Survive!

by Les Stroud

  Doug’s deadfall: This is similar to the figure-four deadfall. To build this trap you need three sticks of varying length (two short ones and one longer one) and a heavy crushing object such as a flat stone.

  Doug’s deadfall uses components similar to those of the figure-four deadfall: two upright sticks and a bait stick.

  For Doug’s deadfall, bait is placed on the end of the longer stick. When an animal disturbs the upright sticks, the rock or trap should fall, crushing the prey beneath.

  Paiute deadfall: Similar to the figure-four deadfall (but easier to set), the Paiute deadfall incorporates a piece of rope into its design. You need three long sticks of approximately equal length, and one short stick. See photo captions on the next page for detailed instructions.

  Bottle trap: Similar to the scorpion trap I used in the Kalahari, a bottle trap is effective in catching small rodents such as mice and voles.

  Dig a hole about a foot (30 cm) deep, making sure it’s wider at the bottom than the top and that the hole in the top is as small as possible, but big enough to fit your prey. Place a long piece of bark or wood an inch or two (2.5 to 5 cm) off the ground and over the hole; you can use rocks or bark to elevate the wood.

  Small rodents will seek shelter from danger under your bark or wood and fall into the hole. They will not be able to climb out because of the angle of the walls. Use caution when checking this trap, however: snakes like holes too!

  Making a Paiute Deadfall

  1. Gather and whittle Paiute deadfall sticks: (from top to bottom) the diagonal stick, the catch stick, the upright stick, and the bait stick.

  2. To set up a Paiute deadfall, bait the stick, then set up the trap as shown. The diagonal stick holds the weight of the rock.

  3. Here is the Paiute deadfall from another angle. If an animal disturbs the bait stick, the catch stick will release. The diagonal stick will fly up, the rock will fall, and dinner will be served.

  Birds

  ALL SPECIES OF BIRDS ARE EDIBLE, but I do not consider them an important part of my small-game diet, for two reasons: birds are very difficult to catch, and bird traps tend to be complex and hard to build.

  If you hope to have any chance of catching birds, you must make tracking them a significant part of your trip preparation and planning, and have extremely good luck. When I was in the Cook Islands, for example, I happened to be there during the one or two weeks when Brown Booby hatchlings were trying to take flight. They were practically falling out of their nests right at my feet! Had I been there a couple of weeks earlier or later, however, I would not have seen them.

  Believe it or not, the easiest birds to catch are songbirds, because you might find several dozen of them together in a tree or bush. The throwing stick is the best primitive hunting tool for nabbing songbirds.

  If you have a net (or can make one), one method of hunting birds is to string a net between trees near their nests. Birds tend to use the same flyways, and you may snare one this way. If you find some nests, bird eggs are also a good food source.

  Tracks and Other Signs of Animal Activity

  IS IT NECESSARY TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE between squirrel and mouse tracks? No. You couldn’t care less whether the animal you’re after is a shrew or a vole or a pika; all you want to do is eat it. All you need to know about tracks is where they are, which indicates where the animals are, and consequently, where you should set your traps and snares.

  In addition to watching for tracks, you can determine where animals spend their time by keeping an eye out for trails or runs, droppings, nests or burrows, holes, and scratchings.

  Hunting

  UNLESS YOU’RE AN EXPERIENCED HUNTER and have a weapon with you, you won’t have much success hunting for your food. I have yet to meet someone who can run down and catch a deer with their bare hands. In North America more than half of all people who get lost in the wilderness are hunters. But remember that hunting is labor-intensive, and as your energy level dwindles, so will your ability to hunt effectively.

  Making Hunting Tools

  The best hunting tools, like the best traps and snares, are the ones you can create simply and easily. For this reason you won’t find me explaining how to make bows and arrows. Not only are they extremely difficult to make but learning how to use them effectively takes practice. A person can’t, without years of experience, take a bent branch, attach a rope to it, and bring down a deer.

  A throwing stick is used intuitively: you throw it at an animal or bird in the hope of dazing or killing it. In essence, the throwing stick is opportunistic hunting. You should always have one with you, so that if you spook a bird or small animal while walking, you have the stick ready.

  The simplest yet most versatile hunting tool in a survival situation is the throwing stick. A throwing stick is a wrist-thick piece of hardwood in a curved J shape that looks like a miniature hockey stick, about 1.5 to 2.5 feet (0.5 to .75 m) in length. Some people sharpen one end of the stick, though that’s not necessary. The throwing stick can be used for protection from wild animals and can also double as a digging stick.

  A throwing stick does you little good, however, if it’s not at hand when you need it. In the African plains, I was hiking with my throwing stick strapped to my backpack. A few minutes into the walk, I stirred up some ground birds about 5 feet (1.5) away from me. Of course, I missed the chance to kill them because by the time I got my throwing stick out, they were gone. That’s a mistake I won’t make again.

  You do not want to travel long distances with the throwing stick looking for game; this requires too much energy and the stick is not accurate. Use it only when an opportunity presents itself.

  Skinning and Dressing

  IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT PREDATORS, make sure you clean game some distance from your camp, preferably near a water source. To skin large game, lay the animal on its back and split the hide from throat to tail, avoiding the sex organs. Turn your knife blade up to ensure that you cut only the hide and stomach muscles, not the internal organs, as cutting internal organs such as the stomach or kidneys can sometimes introduce foul-tasting liquids, effectively spoiling your catch.

  Smaller game is easier to skin. Cut the hide along the bottom or back legs and across the anus. Insert your fingers under the hide on both sides of the cut and pull it apart, using the knife to cut away places where the skin is holding on. The skin should slide back quite easily.

  Carefully cut through the stomach muscles. The exposed internal organs can now be cut or pulled out; they are attached only at the throat and anus. Don’t throw them away, though: most are edible. At the very least, they can be used for bait. You can eat the lungs, heart, kidneys, and liver (but be wary of liver that appears discolored or diseased). Avoid stomach and intestines, and although the stomach contents may be edible (such as crawfish inside fish) they should be considered a last-ditch food source.

  Cooking

  AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, there is only one way to cook food in a survival situation: boil it. Boiling food is most effective because many of the nutrients remain in the cooking liquid, and there is also something comforting about drinking warm broth.

  It’s true that boiled food can taste pretty bland, but I’d rather put up with bland flavor in an emergency than eat something that was grilled or cooked on an open fire, with many of the nutrients and fat dripped away.

  If you don’t have the option of boiling because you lack a pot, then you must use an alternative method. Spit cooking can be accomplished by skewering your meal on a green sapling and suspending it over a small fire. The hot coals of a fire work best here; high flames will only singe your meal without cooking the inside. Turn the spit regularly to cook the meat through.

  Another effective method is rock frying. Heat a couple of flat rocks in your fire, then place your food directly on the rocks to fry it.

  Preserving Food

  IF YOU ARE FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE MORE FOOD than you can eat at any given time, the greatest tragedy is to see
it go bad. For this reason, it’s important to know the various methods of preserving food in the wild.

  First, cut away all the fat. Fat can be rendered on its own and used as a food source, as bait, as grease in a qulliq (candle), as waterproofing, and more.

  If weather allows, the easiest technique is to hang your food to dry. Find a sunny, windy place, and set up a few sticks and logs to create hanging racks. Cut the meat into thin strips and hang it over the racks. After a couple of days it will be dry. You may find the meat turns black and crusty, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it prevents flies from laying their eggs in the meat and becoming maggots. (But if they do, keep the maggots—they’re edible too!)

  A better way to dry meat is to smoke it. Hang thinly sliced meat from your racks, but also build a small, smoky (punky wood works best) fire underneath. Smoking not only gives the meat great flavor, it prevents the flies from getting at it. If you have cloth among your supplies, you can wrap some of it around the racks to make an enclosure, which speeds up the process by keeping the smoke and heat in. For generations, Native North Americans have used tip is as smokehouses.

  When meat has been properly smoked, it will look dry, shrunken, and brittle. It doesn’t need to be cooked to be eaten. Here the meat is drying in the sun while the smoke keeps the flies away.

  Finally, you can preserve meat by soaking it in salt water. Salt water must cover the meat completely. If you happen to have lots of salt, you can layer the meat, covering each layer in salt. In both cases, be sure to wash the salt off the meat before cooking it.

  Eating Carrion

  CARRION—THE CAR CASS OF A DEAD ANIMAL—is something many of us would never consider eating. Until we’re trying to stay alive in the wild, that is.

  Most readers of this book live in a society where the only interaction they have with rotten food is when they throw it in the garbage. And in an age when food has spent time on a truck, train, or ship, has traveled between continents, and has been handled by dozens of people before it hits the grocery store shelves, that’s probably smart.

  But in the wild, it’s amazing what kinds of rotten (or seemingly rotten) foods our stomachs can handle. That’s why I ate a rotting fish when I was in Alaska. Even though it had been out in the sun all day, I figured it wouldn’t hurt me, and I was right. Most cultures in the not-too-distant past included raw or rotting meat as a staple of their diet. For example, the Montagnais of northern Quebec fill the stomach of a woodland caribou with its internal organs and let it hang in the heat of summer in a tree for a couple of weeks. Then, when it has turned into what can graciously be described as stinky mush, they eat it as a delicacy.

  If you resort to eating carrion, you should cook it whenever possible. But if I were presented with the choice between uncooked carrion and starvation, I’d eat the carrion.

  Eating Charcoal

  IF YOU FIND YOUR STOMACH BECOMING UPSET because of your new diet, eating charcoal (pieces of burnt wood from your fire) may help cure what ails you. Charcoal will absorb many drugs and toxins from the gastrointestinal tract.

  African survival expert Douw Kruger uses charcoal extensively for stomach problems. He grinds charcoal into a teaspoonful of fine powder, mixes it with water, and consumes this a few times a day as necessary. Don’t take too much, though, as it can cause constipation. And don’t ever eat charcoal made from poisonous wood.

  Region-Specific Food Considerations

  THE KEY TO SUCCESS IN GATHERING AND CATCHING FOOD in a wilderness environment is knowing a few plants and creatures native to each region. The wild plants and creatures listed below are safe to eat, easy to identify, and found in relative abundance.

  Arid Regions, Deserts, and Canyons

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  pads of the prickly pear cactus

  fruit of the prickly pear cactus

  mesquite beans

  Top Three Critters:

  mice and rats

  grasshoppers and scorpions

  rattlesnakes: Be sure to cut o? and bury the head and its potentially lethal fangs.

  Boreal and Other Temperate Forests

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  cattails

  berries (in season)

  wild teas (from needles, leaves, and fruit): spruce, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, Labrador

  Top Three Critters:

  creepy crawlies (earthworms, grubs, grasshoppers)

  rodents (including squirrels)

  rabbits

  The Arctic and Polar Regions

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  caribou lichen (reindeer moss)

  berries (in season)

  willow shoots

  Top Three Critters:

  rodents

  bird eggs (in season): The Arctic is one of the few places where you can find entire colonies of bird eggs.

  fish: Fishing in a place like the boreal forest is an uncertain undertaking. You could walk through miles of thick bush without finding a lake. In the Arctic in the summer, however, there are all kinds of running streams. (There aren’t always fish in them, but checking streams is worth a shot.)

  On the Sea or Open Water

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  bull kelp

  seaweed

  any other type of greenery

  Top Three Critters:

  barnacles and other crustaceans that attach themselves to the bottom of your vessel

  small fish that follow in the shade of your vessel

  plankton: You can catch plankton by trailing an open sock behind your vessel. The plankton collect in the sock, giving you a teaspoonful of salty mush.

  (Of course, you should also try your hand at catching big fish from your vessel, but this isn’t easy to do. Some have sustained themselves by killing birds that occasionally landed on their vessels.)

  Jungles

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  fruit

  palm nuts

  palm hearts

  Top Three Critters:

  fish from feeder streams (small, shallow, muddy little runoffs from rainfall):

  If you have a net, you can often scoop small fish and crustaceans from these streams.

  fish from rivers

  insects and grubs (as long as you can distinguish the benign ones from the poisonous ones)

  Coastal Regions

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  bull kelp

  bladderwrack seaweed

  sea lettuce

  Top Three Critters:

  creepy crawlies (earthworms, grubs, grasshoppers)

  rodents (including squirrels)

  rabbits

  Mountains

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  berries (in season)

  wild teas

  mushrooms (only if an experienced mushroom hunter has taught you which ones are safe)

  Top Three Critters:

  rodents (including squirrels)

  rabbits

  creepy crawlies (earthworms, grubs, grasshoppers)

  Swamps

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  cattails

  pond lily tubers

  wild teas

  Top Three Critters:

  frogs and leeches

  snakes and turtles

  rodents

  Africa

  Top Three Wild Edibles:

  wild cucumbers

  wild melons

  gemsbuck (marama) bean roots and bulbs

  Top Three Critters:

  snakes, lizards, and tortoises

  ground birds and sociable weaver birds (found in big nests in trees)

  rodents and mongoose

  Group Versus Solo Survival

  BEING PART OF A GROUP THAT’SSTRUGGLINGFORSURVIVAL can be both a blessing and a curse when food is an issue. There is the obvious advantage of having more people to collect food and identify food sources. But when it comes to rationing food, you may find that the other members of your group have vastly
different opinions about the proper proportions.

  Another benefit of being in a group is that you may find it easier to eat things you might otherwise consider disgusting. If you’re hungry and see your buddy eating maggots, for example, you just might do it too.

  And with more people in your group, there’s a greater chance that at least one of them is a proficient hunter or angler, which could radically change the food landscape for everyone.

  On the downside, there can be endless discussions about favorite foods and what you miss the most (as you feast on a slug or two). These conversations can lead to a couple of hours of euphoria but are inevitably followed by depression as the reality of your situation becomes clearer.

  Chapter Nine

  SURVIVAL TRAVEL AND NAVIGATION

  When you’re struggling to survive, most of your decisions revolve around prioritizing your immediate needs: should you search for water, food, or shelter? Should you make a signal or a fire? All are vital to your well-being; the only decision to make is which one should come first, and the answer usually becomes obvious when you take into account your circumstances, the region, and the weather in which you find yourself. But perhaps the single most important (and difficult) decision you will face in the wilderness is whether you should move or stay put.