Living in the wilderness is pretty hard, but you can survive! This is a matter of opinion, of course: some of us watch the “Survivor” series on television just for laughs, because with so much food around them, the competitors should be eating like kings, but they haven’t a clue about living in such bountiful surroundings. Do not panic and everything will go okay.

1

Collect your belongings in a backpack that has everything you need, but easy to carry

2

Pick a safe, secure site where you can stay. Close to a water source, but far enough where you will not be in danger of animals or high tides.

3

Fire is the essence to comfort in the wild. Burning hemlock bows keeps away flies and mosquitos. When you cook with fire do not use flame, build a fire long before you eat to create a hot bed of coals, open flame will burn your food to a black crisp.

4

Find food. Do not eat anything unless you know that it is edible.

5

A lean to is an easy to construct shelter. Never sleep on bare ground, always make the floor of your shelter something like hemlock bows, leaves, or hay, you will freeze if you sleep on the dirt.

6

Stay calm and as relaxed as possible

7

Make water a priority. You can last without food for up to a month, but water is essential. Drinking purified water is critical. You can get many diseases from dirty water. You never know if there is a dead animal upstream from you. So purify all your water.

    • There are several ways to purify water. One is to boil it for 10 minutes. This is the easiest.
    • Another is to use iodine tablets (NOT liquid iodine from the drug store). Use according to directions.
    • Another is to use a water filter. Prefilter the water with a bandanna or other piece of material. Then use the filter on that dirty water. The minimum size filter you need is 1 or 2 micron. This allows particles of 1 or 2 micron in size to pass through the filter. The smaller the micron size, the better the filter, and the slower the water will come out.
    • A gravity filter is easiest. You pour the water in, do more chores, and an hour or two later return to find fresh water.
    • Keep separate “Dirty” and “Clean” water containers. NEVER get a single drop of dirty water on your clean container. All it takes is one drop to get deathly ill.
    • To sterilize your clean container again, boil it in water for 10 minutes. Make sure all parts of the container are under water while boiling.
8
Eating bland foods such as salt, spices and sugar will make you feel thirsty. You can collect morning dew from grasses and leaves with a clean cloth (rag) and squeeze it out into a container. It may not be the cleanest, but it will help to keep you hydrated.
9
Realize that different environments require different courses of action. Practice “survival techniques” at home before you need them: learn to eat insects and grubs, find ways to collect water and learn to make small, efficient fires. Then, when you do end up in the wilderness, you won’t be too bewildered (excuse the pun).
10

Carry pemmican (dried meat and rendered fat) with you whenever you go off on a trip. Make your own favourite recipe at home. It requires no cooking and if you have enough fat in the mix, will sustain you longer than any other “survival food”. You can live on it for months in any situation, even at home. If you find that there is animal tracks theres probably a source of food and water near by.