Wilderness Survival Camp Lessons Learned

Where do I start?  We learned so much on this campout!  We knew that it would be difficult, so we spent 4 months preparing.  We had classes on everything we could think about, we devoured anything we could find on survival.  We read any book we could find.  I bought 6 books online about survival (my wife wasn't too happy about that) and devoured everything I could in each of them.  Each one taught me something new that added to my arsenal of information for survival.  

One of the books was from a group of guys that taught survival skills, and decided to experience it themselves.  They picked a place and planned on surviving for 46 days with just their clothes on their backs and a pocket knife.  They hunted wild animals, and made their own water bottles (out of bark and pitch), shelters, weapons, etc.  One day the author finds a fawn hiding in the grass.  It takes him awhile to convince himself that he needs to kill to survive, but eventually he does, and he brings it back to camp and they dry the meat so it can be used for more than one day.  In the end, the author doesn't write about it until 10 years later, and still doesn't tell where they were because it was illegal to survive in such a way (it's not illegal to die, just to survive - how backward is that?)  The book is called:

"Wilderness Survival, Living off the Land with the Clothes on your Back and the Knife on your Belt", by Mark Elbroch and Mike Pewtherer.

Unfortunately, no matter how much you learn (or think you've learned), the real thing is going to be totally different from anything you've read. We couldn't find a place to survive where there were animals that we could hunt and eat, so we went to some private land (owned by one of our leaders).  It wasn't ideal, but it served it's purpose.  We got really hungry, and were willing to eat just about anything.  Which was part of the reason we did the camp.  We wanted to experience true hunger so we could get to where we would eat things to survive instead of eating things just to eat them.

These small barrel cactus were actually pretty good (well, tasteless, but moist and not bitter).  But this was the only patch of barrel cactus we could find so we didn't want to eat very much - had to follow the Leave No Trace principles as much as possible

The Gooseberries we found were awesome!  We ate all that we could find, the ripe and even all the green ones.  They were sour, but sour beats the bitter Dandelion or bitter Salsify that we were trying to choke down.

Learn how to start fires with whatever you find.  Learn how to do a bow and drill fire because you can then start a fire with just your shoe laces and a couple of sticks (and a pocket knife to shape the drill).  Then practice, practice, practice.

Don't be afraid to spend the night freezing, wrapped around a fire to stay warm.  The first night we all tried to sleep laying around the fire for warmth.  We didn't get very much sleep, but we survived the night.  You can always take a cat nap during the heat of the day to keep going.

I would love to try some alternative fire starting techniques.  I've always wanted to buy a fire piston from www.firepistons.com.  They look awesome!

Above all, keep your spirits up.  As we went through our survival experience we found that as long as we keep our attitudes up, it was easier to endure.  When we started getting down on ourselves, or complaining about the lack of food or warmth at night, we suffered more.  Laugh some, joke some, keep a positive attitude and you'll find it's a lot more fun, and you'll get a lot more done, and it'll turn into a positive experience for everyone.

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