrom $14
IV.DesperadoSmoked red chipotle, slow and loudfrom $13
V.HellfireReaper & ghost pepper — sign the waiver$14

Find your heat →

A steel bowl heaped with dried red chiles — Dried red chiles bound for the Desperado marinade

Extra!

The Tongue River Telegraph

Price: one strip

Vol. XLIVMiles City, MontanaSmoke-house edition

Fourteen Hours in the Cottonwood Smoke

Wade Hazelrig lights the firebox at four in the morning, Tuesdays and Fridays, with split cottonwood off the Yellowstone bottoms and a few lengths of chokecherry for sweetness. The beef has been in its marinade since supper.

By six the racks go in, strip by strip, each one trimmed by Emmett of every thread of fat that would turn it rancid on the trail. The smokehouse door stays shut until the strips bend like a saddle strap and do not snap.

Nothing goes in the bag that was not top round, flank or bison brisket that morning — no chopped and formed meat, no liquid smoke, no shortcuts.

A pitmaster half-hidden in a column of wood smoke above the long smoker grate

Dry rub falling in a cloud of flecks onto a bark-crusted brisket

Split rounds of cottonwood stacked for the smokehouse firebox

“If it snaps, it’s overdone. If it tears like taffy, it’s under. We pull it when it bends like a good rope.”— Emmett Hazelrig

The Branding Iron rub — salt, coarse pepper, toasted coriander and brown sugar — goes on the slab cuts and nowhere else. It sells by the tin for nine dollars to those who want to try it at home.

Read the whole story

Two hands slicing smoked beef thin across the grain on a wooden board

Thin-sliced

Chew: crisp at the edge

Cut a quarter-inch across the grain. Snaps soft, gone in a few bites — Range Rider and Hellfire.

Thick pepper-rubbed bacon strips laid in a herringbone on the smokehouse rack

Thick-cut

Chew: long & firm

Half an inch with the grain, for a strip that lasts a mile of trail — Black Pepper, Rattler and Bacon.

Know Your Cut

Same smoke, four different chews. The cut decides how long a bag lasts in your teeth.

Thin-sliced: 1 min a strip · 20 to a bag
Thick-cut: 4 min a strip · 10 to a bag
Hung strips: 2 min · pulls apart by hand
Whole slab: as long as you slice it

Match a cut to your heat

Strips of marinated meat hanging from a line to dry in the air

Hung strips

Chew: tender, pulls apart

Bison brisket hung whole on hooks and torn by hand after the smoke. Softest bag on the wall.

Slabs of dark smoked beef with a pink centre, stacked in a woven basket

Whole slab

Chew: yours to decide

A pound of rubbed and smoked beef in one piece. Slice it at camp as thick or thin as you please.

Hazelrig Trail Line · departures every Wednesday

Trail Packs, Leaving Miles City

Pack	Bags	Heat on board	Fare
Day Ride	3	Tenderfoot to Wrangler	$34
Weekender	5	Your pick of any five	$54
Long Haul	8	All five heats, one Hellfire	$84
Cattle Drive	12	The whole wall + a rub tin	$119

Every pack ships in a waxed canvas sack. Ten per cent off the bag price, freight free.

Build your pack

A cast-iron skillet over a campfire, a hammock strung between the trees behind — Supper over the fire on the second night out

Word from Down the Line

4.9 of 5 across 1,284 wires from customers in 46 states

Hazelrig WireRecd. Miles City 3:40 pm

★★★★★

Ate the Long Haul pack on the Beartooth loop stop Rattler lasted three days stop Hellfire lasted three bites stop sending for more stop

Delia Marchbanks · Bozeman, Mont. · 46 words

Hazelrig WireRecd. 9:12 am

★★★★★

Bison strips tender enough for my father who has four teeth stop he says it beats his own

Ruben Ochoa · Cheyenne, Wyo.

Hazelrig WireRecd. 12:05 pm

★★★★☆

Black Pepper Bounty in every deer camp bag stop docked a star only because the boys ate mine

Hank Tolliver · Rapid City, S.D.

Hazelrig WireRecd. 5:58 pm

★★★★★

Ordered Monday arrived Thursday in Ohio still smelling of the smokehouse stop the summer sausage did not survive the drive home from the post office stop

June Albright · Dayton, Ohio · 52 words

Freight

$8 flat

Free over $75. Packed Tuesday and Friday, out by Wednesday and Saturday, 2–5 business days anywhere in the lower 48.

Keeps

12 months

Vacuum-sealed with an oxygen packet. Once open, eat inside a week or keep it in the cold.

By order of the proprietors

Public Notice

to all travellers, hunters, truckers & the plain hungry

Article I.How hot is hot, really?

Wrangler is pepper you can taste, not feel. Desperado warms the whole mouth for a minute. Hellfire is reaper pepper and lingers — we ship it with a glove and a warning card.

Article II.What goes in the marinade?

Montana beef or bison, sorghum, cider vinegar, garlic, salt and the peppers for each heat. Celery powder cures it instead of nitrite salts. No MSG, no liquid smoke, gluten-free.

Article III.Will it survive a hot truck or a long hike?

Sealed bags need no cold at all. Summer sausage and snack sticks keep three months unopened in a pack; whole-muscle jerky keeps a year.

Article IV.Do you ship outside the States?

Meat crosses few borders, so we ship to the fifty states and to APO and FPO addresses only. Alaska and Hawaii add $6.

Article V.What if I don’t like it?

Write to us within 30 days, opened bag or not, and we send a different bag or your money back. We only ask which heat let you down.

W. Hazelrig & E. Hazelrig

Returns

30 days

Opened or sealed. A different bag or a refund, your choice, no need to post the bag back.

Counter

Tue–Sat

8 am to 5 pm at 418 Pleasant Street. Warm ends sold by the paper sack on smoke days.

Men, women & well-behaved dogs

Join the Posse at Fall Smoke Day

One Saturday every October we open the smokehouse doors, cut warm ends off the racks and pour coffee in the yard. Free, all day, Pleasant Street.

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