Wilderness Survival High Adventure

Ever since I was young I wanted to do an actual wilderness survival campout.  Where I go into the mountains with a small survival pack, and survive off the land for a week or two.  In my mind I would be able to kill my own animals for food (with traps I make while up there, or hunting with weapons I made), tan the hide and use it for things, build a shelter to sleep in, start a fire with a bow and drill, the whole nine yards.

No, this isn't part of our survival time.  This is back at the base camp where yes, we did have a sink with warm running water.  Spoiled, eh?

So, when our Varsity's decided to try to do a survival trip for High Adventure, I was ecstatic!  So we started researching where we could go, and what we could actually do, and found out that it's illegal to survive in the wilderness!  Even with a fishing license and small game license, the only animals that were legal to hunt during the week we had available were the red-tailed fox, the striped skunk, and the Eurasian collared dove.  Well, I've seen lots of Eurasian collared doves here in town, but not many out in nature.  And I've never seen a fox or skunk!  Chances are we were going to die of starvation on our campout if we had to be so selective with what we could and couldn't eat.

We found out also that there wasn't any way we could survive in a wilderness area where there was huge fines for building structures such as survival shelters, AND it is illegal to hunt anything in those areas.  The only place we found that had any potential at all was on some private land (that we had permission to camp on) that was supposedly loaded with rabbits and prairie dogs, had a small stream running through it, and was far enough away from anything interesting that we could probably camp without detection from others.

So, here's what we were able to work out.  We had training classes for weeks before the trip where we discussed things such as Shelter, Fire, First Aid, Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, Finding Water, etc.  We gave the boys a list of approved items to take on their trip, and did some practice over-nighters.

Starting a fire with no matches or lighter, and wet wood.  It took about an hour, but we did it!

Here's the "shelter" I made on our first practice trip.  It was sufficient, but it got windy at night and that tarp was LOUD!

We were ok to hunt or trap the rabbits and prairie dogs on the land because they're considered pests by the ranchers out there, but unfortunately it's not suggested to eat them during the summer since they get diseased.  So our plan was to trade a hot dog for each prairie dog that was caught, and a chicken for each rabbit caught.  We hoped to still be able to tan the hide of the prairie dogs or rabbits caught using the brain tanning method.

Our plan was to drive to our destination on Monday, eat breakfast Tuesday morning and then hike 2 miles from our base camp with our survival kits and there survive until Thursday night when we would hike back to our base camp and have dinner.  Then for a reward for surviving we would go canyoneering on Friday.

When all was said and done, we got to the land, and found out that it was a weird year for prairie dogs and rabbits.  We didn't see any of either on the land.  So immediately we had to make changes to the plans.  We decided that lizards and snakes were worth hot dogs now, but never found anything large enough to trade for a frozen chicken.

We camped near a stream, in a valley, and found out the first night that it gets quite cold down in that valley.  I had slept Monday night at the base camp on top of my sleeping bag to see how cold it would get and decided I could make it without the bag for 2 nights.  Of course when the boys found out that I didn't have a bag, they couldn't look like a wimp and take theirs, so we went sleeping bagless.  Well, Tuesday night it was too cold to sleep so most of us spent the night around the campfire trying to sleep while sitting, or wrapped around the fire.  Suffice it to say, it wasn't too fun, but it was a survival experience, and we did survive!  We did have a couple of guys back at the base camp that checked in on us from time to time, so we had them bring us sleeping bags for the next night.

Yes, we did allow sleeping bags, and no, we didn't make them make their shelters out of just wood and leaves, but it was sure an experience just the same!

There were fish in the stream, about as big as my thumb though, and they didn't like anything we were using to catch them.  On the last day we had some success with worms and caught 4 thumb sized fish which we cooked up and ate.

We went hunting/foraging all day long to try to get food.  We ended up eating cactus, dandelion (bitter though, hard to force down), salsify (bitter as well), and our biggest find was some Gooseberry bushes along the river.  We ate all the gooseberries we found, ripe or not they were better than the bitter stuff we were finding everywhere else.

Ahh, Gooseberries!

Yeah, it's not much, but it was so good that we didn't care!

We wanted to make sure that we had a chance to eat something we killed, so we bought and brought along a live turkey which we killed and ate 1/2 way through our experience.  For most of the boys there it was the first time they had eaten something they had seen die, and gotten to gut and clean.  They all ate it, and were ravenous as the wolfed it down so it was good, I just wish we could have gotten something we could skin and tan.  As you can see from the photo, some of those helping didn't want to get blood on their hands, but it was good to have them pitch in and help with the dirty work:

All in all it was a good experience.  It wasn't the fast paced trip we're used to, there was a lot of just wandering around trying to find food, but in the hungry state we were all in we were conserving energy as much as possible.  It was definitely a challenging trip for all those involved, but it still is a cherished memory for the boys that made it.  They look back and remember that they were able to do it, even though it was very difficult, and that with that knowledge, they can do other hard things as well.

Yes, we did find some cactus to eat.  Not bad really, and I'm sure it had at least some nutrients, right?

If I were to do it again, I would search harder for a place with actual animals that we could trap and hunt.  That was a big part of the experience that we didn't really get to do.

If you want copies of the handouts I created for each class, click below to download the files.  You'll notice that they don't have all the answers, they were meant to be for a class where they fill in the blanks as we discussed it:

Survival Tips

Edible Plants

Fires, Signal for Help, Weather & Knots

First Aid and Shelters

Fishing & Trapping

Leave No Trace

Lessons Learned 

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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