How to find food - DONT STARVE In the Wilderness or remote homestead

How to find food - Dont starve in the wilderness or remote homestead....

One of the most important things a person needs to know when living in the wilderness is how to find food. I will explain some methods for collecting and preserving food without refrigeration. I will cover some basic knowledge that will help to acquire some food.

Don't starve in the wilderness! Wild plant edibles are many. Many mushrooms are poisonous. I recommend not eating them unless you have been trained in picking them. However there are many edibles available to you. You can acquire vitamin c in wintery areas by drinking pine needle tea which will prevent scurvy. Please take the time to read a book on wild edible plants and berries. There are hundreds of them and they can help sustain you preventing starvation. The layer of wood just beneath the bark on a tree can be eaten in pines, maples, and others.

Another method of how to find food and not starve in the wilderness is fishing: this method should not be overlooked as it is a year round food source. Fish offer some very healthful benefits. Some fish contain fats such as salmon. This fish carries large 600 lb bears through long winters and it can carry you through too.  Another benefit is that it can easily be preserved both pressure canned in jars, as well as soaked in brine (sugar and salt solution) then smoked, or just smoked and air dried.  Salmon are a migratory and seasonal fish, so must be harvested when they arrive. You must not wait! They can be caught with hook and line, nets, weirs and fish wheels. Please see the laws in your area. Fish traps can be made with sticks in a river or stream stabbed into the ground  that is wide at the opening and narrows down stream so that the fish swim in and become trapped. Fish such as pike, whitefish and others can be caught through the ice using line and hook and also nets put under the ice using two holes.  When fishing in the warmer months try fishing near trees that have fallen in the water, log jams, and on the quiet water side of bends in the river. Line can be made from strands of fabric pulled from clothing, vines, fine trees roots etc. Good can be carved from bone, sticks, and found wire or metal a simple tiny stick about the length of your thumbnail can be sharpened atboth ends and the line tied just off center. Baited. When pulled it will catch in the fishes throat and the fish can then be pulled in.

Don't starve in the wilderness, consider Trapping:  The advantage of traps vs. Hunting is that a trap is hunting for you even when you sleep. Having snare wire is essential in aiding in not starving in the wilderness. It is made into slip loops and placed where animal trails can be seen in the grass and snow. It can be hung from low bushes and should be about 2 to 3 inches from the ground. Traps must be checked every day. You can not survive only on rabbits as they do not have enough fat, making them supplemental meals only. Deadfall traps can be used for any animal size depending on the size of the dead fall trap. A trap like this is built by balancing a heavy object such as a log or rock on a stick so that the animal bumps the stick or pulls on a string tied to the stick activating the heavy object to fall with gravity. You can acquire larger or smaller animals this way. These animals will have fat and the bones can be boiled to extract the high calorie marrow.  Another relatively easy trap is digging a deep hole that animals fall into and can not escape.

Hunting:  hunting with spears, bows and arrows, and guns is most successful in the early mornings and in the evenings when wild animals move about the most. Finding a water source, an area of cover, or a feed source will give you the most opportunities to see animals. Being still and quiet, without fidgeting, will allow animals to behave normally and allow them to come closest to you without being alarmed. This gives you the best advantage for success in acquiring some major nutrients.  You will find it helpful to conceal yourself behind bushes, rocks, downed trees or other natural features which can conceal you from view.  It is also helpful to hunt with the breeze blowing into your face instead of your back. Having the wind in your face ensures that your own scent is being  blown away from the game you are hunting preventing them from being aware of your presence. The farther animals are from you the higher you must aim. Nest can be preserved in a cold stream, by air dying in the wind, by smoking, or pressure canning. During the winter months is can be hung from a branch out of reach ofpredators and left frozen until use.

How to find food in the wilderness requires knowledge about things like, Birds rarely fly at night. They become easy to grab by hand in the dark. If you see abird go to roost, in the dark you can often reach up or climb up and grab it. Same with Water fowl on the nest. The eggs can also be eaten. Again please know the laws in your area.

If you are near the ocean, freshwater can be found by digging a hole on the beach about ten feet from the high tide mark. The hole should fill with less salty water. In the forest you can acquire fresher water which from snowmelt, is healthier, versus rivers or lakes than can contain bacterias and protazoans.

Foods that are often overlooked by the average person are: white grubs from dead trees or wood, these taste kind of nutty. Porcupines which make a very nice stew and are relatively easy to catch. Crawdads along a creek edge are miniature lobster looking creatures. Earth worms, grasshoppers, which can be fried. Mice, snakes, frogs legs, Pine cone seeds, cattail roots (are similar to potatoes and are a carbohydrate.) Seaweed Sea urchin eggs, clams if you are near the sea.

These are just basic suggestions and should be studied through reading material, licensed teachers, etc. Always follow the laws in your area. 

WILDERNESS LIVING in a tent! ~ HOW MUCH FOR PEOPLE IN A CANDY WRAPPER?

 

         THIS IS A SHORT VIDEO THAT IS SO INCREDIBLE, THE REAL DEAL, WELL DONE, BY A GIRL LIVING IN THE YUKON IN A TENT IN TOTAL WILDERNESS. WELL WORTH A FEW MINUTES TO WATCH. I WISH SHE'D MAKE MORE!
             
       My first summer in northern Canada and Alaska was a real eye opener for me.  I had very little money and was making the trip in a little Geo Prism and a tent. I left from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I had a car top carrier full of dehydrated food, a trunk full of tents and gear, and a backseat full of sleeping bags, a dog and a 6 yr old.
       I wanted to see ALL of ALASKA so that I could come home and shop "online" for a piece of land there knowing what the general area and terrain was like in a given location.   I ended up going 11,000 miles that summer. (My car died about 60 miles after returning home) ~ that was a close call. Sure glad I didn't head up to the Arctic Ocean like I was thinking at the time.  

        Since my journey really started after crossing the Minnesota border into Canada.  I quickly found us in very rural countryside heading north.  We drove in 20 hour stretches looking for a camp ground.  Only when we were completely exhausted of looking at mile after mile of countryside did a campground seem to appear. We had a goal of getting into Alaska as quickly as possible.  Prior to crossing the border,  we had spent the night at a camp ground was in Northern Minnesota. We had pulled in around midnight, set up our tent quickly, thinking we were going to FINALLY get some sleep.... WHAT WERE WE THINKING? Sleep is NOT something you get on an adventure! 

About a half hour after we arrived at our first campsite,  a van drove up to our peaceful setting, it was full of some interestingly intoxicated occupants who were certain they were suppose to meet us there. We reassured them that we had NO IDEA who they were and that they were the last thing we needed for company in our endeavor to get a good nights sleep. We urged them to depart, which took some convincing, but they did finally leave and we had our trusty double barrel shotgun join us for the night instead. So wearily we turned in to once again try to sleep. Suddenly there was a loud SMACK on the water behind the tent    ....There was a large canal behind our tent and unbeknownst to us it was inhabited by very large carp or gar jumping from the water and coming down with an awful tremendous SMACK. That went on all night until day break. So we awoke almost rested and headed north. We crossed the border in the middle of the night around 2 am in North Dakota. The Canadian border guards had a million questions, (really just 2 questions asked a half a million different ways. Namely why were we coming into Canada and when are we leaving...welcome to Canada! This was doubly interesting because we had a son with us who was born at home and didn't have a birth certificate at the time. This bit of information would come into play later, however with some explaining they let us cross.)  The border agents kindly let us in with the small $25 fee per firearm , so lightened our wallets of about $150 right off the bat.  We traveled hours and hours into Saskatchewan where you you could see so far across the horizon that you could see the curve of the Earth!  Its easy to see there how so many millions of bison/buffalo could roam those vast prairies. The prairies are enormous! There's just no way to describe how you can drive for days and never reach the horizon. Coming along a back road we spied a sign for a camp ground at a lake. So we turned off expecting to come upon the campground within the first couple of miles. A few miles further on we see another sign telling us to turn at the road up ahead, after about 17 miles of signs we finally arrive at the campground to find a bewildered hostess who had no idea what to charge for two people and a kid in a "candy wrapper" (a tent -in bear country), so she tells me to wait a second while she calls the owner and I hear her whispering, "yeah, they're wanting to stay in a candy wrapper, how much do I charge them?" This was our first initiation into bear country where people, sane ones anyway, just didn't camp in tents. The owner arrived at a price which included all the cut campfire wood we needed and just a tip that we should keep our food packed away, there's been a couple bears off and on around the campsites, particularly in the back more secluded areas such as we had asked for....Well that was comforting!
    As it turned out we spent a couple of months wandering around Alaska after leaving Canada and never saw a bear near our tent. We were assaulted by storms so bad the winds pushed the roof of our tent down into our faces as we slept, rain that poured like a river requiring a second tent to be put over the first to keep out the driving rain, motes to be dug to divert the raging torrents coming off the tent. We had a moose cruise past the side of the tent on the one foot of space of the tent pad that stuck out past the tent. It was pretty unnerving to think of hooves carrying 1200 lbs just inches from my face. There were the unknown silent things (probably bears!)that we could neither hear, see, or smell that sent our dog into a barking ruckus in the middle of the nights, but overall our tent stay was fairly uneventful. The Alaskan nights (mind you its still broad daylight at night) in June and July did surprise us by dipping down into the 20's and 30's in some places particularly in higher elevations.